BAMIAN, a once renowned city of Afghanistan, about 8o m. N.W. of Kabul, in a valley of the Hazara country, on the chief road from Kabul towards Turkistan, and immediately at the northern foot of that prolongation of the Indian Caucasus now called Koh-i-Baba. The passes on the Kabul side are not less than and 12,000 ft. in absolute height, and those immediately to the north but little inferior. The height of the valley was fixed at about 8,5oo ft., and the surrounding country surveyed in Nov. 1885. The river draining the valley is one of the chief sources of the Sarkhab (Surkhab) or Aksarai, an important tributary of the upper Oxus. The prominences of the cliffs which line the valley are crowned by the remains of numerous massive towers, whilst their precipitous faces are for 6 or 7 m. pierced by numerous ancient cave-dwellings, some still occupied. The most famous remains at Bamian are two colossal standing idols, carved in the cliffs on the north side of the valley. They are 173 ft. and 120 ft. high respectively. These images, much injured apparently by cannon-shot, are cut in niches in the rock, and both images and niches have been coated with stucco. There is an inscription, not yet interpreted, over the greater idol, and on each side of its niche are staircases leading to a chamber near the head, which shows traces of elaborate ornamentation in azure and gilding. These chambers are used by the amir as store-houses for grain. The surface of the niches also has been painted with figures. In one of the branch valleys is a similar colossus, somewhat inferior in size to the second of these two ; and there are indications of other niches and idols. At Haibak there is a very perfect excava tion called the Takht-i-Rustam (a general name for all incompre hensible constructions amongst the modern inhabitants of Afghan Turkistan), which consists of an annular ditch enclosing a plat form, with a small house about 21 ft. square above it, all cut out of the solid rock. There are hundreds of caves in this neighbour hood, all pointing to a line of Buddhist occupation connecting Balkh with Kabul.
That the idols of Bamian, about which so many conjectures have been uttered, were Buddhist figures, is ascertained from the narrative of the Chinese pilgrim, Hsiian-Tsang, who saw them in their splendour in A.D. 63o, and was verified by the officers above named, who discovered other Buddhist caves and excavations in the valleys of the Balkhab and Sarikol. Still vaster than these was a recumbent figure, 2 m. east of Bamian, representing Sakya Buddha entering Nirvana, i.e., in act of death. This was "about I,000 ft. in length." No traces of this are alluded to by modern travellers, but in all likelihood it was only formed of rubble plastered (as is the case still with such Nirvana figures in Indo China) and of no durability. For a city so notable Bamian has a very obscure history. In the time of Hsiiang Tsang it was the head of one of the small states into which the empire of the White Huns had broken up. Bamian was (c. I164—I214 A.D.) the seat of a branch of the Ghori dynasty, ruling over Tokharistan, or the basin of the upper Oxus. The place was long besieged, and finally annihilated (12 2 2) by Jenghiz Khan, whose wrath was exasperated at the death of a favourite grandson by an arrow from its walls. In 184o, during the British occupation of Kabul, Col. William H. Dennie routed Dost Mahommed Khan, and a number of Uzbeg chiefs at Bamian.
See Hon. M. G. Talbot, "The Rock-cut Caves and Statues of Bamian," Journal R. Asiatic, Soc. vol. xviii.; and J. A. Gray, At the Court of the Amir (1895). (G. MA.)