BOROBUDlRescued a masterpiece of the world heritage

A time to live...

© ALGERIA Market day in the Mzab

The Mzab region of Algeria is a rocky Saharan plateau etched with deep ravines. In the history of Islam it is known as the

place where the "Mzabites" or "Mozabites", heterodox Berbers belonging to the Ibadite sect, settled in the 11th century.

The Mozabites became established in the towns of Algeria where they exercised a virtual monopoly over trade in such pro¬

ducts as spices, fabrics, carpets, and meat especially mutton, a favourite dish in Arab countries. The chief town of the

Mzab, Ghardaia, is noted for its picturesque architecture and as a date-producing centre. Above, market scene at Ghardaia.

The

UnescoCourierA window open on the world

FEBRUARY 1983 36th YEAR

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Editor-in-chief: Edouard Glissant

ISSN 0304 - 3118 '

No. 2 - 1983 - OPI - 83-1 - 395 A

page

4 BOLIVAR THE LIBERATOR (1783-1830)

Undimmed by time, a bright vision of a New World

by Arturo Uslar-Pietri

7 FROM JACMEL TO SANTA MARTA

by René Depestre

8 BOROBUDUR

Indonesia's Buddhist sanctuary a sermon in stone

by R. Soekmono

1 6 HOW BOROBUDUR WAS SAVED

by R. Soekmono and Caesar Voûte

1 7 FROM REDISCOVERY TO RESTORATION

24 TASHKENT

The capital of Uzbekistan celebrates

its two thousandth anniversary

by Erkin Yussupov

27 A GOLDEN TREASURY OF MANUSCRIPTS

by Muzaffar Khayrullaev

30 CULTURE IN A COLD CLIMATE

The reindeer herdsmen of Lapland

by Pekka Aikio

34 A STRATEGY FOR DISARMAMENT

by Constantin Ene

38

2

UNESCO NEWSROOM

A TIME TO LIVE

ALGERIA: Market day in the Mzab

A man who wrote a chapter of

/I world history, a monumentjCjL without parallel in the world,the cultural treasures of an ancient

city, a community in search of its

cultural identity, the quest for

peace these apparently disparate

subjects, which make up the content

ofthis issue of the Unesco Courier, all

form part of the common heritage of

mankind that Unesco is pledged to

preserve and defend.

The bicentenary of the birth of

Simón Bolivar, the great Latin

American liberator and the visionary

whose noble ambition it was to unify

a continent, is celebrated in prose and

verse by A rturo Uslar-Pietri and René

Depestre. '

Drs. Soekmono and Voûte, respec¬

tively Director and former Unesco

Co-ordinator of the Borobudur resto

ration project, trace the history of the

thousand-year-old Buddhist sanc¬

tuary of Chandi Borobudur and tell

how, after centuries of neglect and

abandon, this monument to human

genius has been savedfor posterity by

a combination of Indonesian pride

and perseverance and an effort of in¬

ternational co-operation and solidari¬

ty inspired by Unesco.

Erkin Yussupov describes how, over

its two thousand years of existence,

the "stone village" of Tashkent has

grown to become the capital of the

Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic and

the fourth largest city of the USSR.

One of the cultural cross-roads of

central Asia, Tashkent houses a

magnificent collection of ancient

manuscripts which, as Muzaffar

Khayrullaev, Director of the Al-Biruni

Institute of Oriental Studies tells us,

bear witness to the interpénétration of

philosophical and scientific thought

and aesthetic and moral values ofcen¬

tral Asia over the centuries.

Thousands of kilometres away, in

the Arctic Circle, live the Laplanders

ofFinnoscandinavia, a people united

by a common language and a life based

on the herding of reindeer. Pekka

Aikio describes how the Laplanders

are affirming their cultural identity

and their right to maintain their age-

old way of life.

Finally, Constantin Ene explores

the complex problems of disarma¬

ment and proposes a number of ways

in which the cause of peace, vital to

human survival, can be advanced.

Cover: Buddha framed by stupas, Borobudur

Photo Michelangelo Durazzo '< ' ANA, Pans

BOLIVARTHE LIBERATOR (1783-1830)

Undimmed by time, a bright

vision of a New World

by Arturo Uslar-Pietri

TWO hundred years after his

birth, Bolivar undoubtedly re¬

mains one of that tiny but

distinguished group of people who have

had something to teach mankind. He

died in 1830, but the sheer magnitude of

his personality is still being revealed to us

and still has the power to move us. In the

eyes of his contemporaries, he was the

outstanding leader of the struggle for the

political independence of Latin America,

a charismatic figure who, virtually

without resources, managed to overcome

all manner of obstacles and setbacks in

directing and sustaining the long-drawn-

out and difficult fifteen-year offensive

which was to put an end to Spanish domi¬

nion over America. His unyielding

tenacity, his conviction that in¬

dependence could and should come

about in his own lifetime and his far-

reaching vision of the future of the New

World, all set him apart from the many

other exceptional leaders who emerged

during the war for the emancipation ofthe continent.

For the Western world, he soon

became the symbol of the struggle against

despotism and the old monarchies. His

name was synonymous with freedom.

The revolutionaries of 1 830 and 1 848 , the"Carbonari", the liberals, the young

Romantics all looked to him and his ex¬

ample. He was the hero who had pitted

himself against three hundred years of

ARTURO USLAR-PIETRI, noted Venezuelan

writer and his country's former ambassador and

permanent delegate to Unesco, is the author of

many novels, short stories, and essays such as La

Otra América (The Other America). The text

published here is the introduction to a forth¬

coming anthology of the writings ofSimón Bolí¬

var which Unesco is publishing in Spanish and in

six other language versions.

