00:00They came to my house. They arrested me in my house.
00:05They tied our hands. They tied a rope around our waists.
00:09They would take us to the head of the giant Buddha.
00:14They tied a rope around our waist and suspended us from there.
00:19We took drills in our hands and installed explosives.
00:30There was a terrible sound. When you looked, it was all fire, smoke and dust.
00:45Whenever I see these empty places, I feel as if it is the day of my death.
00:51I was thinking, my God, when will my death come?
00:55When will they drop me down, kill me and bury me here?
01:03What a horrible time it was.
01:11It is this act of senseless destruction that the first major open-air excavation
01:16in Bameyan's history seeks to heal.
01:19I think my father will find the sleeping Buddha.
01:25He's sort of a genius.
01:27And I know that he knows what he's doing.
01:31And I know for a fact that he will find it.
01:34Dr. Tarze believes he's closing in on a statue that rivals any wonder of the ancient world.
01:41The sleeping Buddha of Bameyan.
01:44After all, he relies on the word of a holy man who actually saw it.
01:51A Buddhist monk who's been dead for some 1400 years.
01:58His name was Xuanzang.
02:00And in the 7th century AD, he trekked from China to India
02:05in search of sacred Buddhist texts.
02:07In 632 AD, Xuanzang had Bameyan in his sights.
02:18These people are remarkable among all their neighbors for love of religion.
02:24There is not the least absence of earnestness and utmost devotion.
02:29After a long desert trek, Bameyan must have been a vision of unsurpassing.
02:36A vision of unsurpassed splendor.
02:42Xuanzang had arrived when the Silk Road Oasis was at its zenith.
02:49What unfolded before him was a valley lush with agriculture.
02:53And a vast royal city.
02:55But the valley's centerpiece would reward every arduous step of the pilgrim's journey of faith.
03:05The giant Buddha of Bameyan.
03:10To the northeast of the royal city, there is a mountain on which is placed a stone figure of Buddha.
03:16150 feet high.
03:19Its golden hues sparkle on every side.
03:23And its precious ornaments dazzle the eyes by their very brightness.
03:29Xuanzang arrives here and he is blown away by the gold.
03:35By the flames on the shoulders.
03:37By the mask.
03:38That description has to be the one that was situated where we are today.
03:44The 55 meter high Buddha.
03:47But according to Xuanzang, that wasn't all there was.
03:51Somewhere lay a third Buddha, more than a thousand feet long.
03:57Part scholar, part detective, Dr. Tarze knew that to find the sleeping Buddha,
04:02he first had to locate the monastery that housed it.
04:07To the east of the city, two or three li,
04:10there is a monastery in which there is a figure of Buddha lying in a sleeping position.
04:16As when he attained nirvana.
04:18The figure is in length about one thousand feet.
04:24Could Xuanzang's description be true?
04:27If so, hidden under centuries of earth,
04:29the monastery wasn't giving up its secrets.
04:33To unlock them, Dr. Tarze had to get inside the head of the monk
04:39and plot each step of his journey.
04:42From the royal city, he went to the big Buddha.
04:48Between the two Buddhas, he arrived at the monastery of the ancient king.
04:53He left there and arrived at the 38 meter Buddha.
04:59That's the smaller of the two giant Buddhas which once stood here.
05:05Then came the critical last leg of Xuanzang's journey.
05:11He leaves the royal city and travels a distance of two to three lees.
05:18He arrived at the Eastern Monastery,
05:22the monastery where he found the one thousand foot Buddha.
05:27Pinpointing the Eastern Monastery's location has thwarted explorers for the better part of a century.
05:35Xuanzang's starting point, the royal city, hasn't been precisely located.
05:40And his unit of measurement, the ancient Chinese li, can mean a third of a mile or four tenths of a mile.
05:50That left acres of ground to explore.
05:53Tarzi and his team dug test trenches for one year, then two.
06:01Still, no monastery.
06:04The excavation from the first year was over there, where the wheat is.
06:10This excavation showed us that there weren't any buildings in this area.
06:14So we decided to not excavate any more in this area, but moved over there, where there are more relics.
06:23Over there, at the end of year two, Tarzi struck pay dirt.
06:29Outlines of an immense structure unlike any he'd seen before.
06:34Could this be Xuanzang's monastery?
06:37This year's excavation is a difficult one.
06:42It's like an autopsy of an enormous cadaver.
06:48I'm a bit lost in the guts, because the cadaver is huge.
06:55For Tarzi, one feature of the building provided a tantalizing clue.
07:00Structural supports designed to accommodate something of monumental size and weight.
07:05Look, take a look in this area.
07:10There is one wall, two walls, three walls, four walls.
07:15These walls were constructed very intelligently, so that they would support an immense amount of weight.
07:24I think that we might be at the terrace level, where the big Buddha's feet might have been.
07:30In any case, it's very exciting.
07:33We have to be patient.
07:36We're looking for something big.
07:38Yet already, the archaeologist has extracted art objects nearly as extraordinary as the Colossus itself.
07:53And these exquisite Buddhist sculptures raise Tarzi's hopes that he's found Xuanzang's monastery.
08:03From the moment that I found this collection of statues, and the other things that we have found this year, God willing, we are in the monastery where the thousand-foot sleeping Buddha was found.
08:14We are sure that we are sure that we are in a monastery, a hundred percent sure.
08:25I was going to say a thousand percent.
08:27But has the sleeping Buddha, like these sculptures, survived the onslaught of 1,400 years?
08:38Dr. Tarzi and his students are due back at school in France.
08:41He has just a week to find out.
08:49Dr. Tarzi is far from alone in his quest to right wrongs committed by the Taliban.
08:55He's part of a brotherhood of Afghan artists and art lovers for whom the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhists became a thundering call to arms.
09:06With courage and ingenuity, they began fighting back.
09:11I became very sad when I heard that the statue in Bamiyan had been destroyed.
09:22A rumor was spreading that the artwork exhibited in the National Gallery and the National Museum would be the next victim.
09:32Mohammed Youssef Assefi is a medical doctor and prominent Afghan painter.
09:37For him, the Taliban's reign of terror hit home when henchmen slashed artwork at the Presidential Palace and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
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