American Buddhist Net

08/07/2008
Ari LeVaux

Chinese authorities may have shut down the dog restaurants in Beijing before the start of the Olympics, but I still scored a great piece of ass in Dunhuang, a city in western China. Stir-fried with carrots and peppers, the donkey flesh tasted like beef, only leaner.

I’m writing from Central Asia, smack in the middle of the world’s largest continent, and as far from the ocean as you can get. I’ve joined a group of Beijing-based astronomers that’s come west to watch the August 1 solar eclipse, the path of which passes near the village of Yiwu in Xinjiang, China’s most remote province.

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SAEED SHAH
August 6, 2008

ISLAMABAD -- For years, her existence was known only through her cries of pain and the occasional glimpses of her by other prisoners at Bagram, the U.S. base in Afghanistan that houses a notorious prison. She became known as the Grey Lady of Bagram, a ghostly figure who was said to have lost her mind.

It has been long suspected that the woman is Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani scientist accused by the United States of offering her services to al-Qaeda.

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Hundreds of Kashmiri Hindus backed by political parties clashed with police in the Capital on Saturday while holding a rally to pledge support to activists in Jammu protesting the killings of two people and revocation of the land transfer to the Amarnath Shrine Board.

Around 3,000 people of all age groups gathered at Jantar Mantar in the heart of the Capital and proceeded towards Parliament House, but were stopped by police officials near the Parliament Street police station.

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Army called out in Kashmir religious protests

India-Pakistan clashes bring fear to Kashmir villages

Good piece, worth reading, especially if you are not familiar with the history of this area. Moreover, given the importance of Buddhist Gandhara, Taxila, and Greco-Bactria, and given the known influence of these regions on both Indian and Chinese Buddhism, it is hard not to conclude that Eastern Mediterranean coastal areas were also deeply influenced by these kingdoms and that consequently early Christianity was influenced by Buddhism. Some say that it was profoundly influenced. Central Asia is one of the world's most important historical regions, though constant changes in the area often obscure that fact. ABN
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August 1, 2008
Pervaiz Munir Alvi

Pakistan is home to the ancient Gandhara Civilization. Its Buddhist character, which this civilization is best known for, was first established in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when colonial British military men and archeologists discovered various ancient religious sites near the city of Taxila in the Potowar region of Pakistan.

However since independence of Pakistan, the late 20th century studies and research conducted both by the Pakistani and Western scholars have documented and confirmed that Gandhara Civilization was not always Buddhist in character but had also gone through some well defined Hellenistic and Parthian periods as well.

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July 29, 2008

The United Nations Mine Action Centre for Afghanistan (UNMACA) has announced plans to clear a total of 1,800,000 square metres of land in the historic city of Bamiyan that is contaminated with mines and unexploded ordinance (UXOs) by October.

Bamiyan contains a number of Buddhist monastic ensembles and sanctuaries, as well as fortified edifices from the Islamic period. It is also where the Taliban destroyed two standing Buddha statues in March 2001.

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Mon Jul 28, 2008

SUKHUMI, Georgia (Reuters) - In the capital of Georgia's breakaway province of Abkhazia, cracked steps lead up to a battered 1970s monument featuring a baboon.

"Polio, yellow fever, typhus, encephalitis, smallpox, hepatitis and many other human diseases were eradicated thanks to tests on primates," the inscription reads.

Once the pride of Soviet science, Sukhumi's Institute of Experimental Pathology and Therapy is now a shadow of the pioneering centre that helped defeat polio and saved countless thousands of lives in World War Two with penicillin treatments.

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Monday 21st July, 2008

Scientists have determined that the emerging new understanding of the Indus Civilization suggests that it might have been "a powerhouse of commerce and technology in the 3rd millennium B.C.E."

According to a recent report in the journal Science, though there is much written about the Indus Civilization, this report is different because it highlights how our scientific - in this case archaeological - knowledge on the subject is not only expanding, but changing.

Striking new evidence from a host of excavations on both sides of the tense border that separates India and Pakistan has now definitively overturned the second-class status given to the Indus Civilization.

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This statement does not bode well for an Obama presidency. Sounds to me that he is trying to make a point that had minimal validity maybe four, five years ago, depending on context. Is he pandering to some invisible audience or totally misguided by the need to support the "war on terror" but not the debacle in Iraq? Is he getting bad advice and taking it or did he decide to say that all on his own? ABN
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By CARLOTTA GALL
Published: July 21, 2008

...In an interview with CBS News on Sunday, Mr. Obama said: “We have to understand that the situation is precarious and urgent here in Afghanistan. And I believe this has to be our central focus, the central front on our battle against terrorism."