Right, map of South America before Bolivar's time. In

1819 the Liberator constituted the Republic of Great Col¬

ombia (inset) from the independent territories of

Venezuela, New Granada (present-day Colombia) and

the présidence of Quito (today Ecuador). This was the

first step towards the fulfilment of his dream of unifying

all the countries of what is now Latin America. Later, in

1825, when Upper Peru became independent of Spain

and chose to be called Bolivia after the Liberator, it tried

to merge with Peru. However, the federation of States

envisioned by Bolivar broke up definitively in 1830. Op¬

posite page, the Liberator as depicted by artists from the

five countries whose destiny he shaped.

4

the old régime in Spanish America, had

succeeded in bringing it to an end, and

had proclaimed a new order of

democracy and freedom in its stead. His

admirers ranged from the restless young

people in the Paris of the Bourbons, who

sported the "Bolivar hat" as though it

were a battle standard, to students of

world politics and to Byron, who gave

Bolivar's name to the boat on which he

dreamed of bringing freedom to Greece.

Bolivar had become the eternal

"Liberator", the man who had per

sonified a continent's determination to

be free and who had striven to establish apolitical order founded on justice and the

rights of the individual.

There can be no doubt that, as a

military leader, he won significant vic¬

tories against all the odds. He sowed the

seeds of destiny, in that nations were

born of the battles he waged, and he

secured freedom for vast numbers of

people and an enormous Iandmass. In

1825, when his triumph at Ayacucho put

an end to the Spanish Empire and made

^.^AMERIOUgyMÉnWIONALE Y'I AUWBOLIVAm

3i/pr.t / Alimy it H. Ö.-XK- I8Í5

him the arbiter of the destinies of Latin

America, he conceived and attempted to

give substance to the grandiose plan of

uniting America as he saw it, in a bid to

bring about a new age of stability and

justice for mankind. Indeed, his disagree¬

ment with his former followers and the

growing difficulties he had to contend

with stemmed from his vision of the

future.

For him, independence was not so

much an end in itself as a necessary step

along the road to a more difficult but

much more ambitious project. His aim

was not merely to replace one set of men

by another, to put Creole leaders in the

seats vacated by the Spanish viceroys and

governors and thereby perpetuate the

political and social patterns inherited

from the colonial past. He wanted

something totally different: literally to

create a powerful and free New World,

setting an example through its institu¬

tions, intent on dispensing justice in all its

forms, and laying the foundations for a

new global order which Bolivar himself

spoke of as a "new equilibrium for the

universe".

Right from the start, Bolivar was

distinguished for the clarity and boldness

of his thinking. Had he done no more

than commit to paper the ideas and

judgements on the American world

which he bequeathed to us, he would still

be considered one of the most original

thinkers of his time. Moreover, he was an

outstanding stylist and his letters and

speeches are among the best prose

writings of the period. No-one could

equal his gift for expressing himself in

terms that were robust and penetrating

Map United Nations

The boundaries on this map do not im¬

ply official endorsement or accep¬

tance by Unesco or the United

Nations

and charged with significance. His

language faithfully reflected his tempera¬

ment and his deep anxieties. He was a

master of concision and of striking

similes. His words were as good as his

deeds.

There have been few other figures in

history who combined as he did the gifts

and qualities of a man of action and thoseof a thinker, of those who were leaders of

men and also visionaries, whose political

acumen did not prevent them from form¬

ing grand designs or from rising abovepetty day-to-day concerns. His tragedy

was his inability to ensure that his vision

of the future would come true. He could

not rest content with the extraordinary

task he had accomplished, since he con¬

sidered it merely as the necessary prelude

to the new political organization of Latin

America and a new world equilibrium.

Only a person of his quality could have

regarded the second stage as being more

important than the first.

Bolivar is a figure of infinite variety. If

we see him as being no more than the

leader of a highly successful insurrection,

we obliterate one whole side of his per¬

sonality and overlook some of the most

interesting and admirable aspects of his

achievement. He was never just a man of

action, perpetually engaged in a struggle

that must often have seemed hopeless;

nor was he an ideologist unimaginatively

applying doctrines and examples culled

from other countries and other historical

situations.

What is more, he was not just a politi¬

cian bogged down in the immediate pre¬

sent. A study of his life leaves us con¬

stantly amazed at the profusion and

variety of talents he displays. In his eyes,

the past of the Latin American peoples

was as alive as their present. He identified

himself totally with the historical and

cultural predicament of his fellow

Americans, and yet at the same time he

could look forward to the future as he

wished to see it and could work for a far-

reaching transformation of society and

its goals. He was not blinded by the

various brilliant political theories of his

day. He had carefully scrutinized the

ideas of Rousseau and Montesquieu,

comparing them with his own experience

in the struggle and with the lessons of the

American past.

His conclusion was that the future of

the American peoples did not lie in mere¬

ly imitating or adapting the ideas and in¬

stitutions of other nations born of differ¬

ing historical and cultural circumstances;

in his opinion, only the facts, however in¬

tractable, could be the starting point for

the determined and clear-sighted effort

needed, since the colonial past had in no

way prepared those peoples for their dif¬

ficult metamorphosis.

One fundamental theme of Bolivar's

ideas on nation-building was what we, in

present-day international parlance,

would call the cultural constraints on

development and the difficulty of adap¬

ting foreign models. He was forever aler¬

ting legislators dazzled as they were by

the examples of the institutions that

emerged from the revolutions irt the

United States and France to the impor-

6

tance of allowing for specific Hispano-

American practices, traditions and ex¬

periences of the past. He ardently desired

freedom, justice and democracy, but he

did not lose sight of the social and

political realities which three hundred

years of life under colonial rule had

created in the America he knew.

