STATUES WITH BROKEN NOSES!

A CONFESSIONAL NOTE

Long time back once I asked my late father, who was an ardent enthusiast of Islamic and Indian History, that why most of the old statues found in Asia and Africa are with broken noses? He answered my question in Urdu with an expressionless face, “Son, you know that Muslims have always preferred to be called Idol Smashers (بت شکن) and not Idol Sellers (بت فروش)”. This was a reference to a quote attributed to Mahmood of Ghazni  who demolished the big idol at the temple of Somnath in India in the year 1026 AD. Tradition says that when he was breaking the idol / jyotirlinga the priests in the temple implored him not to break the statue but in compensation accept huge offering of wealth. Mahmood declined the offer and replied that he was an idol smasher and not an idol seller. Pertinently, the Prophet of Islam is also said to demolish a number of 360 idols which were kept inside Kaaba at the time of conquering Mecca in 630 AD. Those idols used to symbolize different gods of different tribes who inhabited Arabia. Since then, Muslims are defined as someone who loathe idols and thus smash them.

“So, what it has to do with broken noses of statutes?” I inquired. My father explained, that during Middle Ages whenever Muslims conquered a new infidel territory, they preferred to break all the statues and idols on which they could lay their hands. Otherwise, if they had to spare some statutes, for one reason or another, then they resorted to at least defacing the statutes by chiseling away their noses!

An air of sadness struck me by realizing that how many precious statues of archeological significance all over Hindustan – having roots into Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism – could had either been destroyed or defaced, over a period of many centuries. Similarly, statutes either belonging to various faiths or simply those which were areligious and not even worshiped anywhere in Afghanistan, Persia, Babylonia, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Syria and throughout Northern Africa could had been converted to ashes and dust. Then I recalled the broken nose of Sphinx in the Valley of Kings and also many other huge statutes of Abu Simbel which were protected by UNESCO from inundation into the waters of Aswan Dam. Probably, whatever prehistoric and historic archeological sites, ancient statues and artifacts have reached to us today are a very small fraction of all those antiquities which were created and crafted at different times during last so many centuries of civilizations on the planet Earth!