Archaeology has returned to Afghanistan in a big way. First there was the announcement regarding the Bactrian Gold.. Then there was constant news about the search for a third reclining Buddha in Bamiyan by Zemaryali Tarzi based on a note written by Huen Tsang. Now a Japanese archaeologist team has found some new structures in Bamiyan.
A Buddhist residence and a religious meeting place have been discovered from under a huge amount of debris in the Bamiyan province of Afghanistan.(...) Habibolah Takhari, Afghanistan cultural deputy in Iran, says that after one year of the Japanese archaeologists working in Bamiyan, at last two houses have been discovered near the destroyed Buddha statues. According to Takhari, archaeologists believe that these two buildings were Buddhist residences and a place for holding religious meetings.
(...) The statues were historically damaged a few times before, once early in the thirteenth century when the Bamiyan was attacked by Genghis Khan, by Orangzeb Khan in 1689, and by Abdol Rahman Khan in 1892 all of whom made a lot of efforts to damage the statues.[Buddhist Structures Dug up in Bamiyan]