Nor did he lose sight of the interna¬

tional situation hovering on the horizon.

The independence of Latin America

could not be envisaged and achieved as if

it were an isolated local phenomenon: it

was a major upheaval establishing a new

situation and a new pattern of worldwide

relations. The sudden emergence of a free

and sovereign America would inevitably

produce significant changes in political

relationships all over the world. This was

the exceptionally wide-ranging context

within which Bolivar's action and think¬

ing evolved and which afforded him his

status and relevance as the guide of the

American peoples and the embodiment

of their spirit.

and wealth, he climbed the mountain of

silver that had been the symbol of col¬

onial authority, accompanied by the

representatives of Argentina, Peru and

Chile. As he took in the panorama

stretching out before him, as he felt and

expressed the compelling need for in¬

tegration as the only course capable of

securing the future of so vast a slice of

humanity and territory, he caught a

glimpse of the scenario of universal

history. It was at this time that he conven¬

ed the Panama Congress that was to

bring together representatives of the

whole of America in a bid to work out the

practical aspects of the continent's

policies, its self-defence and the joint ac¬

tion it would be required to take in its

dealings with the rest of the world.

We need only leaf through the main

documents in which his ideas are

assembled to realize that his conception

of the common destiny of Latin America

never changed. As early as 1812, in Car¬

tagena, when he had scarcely emerged

To commemorate the bicentenary of thebirth of "The Liberator" (1783-1830)Unesco is to issue an official SimónBolívar medal. Designed by theVenezuelan artist Hector Poleo andengraved by Denis Châtelain, the medalwill be struck by the Paris Mint. On itsobverse the medal bears a profile portraitof Bolivar, while the reverse depicts asymbolic sun rising over a Latin Americain the process of unification, with thedove of peace taking wing.

This, moreover, is an attitude that

prevailed throughout his life and in all his

writings. From the outset, his vision of

independence embraced the whole conti¬

nent and, in this respect, he was at one

with his celebrated predecessor Francisco

Miranda. The issue as they both saw it

was not to win independence for a few

portions of the Spanish Empire but to en¬

sure that the whole territory it covered

would become conscious of its identity

and destiny, and would attain full

sovereignty. This accordingly implied a

form of political organization and the

adoption of goals that would encompass

the entire New World. From the very

beginning, he spoke in the name of

America rather than of Venezuela, and

was not afraid to suggest ways in which

political integration could come about.

As he said on several occasions,

"America is our homeland".

The question now is what he meant by

America and what form of integration he

had in mind. His scheme of things did not

rule out any significant part of the

America that had been subjugated by the

European powers. He started with the

peoples of Venezuela, New Granada and

Ecuador which were close at hand and

were subsequently to combine to form

Colombia, but he went on to include all

parts of the Empire in successive designs

for co-operation.

When, in 1825, after the final and

decisive victory at Ayacucho, he arrived

at Potosi, that magical centre of power

from the ruins of the first attempt he

made to set up an independent republic in

Venezuela, he issued a bold manifesto

sounding the alarm against the mistaken

belief that any part of America could

achieve and preserve its independence in

isolation. As long as Venezuela was not

liberated, the independence of New

Granada would be threatened, since an

expeditionary force organized from

Venezuela and setting out from the

"Provinces of Barinas and Maracaibo"

would be able to penetrate into "the fur¬

thest reaches of southern America".

Indeed, the huge efforts which he ex¬

pected on the part of the enemies of

freedom were exactly the same as those

he himself had to make throughout the

long hard years of his political and

military career. From then on, the whole

of Latin America became the theatre of

operations for a single combat, the strug¬

gle for independence, only to be achieved

by the integration of all its peoples in a

single body that would guarantee the uni¬

ty of its presence and action on the world

scene.

In the astonishing letter which he wrote

in Jamaica in 1815 to "a gentleman of

that island", he painted the most detailed

and challenging picture of his vision of

the American destiny. His theme was not

Venezuela but rather "a vast, varied and

unknown country, the New World". He

looked upon it as a fact of history and

geography, asking impatiently whether

the entire New World was not mobilized

and armed to defend itself, and adding:

"On this battlefield, some 2,000 leagues

long and 900 leagues wide at its extremes,

sixteen million Americans are either

defending their rights or are being

oppressed".

In his view, an unavoidable historical

phenomenon had occurred, one that was

bound to have far-reaching consequences

for the world. It was here that he express¬

ed the gist of his thinking: the projected

independence of America was a necessary

goal "because world equilibrium

demanded it".

This, then, represented his fundamen¬

tal view of things. The time had come to

strike a new universal balance. The pat¬

tern of imperial domination could not

continue. In the words used by Virgil in

his prophetic Eclogue, a new order was to

come to pass. The Spanish Empire had to

be brought to an end so that an authentic

New World could come into being and

engage in a dialogue on fair and just

terms with the other powers of the earth.

For Bolivar, the term "New World"

did not have the restricted connotations

earlier historians had given it. He did not

conceive of it merely as a recent adjunct

to an old world and an old order but as a

heaven-sent opportunity of creating a

new society that would not repeat the

mistakes of the old world and would

usher in a new era in relations between all

nations.

