Archaeological Survey of India team to visit Kabul for Buddha’s bowl
PRICELESS BOWL Special features : Delicate lotus petal design chiselled around base, attesting to Buddhist past
The 1883 lithograph of Buddha’s bowl at Calcutta Museum.
KOLKATA: Two experts from Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) are being sent to Kabul to examine a begging bowl said to be used by Lord Buddha, and initiate the process of bringing it back to India.
In August last year, RJD MP Raghuvansh Prasad Singh demanded in Lok Sabha that the bowl be returned to Vaishali (which also happens to be his constituency). On Saturday, Singh presided over an emergency meeting with ASI director general Praven Srivastava, ADG B R Mani, director-antiquities R S Fonia and director-east Phani Kanta Mishra where it was decided to send a team to Kabul to "physically verify it" as part of the initiative to bring it back to the country.
Mishra and G S Khwaja, director-Arabic and Persian Epigraphy, Nagpur, have been nominated for the job, ASI sources said from Delhi.
ASI conducted an exhaustive research on the bowl in the last six months after junior external affairs minister Preneet Kaur, in her reply to Singh, said that the Indian embassy in Kabul has inquired and found the item to be Lord Buddha's bowl. ASI was then asked to provide information about its origin.
ASI documents and a report of ASI's first director general Sir Alexander Cunningham say the giant 350-400kg stone artefact was Lord Buddha's bowl or Bhikshapatra that he donated to the people of Vaishali before leaving for Kushinagar (Uttar Pradesh) for Parinirvana. In the 2nd Century, Kanishka the Great took the bowl from Vaishali to his capital Purushpura (modern-day Peshwar) and then to Gandhara (now Kandahar). In the 20th century, the massive bowl was taken to Kabul Museum, where it rests today.
Chinese Buddhist pilgrims between the 3rd and 9th centuries — including Fa Hien and Hiuen Tsang — saw it and recorded it in their travelogues, say ASI sources. "Sir Alexander Cunningham, in his Volume-16 report, recorded the archeological details with a lithography (lithographed at the Surveyor General's office, Calcutta, July 1883) of the bowl," said Mishra, who is due to visit Kabul.
Buddhist relics in Afghanistan have been a cause of concern for India and the world after the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban regime in 2001. The Taliban had ordered all Buddhist artifacts in Kabul museum destroyed but Buddha's bowl remained undamaged, thanks to the Quranic verses inscribed on its outer surface.
The 'bowl' is by no means small. The solid stone hemisphere, made of greenish-grey granite, is about 5.7 feet in diameter and its rim is 18cm thick on average. It's thicker in the middle and at the base. It has no cracks or abrasions, except for a palm-size area that has flaked away near the rim. The base is a delicately chiseled lotus, attesting to its Buddhist past. And inscribed in beautiful large calligraphic script along the rim of the bowl are six rows of verses from the Quran, reflecting its Islamic continuum and its status through the ages as an object of special religious interest. Traces of similar calligraphic script are visible on the inside of the bowl as well. At 350-400kg, the bowl is far too heavy to lift, ASI documents say.
How did Quranic verses come on this Buddhist relic? ASI research has revealed that during the Islamic period it was taken from one palace or mosque to another until at an unknown date it ended up in Sultan Ways Baba's shrine on the outskirts of Kandahar. Several British officers reported seeing it there in the 19th Century and one of them tried to translate the inscription. In the late 1980s, during Afghanistan's civil war, President Najibullah had the bowl taken to Kabul's National Museum.
In August last year, RJD MP Raghuvansh Prasad Singh demanded in Lok Sabha that the bowl be returned to Vaishali (which also happens to be his constituency). On Saturday, Singh presided over an emergency meeting with ASI director general Praven Srivastava, ADG B R Mani, director-antiquities R S Fonia and director-east Phani Kanta Mishra where it was decided to send a team to Kabul to "physically verify it" as part of the initiative to bring it back to the country.
Mishra and G S Khwaja, director-Arabic and Persian Epigraphy, Nagpur, have been nominated for the job, ASI sources said from Delhi.
ASI conducted an exhaustive research on the bowl in the last six months after junior external affairs minister Preneet Kaur, in her reply to Singh, said that the Indian embassy in Kabul has inquired and found the item to be Lord Buddha's bowl. ASI was then asked to provide information about its origin.
ASI documents and a report of ASI's first director general Sir Alexander Cunningham say the giant 350-400kg stone artefact was Lord Buddha's bowl or Bhikshapatra that he donated to the people of Vaishali before leaving for Kushinagar (Uttar Pradesh) for Parinirvana. In the 2nd Century, Kanishka the Great took the bowl from Vaishali to his capital Purushpura (modern-day Peshwar) and then to Gandhara (now Kandahar). In the 20th century, the massive bowl was taken to Kabul Museum, where it rests today.
Chinese Buddhist pilgrims between the 3rd and 9th centuries — including Fa Hien and Hiuen Tsang — saw it and recorded it in their travelogues, say ASI sources. "Sir Alexander Cunningham, in his Volume-16 report, recorded the archeological details with a lithography (lithographed at the Surveyor General's office, Calcutta, July 1883) of the bowl," said Mishra, who is due to visit Kabul.
Buddhist relics in Afghanistan have been a cause of concern for India and the world after the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban regime in 2001. The Taliban had ordered all Buddhist artifacts in Kabul museum destroyed but Buddha's bowl remained undamaged, thanks to the Quranic verses inscribed on its outer surface.
The 'bowl' is by no means small. The solid stone hemisphere, made of greenish-grey granite, is about 5.7 feet in diameter and its rim is 18cm thick on average. It's thicker in the middle and at the base. It has no cracks or abrasions, except for a palm-size area that has flaked away near the rim. The base is a delicately chiseled lotus, attesting to its Buddhist past. And inscribed in beautiful large calligraphic script along the rim of the bowl are six rows of verses from the Quran, reflecting its Islamic continuum and its status through the ages as an object of special religious interest. Traces of similar calligraphic script are visible on the inside of the bowl as well. At 350-400kg, the bowl is far too heavy to lift, ASI documents say.
How did Quranic verses come on this Buddhist relic? ASI research has revealed that during the Islamic period it was taken from one palace or mosque to another until at an unknown date it ended up in Sultan Ways Baba's shrine on the outskirts of Kandahar. Several British officers reported seeing it there in the 19th Century and one of them tried to translate the inscription. In the late 1980s, during Afghanistan's civil war, President Najibullah had the bowl taken to Kabul's National Museum.