…Bamian, an important commercial and religious center…
630 CE
…Bamian, an important commercial and religious center on the caravan route between central Asia and India, and home to numerous Buddhist monuments constructed along the conglomerate cliffs that wall the valley.
Here Xuanzang meets the king and sees tens of non-Mahayana monasteries, in addition to the two large Bamian Buddhas carved out of the rockface.
Located in the Bamian River valley northwest of Kabul, in the central mountains of present Afghanistan, the valley’s caves have been fashioned into temples and monasteries, many containing well-preserved fresco-like wall paintings, and a famous colossal statue of the standing Buddha, standing one hundred and seventy-five feet (fifty-three meters) high.
This Buddha, and another measuring about one hundred and twenty feet (thirty-seven meters), both probably carved in the third to fifth centuries, reside within niches carved into the sheer cliff.
Work had begun on the smaller one in 544 and 595; the larger is built between 591 and 644.
(In 2001, the country's then-rulers, the fundamentalist Taliban, will blow the statues to smithereens).
The party then resumes their travel eastward, …
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