Bolivar thus became the prophet not

only of the New World but of a new

world order. Henceforward, he sensed

and made it plain that the time was ripe

for the emergence of new and indepen¬

dent nations and also that the very ex¬

istence of such nations would dictate the

setting-up of a new pattern of relation¬

ships. Using words that would be equally

relevant to the struggle currently being

waged by the new nations of Latin

America, Asia and Africa to bring about

a new order of relations, to the dramatic

dialogue going on between North and

South, or to the far-reaching process of

the emergence of the Third World,

Bolivar said: "There is another balanced

order of importance to us, and this is the

equilibrium of the universe. This struggle

cannot be partial for its outcome will af¬

fect vast interests scattered all over the

world".

How topical and alive his words sound

today! Their subject is the key issue now

being feverishly debated in the leading in¬

ternational fora. Two hundred years

after his birth, Simón Bolívar is in the

front line of the fight for the establish¬

ment of a new international order.

Unesco formally acknowledged this

when, in 1978, its governing bodies ap¬

proved the creation of the International

Simón Bolívar Prize "to be awarded

every second year, starting on 24 July

1983, the bicentenary of the birth of

Simón Bolívar, to those who have made

an outstanding contribution to the

freedom, independence and dignity of

peoples and to the strengthening of

solidarity among nations, or who have

fostered their development or facilitated

the quest for a new international

economic, social and cultural order".

Arturo Uslar-Pietri

Bolivar in the rock

of Santa Marta*/ rose early to sing you

in the path where your good news

precedes all our dreams. From son to son

of the Caribbean I dance your ideas.

Supported by your roots my steps

feel the pulsation of the fate of men:

Help! Simón Bolívar, help!

Captain, times are bad!

The world needs your health,

The planet is losing the life ofyour roots

like a young queen her hair!

I seek you in the rock of Santa Marta

Are you still a beguiler of shores?

Have you said the last word to the waves

of solitude that have withered our lands!

What of the morning star remains in you?

Where is the house you had at Jacmel?

How many times have they heralded in you

the myth of the genius burned alive at the stake

of his own legend? How many times

have they hailed the return in force of your life

in the seeds of nourishing maize?

Where shines your heritage as the father of bread

and the peace of women, father

of the house where we would live in peace

each people enlightening the other in a single universe?

We have lost treasures with your name

We have taken for life the word libertador

turning it into a maker offrontiers.

Where is the roofyou had at Rosario

on your creóle home of the Americas?

Where is the house of a single crystal

where you will enter as one leaves one's mother's womb?

Inventor of new seeds,

man of beginnings, prophet

of the guitar and cacao,

each day of sunshine is in danger,

each starry night brings to our doors

the nuclear shame which will extinguish life.

Bolivar knock at whatever number you please,

the door will open,, whatever the street,

you are welcome, they will not dare

to shatter the right of everyone to be a sun

if they know that the strong tenderness of a man

has come back to the house of human brothers.

Paris, December 1982 RENE DEPESTRE

* On 18 December 1816, Simón Bolivar embarkedfrom the Haitian port of Jacmel

for a campaign which would end with the liberation of Venezuela and several other

countries of Latin America. He died at Santa Maria on 17 December 1830.

RENE DEPESTRE, Haitian poet, essayist and novelist, is a member of the Unesco

secretariat. Among his works are Un Arc-en-ciel pour l'Occident Chrétien (pub¬

lished in English as A Rainbow for the Christian West, University ofMassachusetts

Press, 1977) and, more recently, Alleluia pour une Femme-Jardin and Bonjour et

Adieu à la Négritude. He has collaborated on a collective work produced by Unesco,

América Latina en sus Ideas (Latin America through its Ideas).

7

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RICH IMAGERY OF BUDDHIST COSMOLOGY ¡s displayed on Borobudur's1.460 narrative bas-reliefs which, taken together, cover 1,900 square

metres. Detail above shows an incident from the story of prince Sudhana

and the nymph Manohara. While searching for the nymph near the capital

of her father the king, Sudhana meets girls bringing water to bathe her. To

announce his presence he drops a ring into one of the water vessels.

Indonesia's Buddhist sanctuary -

a sermon in stoneby R. Soekmono

In the centre of the Indonesian island of

Java, on a fertile plain bordered by rugged

mountains and volcanoes, stands the

magnificent Buddhist sanctuary of Chandi

Borobudur. With its stone terraces rising

skywards, wave upon wave, with its profu¬

sion of unique stone reliefs and statues of

the Buddha, capped by a great central

stupa, Borobudur has been called "the

vastest, oldest, and most beautiful monu¬

ment in the southern hemisphere". But for

centuries after it was built over a thousand

years ago, Borobudur was abandoned and

forgotten. When it was rediscovered in the

nineteenth century it was ravaged with

decay, and although a number of repairs

and holding operations were carried out, it

seemed doomed to eventual collapse. In the

years after Indonesia became independent,

the new nation made thepreservation of this

tangible evidence of its glorious past a

priority objective. Today, through a unique

combination of multidisciplinary technical

skills, Indonesian pride, and international

co-operation channelled through Unesco's

international campaign for Borobudur, this

great work ofhuman genius has been saved

for posterity. The finishing touches have

now been put to a vast archaeological rescue

operation which has taken ten years and has

involved the stone-by-stone dismantlement

and reconstitution of the square lower ter¬

races of the colossal edifice. Here,

Dr. Soekmono, of Indonesia, the Director

of the Borobudur Restoration Project,

traces the history of the monument and of¬

fers an interpretation of its significance;

in a second article Dr. Soekmono and Dr.

C. Voûte, Unesco Co-ordinator of the

Borobudur project 1971-75, describe the

threats to Borobudur and show how at¬

tempts to save it have finally been crowned

with success.