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Islamabad (AsiaNews) - District judge Mian Muhammad Naeem, of the section of Muzaffargarh, has ruled that the two Christian sisters "have converted in a legitimate manner to Islam", and for this reason they cannot be "restored to their family of origin". Setting aside the request from their father to regain custody of his daughters, the judge also admitted the "validity" of the marriage of the girls to two Muslims.

Saba Younas, aged 13, and her sister Anila were kidnapped last June 26 in the village of Chowk Munda, in the province of Punjab, where they had gone to visit their uncle, Khalid Raheel.

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Thursday, 17 July 2008
By Alastair Leithead

When the Buddhas of Bamiyan were carved out of the mountainside, the Roman Empire still dominated the globe.

They towered over a rich valley in what is now central Afghanistan, where caravans of traders would stop and rest on the Silk Road as they transported goods between east and west.

For centuries the two huge statues stood guard over Bamiyan.

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Mardan, July 12: Several articles recovered from Mardan, a tribal area in NWFP, like toilet trays, terracotta sculptures, coins etc indicate that the Greek, Roman, Iranian and Central Asian cultures deeply influenced the indigenous Gandhara art and culture in the region.

Speaking at a gathering here, a prominent Pakistani archaeologist Dr Zianul Wahab said that Gandhara was the centre of various arts and its architectural techniques were very popular in the world.

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It is longer than Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall taken together. It is over a thousand years older than the Great Wall of China as we know it today. It is of more solid construction than its ancient Chinese counterparts. It is the greatest monument of its kind between central Europe and China and it may be the longest brick, or stone, wall ever built in the ancient world. This wall is known as ‘The Great Wall of Gorgan’ or ‘the Red Snake’. An international team of archaeologists has been at work on the snakelike monument and here they report on their findings.

The ‘Red Snake’ in northern Iran, which owes its name to the red colour of its bricks, is at least 195km long. A canal, 5m deep or more, conducted water along most of the Wall. Its continuous gradient, designed to ensure regular water flow, bears witness to the skills of the land-surveyors responsible for marking out the Wall's route. Over 30 forts are lined up along this massive structure. Their combined size is about three times that of those on Hadrian's Wall. Yet these forts are small in comparison with contemporary fortifications in the hinterland, some of which are around ten times larger than the largest Wall forts. The 'Red Snake' is unmatched in so many respects and an enigma in yet more.

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Thursday, July 03, 2008

LAHORE: In the forest of Sravasti there lived some ascetics who scoffed at the teachings of Buddha and questioned his greatness. In order to put an end to this controversy, King Paranjit (or Parshajita) of Sravasti decided to invite the hermits as well as Buddha.

In an enormous hall a large gathering assembled for the occasion. The arrival of Buddha was awaited, that moment a dense cloud drifted in and slowly as it evaporated Buddha was seen standing in the centre.

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The rise and fall of Bhddhism in South Asia
Author: M. Abdul Mu'min Chowdhury
Publisher: London Institute of South Asia
Pages 358, Price: Taka 500/- US$ 15

Before the rise of Brahmanism the subcontinent was overwhelmingly Buddhist. South Asian monks and merchants had introduced Buddhism to other countries. Although in those Asian countries it continues to prosper, in South Asia it survives only as a jumbled memory. The human agency, the Aryan-Brahmans, behind the unusual fate of Buddhism in the subcontinent also became its modern day historiographers.

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Thursday, Jun. 26, 2008

Mirza Hussain, and other prisoners like him, had labored for hours to stack mines, bombs and dynamite beneath the feet of Afghanistan's most iconic public artwork — a 175-foot standing statue of the Buddha carved from the sandstone cliffs of the Bamiyan Valley sometime in the 7th century. Finally, the local Taliban commander blew his whistle, and hundreds of observers plugged their ears, held their breath and waited for the Buddha to fall. It didn't. The first load of explosives only destroyed the statue's feet.

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Sun, Jun. 22, 2008
By Steven Rea

'You know that Genghis Khan is one of the most unpopular names in Russia," says filmmaker Sergei Bodrov. "We Russians spent 250 years under Mongolian rule, so we still blame Mongols for all our problems. I read about Genghis Khan, of course, in my school books, and he is portrayed very badly. He is an evil warmonger, and so on.

"But I became suspicious, because I didn't think he was born as a monster, and I found interesting stories about his childhood, and the young years of his life."

