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Fri 12 Nov, 2004 01:37 am
Quote:Afghanistan wants its 'Dead Sea Scrolls of Buddhism' back from UK
By Nick Meo in Kabul
12 November 2004
The Afghan government is to request the return of the "Dead Sea Scrolls of Buddhism" from the British Library, amid concerns the priceless manuscripts were looted during civil war in the early nineties.
Afghanistan's Minister of Culture will formally ask for the 2000-year-old scrolls to be sent from London to the newly restored Kabul Museum in the next few weeks as part of a campaign to bring home stolen treasures from foreign collections.
The British Library, whose conservation experts saved the scrolls from crumbling, has admitted it has no idea how they came to London from one of Afghanistan's most famous historical sites at Hadda near the Khyber Pass.
Museums and archaeological sites were looted to order by gangs during the years of turmoil in the early nineties, with treasures from Afghanistan's past being dug up or stolen from museums and shipped abroad, usually by Pakistani middle men selling to rich collectors in America, Europe and Japan.
After years of seeing their heritage plundered for profit, Afghans are showing a new interest in the glories of their past. Showcasing treasures from the extraordinary rich cultures that grew up in ancient Afghanistan, at a cultural crossroads of the Silk Road, are also seen by modern Afghans as a way of showing a more positive international image than the usual one of drugs, terrorism and bloodshed.
Dr Sayed Raheen, Minister of Information and Culture, has promised to try and restore the once-famous collection of the Kabul Museum, looted and burned during the war and reopened last month after a major restoration project.
Many of its finest pieces were hidden first from looters and later from Taliban iconoclasts by museum workers, often at great personal risk.
The Kharosti Scrolls would be a hugely prestigious centerpiece for the new museum. The 60 fragments of text written in the ancient script Kharosti on birch bark are considered by Buddhist scholars as comparable in historical importance to the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Between the 2nd and 7th centuries AD, Hadda was one of the holiest sites in Buddhism drawing pilgrims from all over India and China. The scrolls are the earliest known Buddhist scripts and were produced by monks in the extraordinary civilisation of Gandhara, a synthesis of Indian and Greek culture spread to Asia by the followers of Alexander the Great.
The civilisation flourished at the time of the Roman Empire in what is now the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Dr Raheen said: "Afghanistan has lost so many unique and priceless pieces - ancient coins, books and statues - it's impossible to say how many thousands of our artefacts have disappeared abroad.
"Most of them have gone into private collections and we may never see them again. But there are also treasures in some museums in the West. Paris has important collections of Afghan artifacts, so does Switzerland. And we will certainly be requesting that the British Library returns the scrolls."
Dr Raheen, a noted Sufi poet, said Hadda, near the antiques markets in the Pakistani city of Peshawar and in an area of savage fighting, suffered terrible damage during the war.
He said: "Hadda was totally looted. There are numerous pieces from there now in a number of foreign museums. We have been assured that they are being looked after and told that whenever our national museum is ready they will be sent back.
"The museum is ready now. So we look forward to receiving them." Dr Raheen insisted that the museum is secure enough to hold treasures but still needs specialist display cabinets.
The British Library said it bought the scrolls in 1994 from a British dealer out of concern that they were deteriorating rapidly and needed emergency restoration work to ensure that they were not lost.
Staff usually carefully check the provenance of new acquisitions to ensure they have not been stolen but it is difficult to check the history of Afghan artifacts. Little was known about the scripts and checks could not be made.
A decision was taken to leave the provenance issue aside and buy them to ensure their survival.
They had been stuffed into a pickle jar and it was believed that they had not been unrolled for centuries.
A spokesman for the British Library said: "It is not for the library to speculate upon the future safety of any items returned to Afghanistan, but we note with approval the present regime's concern for the whole of Afghanistan's important cultural heritage, Buddhist as well as Islamic." He said the library would be willing to consider a claim.
Source
More than a week ago, this was already reported here:
Quote:British Library accused of buying smuggled scrolls
The Afghan Minister of Culture says Hadda Museum looted
By Martin Bailey
A Norwegian television film is alleging that the British Library in London (BL) has acquired looted Buddhist scrolls. The birch bark scrolls in Kharosthi script, from the 1st century AD, are the oldest surviving Buddhist texts and the earliest known manuscripts in any Indic language. They have been dubbed ?'the Dead Sea Scrolls of Buddhism'.
When the 29 scrolls were acquired by the BL in 1994 it was believed that they had come from the area around Hadda, in Afghanistan, close to the Khyber Pass and the Pakistani border. In the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation film, transmitted a month ago, Afghan Minister of Culture Sayed Raheen points out that the Hadda Museum was looted in 1992. He then suggests that following the looting, the scrolls were ?'taken out of the country.'
Film producer David Hebditch revealed that the scrolls had been sold by Robert Senior, a coin dealer who is currently based in Somerset. The purchase price has never been disclosed, but it has been suggested that the texts were purchased and donated to the library by Neil Kreitman, a specialist in Gandharan art and son of the late Hyman Kreitman, chairman of Tesco supermarkets. Mr Hebditch argues that the initial sale to the BL was partly ?'an attempt to create a market among private collectors for scrolls'?-and thereby encourage further looting.
The BL responds that the scrolls were in very poor condition when they were acquired, requiring urgent conservation. A spokesman says that the BL was ?'approached by a reputable London dealer for advice on the conservation of scrolls which had been forced into a number of modern pickle jars.' The spokesman added that ?'the skilled conservation work undertaken by the BL subsequently has meant that this material has remained available to the international scholarly community.'
In the Norwegian television programme the BL director responsible for Asian collections, Graham Shaw, admitted that the scrolls ?'would...be returned to a legitimate claimant, if a claim could be proven.' No formal claim has yet been submitted. Although the BL cannot deaccession manuscripts acquired while it was part of the British Museum, it is permitted to do so with material which arrived after the split in 1972.
Even if the scrolls were discovered in a cave or excavation, then it is likely that their removal and export would still have contravened Afghan legislation (either the 1958 Code for the Protection of Antiquities or the 1980 Law on Cultural Heritage). However, because of civil war, the legal situation might also depend on who was the de facto authority in the Hadda area when the scrolls were discovered and exported.
Under the UK's Dealing in Cultural Objects Offences Act it would now be an offence in Britain to import items known to have been looted, but this legislation only came into force at the beginning of this year and is not retrospective. Professor Richard Salomon, the key specialist involved in studying and publishing the BL scrolls, still believes that they were found around Hadda, although he doubts that they were ever in the museum. ?'My first priority is to find out the truth of the matter, whatever it may be.' he said.
The Norwegian film also deals with the sale of a separate group of ancient Buddhist scrolls which passed through London dealer Sam Fogg to Oslo collector Martin Schøyen.
Source
Neither the British Library / the government should return the scrolls because the situation in Afghanistan hasn't improved and even if the situation improve, the Afghanistan don't have sophisticated technology and they wouldn't be able to preserve it.
So, the scrolls should be in UK.
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