Buddha statue restored in Tajikistan

This April, the world will see a restored 20-meter-high statue of Buddha. The statue (known as the Buddha of Khatlon) was unearthed during the archaeological exploration of the Adjina-Tepa hill in Tajikistan. President Emomali Rakhmonov will personally cut the ribbon at the opening ceremony staged to present the statue to the world. The statue was discovered in 1966 during archaeological excavations on the site of a monastery set up in the VI-VII centuries in the depths of the Adjina-Tepa hill located not far from the town of Kurgan-Tube in southern Tajikistan. Archaeologists called the hill "a house of thousand Buddhas" as they had unearthed a few hundreds of Buddha statues of all sizes there. Their finds have now become the gems of many museums all over the world. The main statue on the site was found to be broken in a few pieces, the largest of which presented Buddha's lower part, from the waist down. Other fragments were heaped up as a pile of debris not far from the place where the statue's head had once been. A decision to restore the historical monument was made in 1996, RIA Novosti reports. The restorers transported the Buddha to Dushanbe fragment by fragment. Vera Fominikh, a leading expert of the State Hermitage, was in charge of the project financed by the Asted International. At present, the statue needs a few finishing touches to bring the restoration work to completion.