18 July 2025 The Future is the Product of the Past

Tajik Buddha in Nirvana – the Largest in the World: 42 feet long and 9 feet high

In the past, while Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan destroyed two immense statues of Buddha, art historians in neighboring Tajikistan meticulously restored a huge reclining Buddha from the same period. The world’s largest “Buddha in Nirvana.”

Tajikistan carefully preserves the artifacts of Buddhism. The country is also home to the world’s largest clay statue of Buddha in Nirvana.

It is not for nothing that the Buddha in Dushanbe attracts thousands of tourists and pilgrims every year. This is the largest statue of Buddha in Nirvana in the world. Its length is about 14 meters, and it was created as much as 1600 years ago. The Museum of Antiquities in Dushanbe became famous precisely thanks to her. Buddha today is one of the main attractions of the country.

The terra-cotta figure, found in the 1960s among the ruins of a temple in southern Tajikistan, depicts a reclining Buddha, one hand resting on his hip, the other on a pile of pillows.

Soviet archaeologists discovered the Buddha in the temple at the ruins of Adjina-Tepa, on a wind-swept field 50 miles north of the Afghan border.

Buddha in Nirvana. Photo: Commons

Known as Buddha in Nirvana, it was created in the sixth or seventh century and is believed to be a relic from the time when Buddhism ruled over the high mountains and deep valleys of Central Asia and Afghanistan before the advent of Islam.

Like its Afghan cousins, Tajikistan’s Buddha is huge: 42 feet long and 9 feet high. The statue is housed in a hall that is a replica of the room in a Buddhist monastery where the Buddha was once kept, visited by worshipers who entered the room, walked past the statue, and walked out.

For more than 30 years after its discovery, the statue was kept in three separate pieces in the storage rooms of the Tajik Museum of Architecture and History because there was no money to restore it.

Following independence, Tajikistan invited restorers from Russia’s Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and solicited foreign grants. A French non-governmental organization, the Agency for Technological Cooperation and Development, helped pay specialists involved in the restoration. In early 2001, the United States allocated 30 thousand dollars for the restoration of the clay figure. A little later the Japanese government issued a grant of 260 thousand dollars to the museum.

For the final restoration of the Buddha, restorers from the Hermitage, under the direction of Vera Fomin, came to the aid of their Tajik colleagues of the Museum of Antiquities.

The restoration of the giant statue lasted two years (2000-2001). The largest clay statue of Buddha in the world appeared before the visitors of the Museum of Antiquities on September 9, 2000, the day of the 10th anniversary of the independence of Tajikistan.

More than 97% of the population of Tajikistan today are Muslims, and according to the museum’s management, caring for artifacts and ancient objects of worship from the pre-Islamic era speaks of tolerance and respect for other faiths and demonstrates the true face of a Muslim.

Cover Photo: Commons

Related Articles

Archaeologists have discovered a 4,000-year-old burial ground and shell tool processing site in Taiwan

1 August 2022

1 August 2022

A 4,000-year-old cemetery and shell tool processing site has been discovered in Kenting National Park, Taiwan’s oldest and southernmost national...

The Bronze Sacred Sanxingdui Tree Number 3 is Being Restored

9 April 2021

9 April 2021

According to the announcement of the Sanxingdui Museum, archaeologists have begun to assemble and restore the No. 3 bronze sacred...

In Russia, archaeologists 2100-Year-Old Medallion of Goddess Aphrodite and a warrior tomb unearthed

30 October 2022

30 October 2022

Archaeologists have unearthed a silver medallion depicting the Greek goddess Aphrodite (Roma Venüs) in a 2100-year-old grave of a priestess...

Scientists Create a 3D Model of Lost Temple Relief from a 134-Year-Old Photo Using AI

13 November 2024

13 November 2024

The researchers developed a neural network that can take a single 2D photo of a three-dimensional object and produce a...

The Discovery of a Historic Wooden Shipwreck in the North Sea

27 January 2025

27 January 2025

A section of a wooden shipwreck was uncovered near Rantum, a coastal village located on the island of Sylt in...

A Christian monastery, possibly pre-dating Islam, found in UAE

6 November 2022

6 November 2022

A Christian monastery has been discovered on the island of Siniyah off the coast of the United Arab Emirates (UAE),...

Europe’s earliest cities had a predominantly vegetarian diet

27 December 2023

27 December 2023

The population of the Copper Age mega-sites in what is now Ukraine and Moldova had a predominantly vegetarian diet. In...

2,000-year-old bamboo slips discovered in Yunnan

31 March 2023

31 March 2023

Thousands of bamboo slips (rectangles tied together to form books) have been discovered at the Hebosuo archaeological site in southwestern...

Italian Research Team May Have Found Plato’s Burial Site in Athens

23 April 2024

23 April 2024

Graziano Ranocchia, a papyrologist at the University of Pisa, said he found Plato’s exact burial place based on papyri findings...

Hellenistic cremation tomb found in Istanbul’s Haydarpasa excavations

11 April 2022

11 April 2022

A brick tomb belonging to the Hellenistic period (330 BC – 30 BC) was found during the Haydarpaşa excavations, which...

Rare and Unusual Fossil Shows Small Mammal Attacking Larger Dinosaur

20 July 2023

20 July 2023

An unusual fossil from about 125 million years ago that depicts a dramatic event when a carnivorous mammal attacked a...

Marmore, the Highest and Oldest Artificial Waterfall in Europe, Created by the Romans

4 March 2024

4 March 2024

Approximately eight kilometers away from the town of Terni in Umbria, Italy, there is a waterfall that is one of...

Hidden Treasure from WWII: 500,000 Phantom Ceramic Coins Found

8 November 2024

8 November 2024

About 500,000 Maboroshi (phantom) ceramic coins manufactured due to metal shortages during World War II were discovered in a warehouse...

New Type of Amphora Found in 5th-Century Roman Shipwreck

28 April 2024

28 April 2024

The first in-depth analysis of the cargo of a 4th-century Roman shipwreck found off the coast of Mallorca in 2019...

A cave complex with hieroglyphs and Varangian symbols discovered in center of Ukraine

19 November 2022

19 November 2022

An ancient cave complex thought to date from Kievan Rus’ has been discovered in central Kyiv at Voznesensky Uzvoz. Dmytro...