R. SOEKMONO, Indonesian archaeologist and

ancient historian, is director of the Borobudur restora¬

tion project. Professor ofarchaeology at the University

ofIndonesia, ofwhich he is also executive secretary, he

has published several studies on Borobudur, notably

Chandi Borobudur, A Monument of Mankind pub¬

lished in 1976 by Unesco and Van Gorcum, Assen/Ams¬

terdam, The Netherlands.

MANY theories have been advanced about the origin of

Borobudur, perhaps the most poetic being one claiming

that it originally represented a lotus flower floating on

the surface of a lake which once covered the surrounding plain, the

mythical lotus from which the future Buddha will be born.

No written documents about the construction of the monument

survive, but inscriptions point to the conclusion that it was pro¬

bably founded around the year 800 AD during the Golden Age of

the powerful Sailendra dynasty of Central Java.

Nor do we know with certainty how long Borobudur was in ac¬

tive use, or when it ceased to function as a monument to glorify the

greatness of the Sailendra kings and, at the same time as.a centre

of Buddhist pilgrimage.

The general assumption is that the Chandis (the name given to

monuments dating back to the ancient period of Indonesian

history) fell into disuse when people were converted to Islam in the

fifteenth century. However, it is quite possible that the monuments

in Central Java were abandoned as early as the tenth century, when

historical importance shifted from there to East Java.

Whatever the truth may have been, it was not until 1814 that

Chandi Borobudur emerged, actually and figuratively, from its

dark past. Java was then under British rule, and the representative

of the British Government, Sir Stamford Raffles, took a keen in¬

terest in the island's history. In 1814, when he was informed of the

existence of a huge monument called Chandi Borobudur, he sent

a Dutch engineer named Cornelius to investigate.

Cornelius hired some 200 villagers to fell trees, burn down

bushes and dig away the earth and rubbish in which the monument

had long been buried. The activities of Raffles and Cornelius

stimulated interest in Borobudur, and a later Dutch administrator

arranged for further removal of the debris so that by 1835 the en¬

tire edifice was freed from its last disfiguring cover.

The monument that stood revealed is a colossal stepped pyramid

consisting of nine superimposed terraces and crowned by a huge

bell-shaped stupa. It was built around and on top of a flattened

hill, of andésite, a porous, bluish-grey volcanic rock which had

been taken from nearby rivers. Laid without mortar, the stones

had been made to grip by means of dovetails in the horizontal con¬

nexions, and indentations in the vertical joints. This system allows

a certain flexibility, so that the monument can withstand slight

movements without an immediate danger of collapse.

The structural design is complicated, but a main vertical division

into three parts base, body, and top is evident. The base forms

a square with sides measuring some 120 metres, the total area thus

being slightly less than one and a half hectares.

The four-metre-high walls of the base are supported by a

foothold resembling a huge plinth, 1.5 metres high and 3 metres

across. In 1885, the Chairman of the Yogyakarta Archaeological

Society made the sensational discovery that these walls encased a

series of 160 carved reliefs, which became known as the monu¬

ment's "hidden foot". (A photographic record of the reliefs was

made in 1890-91, after which the "foot" was again hidden with the

original stones, except for the southeast corner.).

Some scholars have suggested that these reliefs had been

deliberately covered to conceal them from the eyes of pilgrims.

However, the use of 12, 750 cubic metres of stone to make the en¬

casement, and the sacrifice of architectural elements and reliefs,

seem to indicate that the soundness of the monument was at stake.

As a considerable part of the gradually mounting foundations of

the stepped pyramid had to rest on loose filled earth, sliding pro¬

bably took place. In other words, the encasing wall was a retaining

embankment thrown up to prevent further sliding and to avoid

worse disaster.

9

Photo © Unesco-Institut Géographique National, Pans

Aerial photos, above and top of page, show the basic architec¬

tural features of Borobudur, a stepped pyramid consisting of

nine superimposed terraces and crowned by a huge bell-shaped

Stupa 35 metres above the ground. Cross-section, right,

shows how the vertical layout of the structure, divided into a

base, a central and an upper part, corresponds to the three

spheres of the Universe in the Buddhist cosmogony:

kamadhatu, the sphere of the Desires; rupadhatu, the sphere of

Forms; and arupadhatu, the sphere of Formlessness.

The body, or middle part of the monument, is composed

of five terraces which diminish in size with height. The firstof these terraces stands back some seven metres from the

sides of the base creating a broad platform right round the

monument. The other terraces retreat only two metres at

each stage, and balustrades at the outer sides convert the nar¬row galleries into corridors.

The superstructure is in its turn clearly distinguished from

the terraces. It consists of three circular platforms, each of

which supports a row of bell-shaped stupas containing Bud¬

dhas half visible through perforated stonework. Surmoun¬

ting the rows of stupas, which are arranged in concentric

circles, the great central dome on top of the monument soars

into the sky to a height of nearly thirty-five metres above theground.

Access to the upper part of the monument is provided by

stairways in the middle of each side of the pyramid. The

stairs lead through a series of gates (most of which have been

lost) directly to the circular platforms, at the same time in¬

tersecting the corridors of the square terraces. The main en¬

trance is at the eastern side, as is clear from the start of the

narrative reliefs.

Chandi Borobudur is one of the most complex and in¬

tegrated religious symbols in the world; each of its levels has

a different kind of sculptural symbolism. It should be con¬

sidered, not as a temple, but as a place of pilgrimage, or a

school or university of a special type. The Buddhist student

is guided gradually along successive terraces and staircases tothe uppermost platform, experiencing physically as well as

spiritually the long and hard journey in search of theUltimate Truth.

