India eyes return of 'Buddha begging bowl' from
Afghanistan
Xin.msn.com AgenceFrance-Presse 2014-01-15
Jan 14-- Indian archaeologists are being sent to
Kabul to study a begging bowl said to have been used by Buddha in a
first step aimed at bringing the artifact back to India, an
official said.
The huge stone vessel, weighing nearly 400
kilograms (880 pounds), is currently displayed at the National
Museum of Afghanistan and is regarded as an important relic in the
Buddhist religion.
The two experts will examine the piece after
demands in the national parliament last year for the return of the
bowl which the state-run Archaeological Survey of India (ASI)
believes belongs to India.
We will be sending two experts to Kabul to
examine the bowl. We are very much in favour of bringing it back to
India, ASI additional director general B. R. Mani told AFP late
Monday.
They will examine if the raw material has been
sourced locally from one of the Afghan cities. If not, it will
strengthen our claim that it belongs to us, Mani
said.
India's attempt to reclaim the bowl follows
efforts to have other artifacts returned from around the world,
including the Kohinoor diamond -- the centrepiece of the British
crown jewels.
The 105 carat gemstone was seized by the East
India Company and became part of the British Crown Jewels when
Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India in
1877.
India has made regular requests for its return,
but Britain has made clear the diamond is going nowhere.
The director of the National Museum in Kabul
said the Indian archaeologists were welcome to come and see the
bowl for themselves.
But if they make a demand (for) it be sent to
India or so, then it is a matter that needs to be discussed by the
governments of both countries, Omara Khan Massoudi told
AFP.
The ASI says its historical documents and
research suggests that Buddha himself could have donated the bowl,
which is 1.75 metres (5.7 feet) in diameter, to the people of
Vaishali, a Buddhist pilgrimage site in the eastern Indian state of
Bihar.
A king who ruled northern India and other parts
of Asia in the second century took the bowl to what is now Peshawar
in Pakistan, before being moved to what is now Kandahar in
Afghanistan, ASI says its research shows.
The bowl was then believed to have been
moved to the Kabul museum during the Soviet war in Afghanistan in
the 1980s.
ASI's research is backed by that of Alexander
Cunningham, a British archaeologist and historian in the 1800s, who
wrote about an elephant that collapsed under the weight of the bowl
while trying to carry it in India.
In Buddhist monasteries such huge stone troughs
used to (be) kept at the entrance gates as donation bowls. This
bowl was also perhaps used similarly, Mani said.
The greenish-grey granite bowl has a lotus
flower chiseled around its base, suggesting its Buddhist past. The
bowl was later inscribed along its rim with rows of Arabic script,
said Mani.
The experts are likely to fly to Kabul next
month.
The safety of Buddhist relics in Afghanistan
caused concern after the Taliban destroyed monumental Buddha
statues carved into a hill in Bamiyan province in
2001.