For 1,400 years, two colossal figures of the Buddha overlooked the fertile Bamiyan Valley on the Silk Road in Afghanistan. Witness to a melting pot of passing monks, merchants, and armies, the Buddhas embodied the intersection of East and West, and their destruction by the Taliban in 2001 provoked international outrage. Llewelyn Morgan excavates the layers of meaning these vanished wonders hold for a fractured Afghanistan.

Carved in the sixth and seventh centuries, the Buddhas represented a confluence of religious and artistic traditions from India, China, Central Asia, and Iran, and even an echo of Greek influence brought by Alexander the Great’s armies. By the time Genghis Khan destroyed the town of Bamiyan six centuries later, Islam had replaced Buddhism as the local religion, and the Buddhas were celebrated as wonders of the Islamic world. Not until the nineteenth century did these figures come to the attention of Westerners. That is also the historical moment when the ground was laid for many of Afghanistan’s current problems, including the rise of the Taliban and the oppression of the Hazara people of Bamiyan. In a strange twist, the Hazaras—descendants of the conquering Mongol hordes who stormed Bamiyan in the thirteenth century—had come to venerate the Buddhas that once dominated their valley as symbols of their very different religious identity.

Incorporating the voices of the holy men, adventurers, and hostages throughout history who set eyes on the Bamiyan Buddhas, Morgan tells the history of this region of paradox and heartache.

The Buddha as man, animal, and god on the path to enlightenment.

According to ancient traditions, it takes countless lifetimes to become a Buddha. The Buddha’s own path to complete awakening was chronicled in five hundred and forty-seven stories known as the jātakas, which underwent numerous adaptations in the centuries after the Buddha’s lifetime. In the fifth or sixth century CE, in the region known as present-day Sri Lanka, an anonymous author wrote an introduction to these, recounting the history of a vow that prompted this great quest. This narrative, titled Jātakanidāna in Pali, preserves the oral traditions about the Bodhisatta, the one destined to become a Buddha in his final life. The text also functioned for centuries as a gateway to other early Buddhist teachings, offering valuable insights into the Buddha's journey toward enlightenment.

The story begins when, in one of his lives as an ascetic named Sumedha, the Buddha vows to delay his own awakening until he can guide others toward their release from the cycle of rebirth. This vow sets him on a long series of lives—as man, animal, and god. At the culmination of his spiritual journey, he recalls his past lives, his teachings, and the establishment of the monastic community that would preserve and spread these teachings.
The Buddha’s Path to Awakening has become one of the most significant biographical works in the Buddhist tradition. This volume presents a new, authoritative translation, accompanied by the original Pali text.