Buddhism lays particular stress on the stages of mental

preparation to be undergone before attaining liberation from

all earthly bonds and the ultimate exclusion from beingreborn. The universe has three spheres. The lowest sphere is

kamadhatu or the Sphere of the Desires. At this stage man

is bound to his desires. The higher sphere is rupadhatu or theSphere of Forms, where man has abandoned his desires but

is still bound to name and form. The highest sphere is

arupadhatu, or the Sphere of Formlessness. In this sphere

there is no longer either name or form. Man is once andforever freed from all bonds with the phenomenal world.

At Chandi Borobudur the Sphere of Desires is represented

by the base; the Sphere of Forms by the square terraces; andthe Sphere of Formlessness by the three circular platformsand the great stupa.

The base is concealed from the visitor's sight today, but

the 160 reliefs and the short inscriptions carved over many of

the panels (apparently constituting instructions to thesculptors indicating the scene to be carved) depict the work¬ings of morality on earth.

Drawing Unesco

KAMADHATU

10

Blameworthy activities, from gossip to murder, with their

corresponding purgatorial punishments, and praiseworthy

activities like charity and pilgrimages to sanctuaries, and

their subsequent rewards, are both shown. The pains of hell

and the pleasures of heaven, and scenes of daily life are

represented in a full panorama of samsara, the endless cycle

of birth and death, the chain of all those forms of delusional

existence from which Buddhism brings release.

In contrast to the openness of the earthly life in the Sphere

of Desires, the path leading to ultimate salvation requires a

narrowing of bodily sight and concentration of the mind.

The narrow galleries of the Sphere of Forms help the faithful

to achieve this. At first sight they are bewildering. The walls

and facing balustrades are packed with reliefs. No less than

1,300 panels of narrative reliefs for a total length of 2,500

metres, and a further 1,212 decorative reliefs, flank the cor

ridors. The biography of the Lord Buddha, from his descent

from heaven until his enlightenment, is depicted on the main

wall of the first gallery. The reliefs which cover the walls of

the second, third and fourth galleries tell the story of the

tireless wanderings of Sudhana in search of the Highest'

Wisdom and the Ultimate Truth.

The narrative reliefs on the walls read from right to left,

those on the balustrades from left to right. This was done for

the purposes of the pradaksina, the ritual circumambulation

which the pilgrim makes, moving in a clockwise direction

and keeping the sanctury to his right. The narrative starts at

the left and ends at the right of the eastern stairway, confirm¬

ing that this stairway is the real entrance to the monument.

The perseverance of the principal figures of the Sphere of

Forms and their tireless efforts to reach the Ultimate Goal

despite their involvement with the extreme richness and

CONTINUED PAGE 15

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Borobudur' s

hidden foot

The base of Borobudur, usually call¬

ed "the hidden foot", is concealed

from view by a heavy stone encase¬

ment which was probably built to

prevent the still-uncompleted monu¬

ment from collapsing through sub¬

sidence. Adorning it is a remarkable

series of 1 60 reliefs which were only

discovered in 1885, over ten cen¬

turies after they were created. The

hidden foot was then exposed and

its masterpieces photographed

before being covered up again, ex¬

cept for the southeast corner. The

panels, which are outstanding for

their enthralling panorama of scenes

from everyday life, illustrate the

workings of Karma, the Law of

Cause and Effect. Scenes are shown

which may lead to a future incarna¬

tion characterized by "a short life",

"a long life", "much pain", "little

pain", "ugliness", "gracefulness"

and so on. Since the pious visitor to

Borobudur should walk around the

sanctuary in a clockwise direction in

accordance with the rite of

pradaksina, the initial deed is usually

depicted on the right side of the

panel, the good or bad result on the

left. Left above, a two-part scene

divided by the tree at centre il¬

lustrates wicked deeds that lead to

the torments of hell: people throw¬

ing fish and turtles into a cauldron

are themselves cooked over a fire

(right of central tree), and a mother-

slayer plunges headfirst into hell

(left). Left centre, refusal to give

alms leads to poverty. Left below,

the exposed hidden foot at the

southeast corner of Borobudur.

11

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fi$g&£] The life of theLord Buddha

Photos on this page show 5

of a set of 120 Borobudur

reliefs which portray

episodes in the life of the

historic Buddha, Siddartha

Gautama, according to a

sacred scripture called the

Lalitavistara. The relief

showing the birth of the

Buddha as prince Siddartha,

son of King Suddhodana and

Queen Maya of Kapilavastu

Swl (in present-day Nepal) ispreceded by panels depic¬

ting various preparations

made to welcome the final

incarnation of the Bodhisatt-

| va (the Buddha-to-be). Top

photo, two goddesses have

flown on clouds to behold

the future mother of the

Bodhisattva in her pavilion

surrounded by attendants

and soldiers.

The Bodhisattva grows up

and marries, and after the

wedding ceremony he is

visited by gods who convey

their congratulations but

also recall the holy task

awaiting him. King Sud¬

dhodana fears to lose the

son who is intended to suc¬

ceed him and builds three

palaces for him. They are

specially guarded to prevent

any attempt by the prince to

escape. Second photo: the

Bodhisattva is sitting in the

middle of the sleeping

women of the court.

One night he leaves the

palace grounds to start a

new life. Third photo: after

passing through many coun¬

tries he says farewell to his

groom and his beloved horse

and cuts off his hair.

After many wanderings, the

Bodhisattva finds five fellow

disciples who agree to join

him in his search for salva-

' tion. In fourth photo, he sits

""\x meditating, left, among

rocks, trees and peacocks

¡ on the Gaya mountain. To

the right are the five

* **V disciples.