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WAH CANTT, June 20 (APP): The archaeologists team of the Federal Department of Archaeology and Museums found a statue of Bodhisattva Maitreya made of black shiest stone belongs to second century AD at the Buddhist monastery locally called Badal Pur situated about 13 km north-east of Taxila Museum.

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Tue Jun 17, 2008
By Ben Blanchard

KASHGAR, China (Reuters) - China locked down the far-western former Silk Road city of Kashgar on Tuesday in preparation for the passage of the Olympic torch relay through the sensitive region populated by ethnic-minority Muslim Uighurs.

Shops lining Wednesday's torch route were shuttered and police stood guard on every street corner. Soldiers and firefighters patrolled the main square of a city seen as the heart of Islam in China's oil-rich border region of Xinjiang.

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Gandhara was a very important Buddhist region in the ancient world and was a major influence on Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Buddhism. ABN
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ISLAMABAD, Jun 16 (APP): Steps including preservation and promotion of ancient cultural heritage of Gandhara through maintaining its identity, will definitely lure a large number of tourists from across the globe.

Chief Monk of Korea, Jeon Woon Deok, expressed his views here during the presentation of a proposal titled “Gandhara Renaissance” for the restoration of Gandhara sites including Takht-Bahi and its surroundings.

The Chief Monk said the monastery of Takht-Bahi physically belongs to Pakistan but spiritually it is attached to Buddhists and its renaissance would create inter-civilization harmony in the region.

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By Alisa Tang, Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan — The girl was 11 when she was molested by a man with no legs.

The man paid her $5. And that was how she started selling sex.

Afghanistan is one of the world's most conservative countries, yet its sex trade appears to be thriving. Sex is sold most obviously at brothels full of women from China who serve both Afghans and foreigners. Far more controversial are Afghan prostitutes, who stay underground in a society that pretends they don't exist.

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Islamabad, June 10 (ANI): The relics of three civilizations have been found in Pakistan, namely from the 2,400 year old Buddhist era, 8th century AD Hindu period, and the 300-year-old Aurangzeb period.

According to a report in The International News, the relics were found under Margalla Hills, at a distance of 15 kilometres from the main Golra intersection in Pakistan.

Among the findings are cages belonging to the Buddhists.

Here, monks used to perform their religious rites in isolation and the emergence of murals on the wall support this view.

The murals were not visible previously, but with the passage of time, the layers of smoke and dust over the walls washed out and the original came out, said Ansar Ahmed, an archaeologist.

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Sunday, June 8, 2008
By Saeed Shah

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — It began with an errant dog. It's culminated with the forced betrothal of 15 little girls, some of them as young as three, as compensation in a case of tribal feuding in a remote part of Pakistan.

It's thought that around 20 people have died in the bitter quarrel, and the marriage offer of the girls is meant to end the bloodletting.

Under a brutal custom, called Vani, the girls are being traded as settlement of a long-running dispute between two tribes. This case occurred on the border between the southern provinces of Sindh and Baluchistan, but the practice, known as Swara in some areas, isn't uncommon in rural parts of Pakistan.

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By BRIAN ROSS
May 30, 2008

The Pakistani scientist blamed for running a rogue network that sold nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya has recanted his confession, telling ABC News the Pakistani government and President Perez Musharraf forced him to be a "scapegoat" for the "national interest."

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Wed, 28 May 2008 15:46:15
By Hedieh Ghavidel, Press TV, Tehran

Manichaeism, presumably an offshoot of Zoroastrianism, was not only an inspiration for various heretical movements in Christianity but also dominated the religious life of Central and Eastern Asia for centuries.

Through the four centuries of Sassanid rule over Persia (224-651 CE) Zoroastrianism was the official state religion. Historians, however, have spoken of several heretical sects. One such cult was that of the Manicheans, founded by Mani at the beginning of the Sassanid era.

The founder of the new religion believed to have been the culmination of Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Buddhism was born in 216 CE in southern Babylonia of noble Persian stock.

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May 22, 2008

VILNIUS - After more than a month of digging work in the Ghor province of Afghanistan, Lithuanian archeologists collected large amounts of evidence about cultures that prospered in the region centuries ago.

...One of the key findings was the remains of a Buddhist monastery hand-carved in the bluff of the River Harirud. The artificial caves revealed testimony of daily life of the Buddhist monks. Specialists believe the monastery could have existed in the first centuries of our era during the prevalence of Buddhism in the current territory of Afghanistan, which was later pushed back by Islam.

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