Archaeologists discover two ancient Buddha statues in China
Archaeologists excavating the royal tombs of the Eastern Empire, or the Late Han Empire, have discovered the oldest Buddha statues ever found in China. Their age is estimated at 2,200 years.
One of these statues, consisting of an alloy of copper and other metals, depicts the so-called Shakyamuni – Buddha, wearing a long cloak and standing on a small pedestal, and the other shows Buddha in the form of the Five Tatagata – the Five Great Manifestations of Buddha.
The small (10 and 15 cm) figurines, executed in the Gandhara style, which spread from India, became part of a collection of artifacts recovered from tombs during excavations in Shaanxi Province, central China, where the world-famous terracotta army of statues was discovered in Seventies in the form of life-size warriors. The style in which figurines are performed was developed in the territory of present-day northwestern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan in the 1st-7th centuries BC.
The newly found statues turned out to be 200 years older than previous similar Chinese statues. In total, during the excavations conducted from June 2020 to November 2021, 3648 ancient tombs were discovered, which survived from the Warring States period (475-221 BC) to the Manchu Qing Dynasty (1644-1911 BC).
Most of those buried in these tombs are of royal blood, high officials and their relatives. To date, in addition to the two statues found in the tombs, more than 16 thousand different objects of great cultural and historical value have been discovered.