Having resisted the

allurements of Mara the Evil

One, the Bodhisattva attains

the Highest Wisdom,

becoming Buddha, "the

, Enlightened One". Bottom

j photo: the gods persuade! the compassionate Buddha

to reveal his doctrine and

give his special attention to

¡ the suffering world.

Photos Luc Joubert-L/nesco Courier. From

Description de Borobudur 1 920 by

N.J. Krom and Th. van Erp

\

wyt

THE GREAT VEHICLE

In the sense that there was no god to be worshipped, Buddhism was not

originally a religion. It was rather a doctrine explaining how to achieve the

ultimate release from all sufferings. Underlying the doctrine is the conviction

that life is misery. Since the phenomenal world is not real, life in all its aspects

is illusion. Life is both a continuation ofearlier lives and a preparation for the

next one, a station in the endless cycle ofbeing born and reborn. Theform andcircumstances of each station are determined by their predecessors.

The determining factor is the karma, the balance of good and bad acts. A

positive balance will secure a better next life and a life that continues to improve

will culminate in a rebirth in heaven. This however does not break the cycle of

birth and rebirth, since a celestial being is also a temporary manifestation. The

ultimate goal is therefore to avoid any form of rebirth.

In the further development of Buddhism, the attainment of nirvana, ab¬

solute non-existence, ceased to be the ultimate goal. To be consistent with the

Buddha's example, it was the salvation of others that should be striven for

rather than one's own. The figure of the Bodhisattva, one whose nature was

enlightenment, replaced the image of nirvana. This school, which became

established in Indonesia, /sca/VeÉ/Mahayana or The Great Vehicle. Its principle

is to pursue salvation for the many, and the ideal of the Mahayana Buddhist

is to become a Bodhisattva. R.s.

SERMONS IN STONE unfold

before the eyes of visitors who

wend their way around the ter¬

races of Borobudur. Photo shows,

above, an episode from the

Lalitavistara, the biography of the

historical Buddha from his descent

from the Tushita heaven to his first

sermon in the' Deer Park near

Varanasi. The Bodhisattva (the

Buddha-to-be) is seen bathing in

the Nairanjana river. Below, a ship

on the open sea, part of a series of

reliefs depicting the earlier lives of

the Buddha before his last incarna¬

tion in the world of human beings.

Photos © A J Bernet Kempers, Arnhem,

The Netherlands

13

Tilgrim's

Progress

of Buddhism'

Winding round the second,

third and fourth terraces of

Borobudur are 460 panels,

many of them life-size,

which illustrate the tireless

search for Enlightenment

of the merchant's son

Sudhana. They are mostly

inspired by the Gan-

davyuha, a sacred text

sometimes referred to in

the West as "The Pilgrim's

Progress of Buddhism".

Sudhana's spiritual quest

leads him to an astonishing

variety of spiritual guides

I ranging from monks and

businessmen to a sea cap¬

tain and night-goddesses.

(1) Sudhana pays homage

' to a woman, putting five

parts of his body on the

ground. (2) He visits the

Great Bodhisattva Man-

[ jusri and requests histeaching. Manjusri is the

figure at centre; Sudhana

is to the viewer's left. The

concluding reliefs in the

series are based on

another sacred text, the

Bhadracari. In one of the

most remarkable scenes

(3) the Bodhisattva

Samantabhadra appears

no less than three times.

First he is seen standing on

the ground (right), then on

a lotus cushion in mid-air

(centre) and finally flying in

the upper sky. The scene is

thought to illustrate the

passage, "Up to the end of

the sky, and until all... kar¬

mas and worldly passions

have ceased, my vows will

know no end."

Photos Luc Joubert-Unesco Courier

taken from Description de Borobudur

1920 by N.J. Krom and Th van Erp

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 1

beauty of forms, provide a model for the pilgrim as he

perambulates the successive stages.

In striking contrast to the square terraces of the Sphere of

Forms the circular platforms representing the Sphere of

Formlessness are plain: no carvings, no ornaments, no

embellishments. The only break in the monotonous plain¬

ness is offered by the row of stupas that encircle the great

central dome.

The complete openness of the arupadhatu, and the

magnificent view from it, symbolize the endless widening of

his spiritual horizon that the pilgrim can achieve by con¬

sistently following the devout conduct in life of the Lord

Buddha. Having absorbed the spirit of the arupadhatu, he

knows the delight of becoming wiser, if not enlightened, and

the ordinary visitor finds that his own weary journey is richly

rewarded.

The exceptional design of Chandi Borobudur has led to

much speculation about why it was built; the identification

of the monument with the cosmic mountain is only one of

many interpretations by which scholars have sought to reveal

its mysteries in the over 500 learned studies that have been

devoted to Borobudur.

The most satisfactory explanation of the symbolic mean¬

ing of the monument has been found by Dr. J.G. de

Casparis, who has made a minute analysis of a number of

eighth and ninth-century inscriptions. In one of them dating

from 842 AD he recognized the compound word

Bhumisambha-rabhudara which he recognized as the

original name of Chandi Borobudur.

This complicated word serves both to explain the

significance of the mountain and to name its founders as

well. As a technical term in Mahayana Buddhism (see box

page 13) the compound means: "The mountain of the ac¬

cumulation of virtue on the ten stages of the Bodhisattva".

A Bodhisattva is one who, like the historical Buddha

Gautama, has set out to attain Enlightenment. The term may

also be interpreted in architectural terms as "The mountain

which is terraced in successive stages" or in a more general

sense as the "King(s) of the accumulation of earth", i.e. the

Sailendra dynasty (saila indra = king of the mountains).

Such ambiguity in a technical term is quite common in the

Sailendra charters, as de Casparis has convincingly shown.

