Author:
Publication: Agence France-Presse
Date: June 9, 2004
Vandals have severely damaged rock
carvings at a historic Buddhist temple in Kazakhstan that marked the ancient
Silk Road between Europe and Asia, archaeologists in this former Soviet
republic said on Wednesday.
The latest incident this spring
has erased most of a 1.5-metre (five-foot) high portrait of a Buddhist
holy man at the temple which lay at the heart of the former Zhungarian
empire -- the last of the Mongol empires that dominated Asia until the
mid-18th century.
The portrait, which is carved into
volcanic rock and dates from around 1710, appears to have been wrecked
by hammer-wielding mountain climbers, Renato Sala of the Kazakh Academy
of Science's Geo-Archaeology Laboratory, said.
Other Buddhas at the temple located
at a crossing point on southeast Kazakhstan's Ili River appear to have
been shot at by patrons of a nearby gun club, Sala said.
"This is a very precious ethnographic
piece," said Sala, one of a number of European archaeologists working in
Kazakhstan, after the latest attack.
Since breaking from Moscow in 1991
the government of Kazakhstan, a mainly Muslim, oil-rich republic, has promoted
the country as a haven of religious tolerance.
But the temple on the Ili River
lies unguarded, even though it has enjoyed something of a revival as a
pilgrimage destination since the end of communist rule.
"Kazakhstan can't promote itself
as a Central Asian country with ties to the East and at the same time let
these buddhas be destroyed," Sala told AFP.
In 1758 Manchu China destroyed the
Buddhist Zhungarian empire, making way for a Kazakh resurgence that soon
fell under Russia's sphere of influence.
Archaeologists hope that a series
of Buddhist sites stretching from northern India through Afghanistan to
China and Kazakhstan will eventually be awarded world heritage status by
the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