In the prehistoric cultures of Indonesia, a stepped pyramid

is the symbol of the abode of the ancestors in the mountains

and hence it can be plausibly argued that ancestor worship

played a significant part in the designing of the monument.

Consequently, the symbolical meaning of Chandi

Borobudur has a twofold origin, in Mahayana Buddhism

and in ancestor worship. In this context de Casparis inter¬

preted the great stupa as the tenth storey of the monument.

The ten mounting terraces of the structure correspond to the

ten successive stages the Bodhisattva must achieve before at¬

taining Buddhahood; they also correspond to the Sailendra

kings who had until then ruled the kingdom.

It is well known that kings identified themselves with their

divine patrons: Hindu kings with Siva or Visnu, and Bud¬

dhist kings with Bodhisattvas. The liberation from the cycle

of birth and death constitutes the final goal in Hinduism (just

as it was in the early evolution of Buddhism) but to the

Mahayana Buddhist it is the start of the Path to be followed

by the Bodhisattva. A Sailendra king had to do his utmost

to pave the way for the attainment of Buddhahood. He had

to accumulate as much virtue as possible during his reign. He

also had to glorify his predecessors, and one of the most

meritorious ways of doing this was to erect monuments

dedicated both to his patron and to his forefathers.

In terms of ancestor worship, a predecessor is assumed to

have reached a higher stage of perfection than a successor.

The most remote forefather, the founder of the dynasty, is

assumed to have attained the ultimate perfection. And the

other ancestors are ranked successively by order of seniority.

This was apparently the underlying idea of the founder of

Chandi Borobudur when he decided to create a monument

that differed radically from the traditional design. His dar¬

ing break with tradition was meant to demonstrate the high

esteem in which he held the forefather whom he identified

with the Buddha; and a stepped pyramid with a stupa on top

was a most appropriate symbol for depicjing the virtue the

dynasty had accumulated along the Path of the Bodhisattva.

Chandi Borobudur can only be understood by fusing Bud¬

dhism and ancestor worship.

R. Soekmono

Borobudur is exceptionally rich in stone statues depicting

Dhyani (transcendental) Buddhas seated cross-legged on

lotus cushions and facing outwards. At first sight they all

seem alike but they differ, especially as to the position of

the hands (mudra). Right, a Dhyani Buddha in the Abhaya

mudra symbolizing the reassurance to refrain from fear.

Photo taken from Description de Borobudur 1920 by N J Krom and Th van Erp

How Borobudur was savedby R. Soekmono and Caesar Voûte

THE present restoration project for Borobudur is the

culmination of a long period of studies and research.

Earlier restoration and conservation measures dealt

only partially with the factors endangering the monument,

even the major work carried out by Theodoor Van Erp bet¬

ween 1908 and 1911. Van Erp rebuilt the crumbling stupas

and cleaned many of the carvings of lichen and moss. Never¬

theless, if all the cleaning operations, repairs and studies car¬

ried out since the rediscovery of Borobudur in 814 are in¬

cluded then research and conservatory action can be said tohave covered more than 150 years.

The threat to Borobudur was due to a combination of

causes. The monument was built on an unpropitious site, not

on level ground but around and over the top of a hill. As they

worked the builders tipped loose earth and rubble before

them so that the foundations of the edifice rest on a layer of

man-made fill. Even during construction this unstable fillcaused sliding which the builders countered by taking

remedial measures notably the retaining wall which conceals

the "hidden foot" (see previous article).

Borobudur is in an earthquake zone and has suffered

seismic shocks ever since it was built. As recently as 1961 two

earthquakes took place within a month. Though only veryslight they dislodged numerous stones in the leaning wallsand produced new cracks and fissures.

For over a thousand years the rigours of the tropical

climate have probed the latent weaknesses of the edifice.Sudden changes of heat and cold between day and night in

an area where temperatures may vary by 20° Centigrade in

twenty-four hours cause porous stones to crack. But the

worst havoc has been caused by the heavy rains (over 2,000

millimetres a year on average, with torrential downpours of

up to 15mm in five minutes). They overwhelmed the inade-

On-site research was carried out into techniques for cleaning,

treating and conserving damaged stones, statues and wall

reliefs. Above, chemical tests in the laboratory.

quate drainage system, percolating down into the central

core where they washed away the earth and weakened the

foundations. As a result the terrace walls sagged and tilted

at crazy angles and the floors sloped inwards. The lower ter-

, race walls were particularly affected and were on the brink

of collapse. Had they done so the whole colossal structure

would have come tumbling down in a great slithering avalan¬

che of earth and masonry.

Moisture on the stones had also corroded many of the

beautifully carved reliefs and favoured the growth ofdisfiguring patches of mosses and lichens.

For Indonesians Chandi Borobudur is a spiritual beacon,

and even during the struggle for independence the monu-

Drawing NEDECO-Dwars,

Heedenk and Verhey,

Amersfoort, The Netherlands

CAESAR VOUTE, of the Netherlands, is professor ofgeology at the Inter¬national Institute for Aerial Survey and Earth Sciences ITC, at Delft and

Enschede. He was Unesco co-ordinator on the Borobudurprojectfrom 1971to 1975. He is the author ofsome 60 publications in various scientific disci¬

plines ranging from palaeontology to the conservation of monuments.

R. SOEKMONO (seepage 9)

Drawing Unesco

Overloading and stresses caused by sub¬

sidence (schematic drawing far right)

threatened to bring down the walls and ter¬

races of Borobudur in an appalling avalanche

of masonry and sculptures. Vertical section,

near right, shows design of the system of

reinforced foundations, filter layers,

drainage ducts and impermeable layers

whereby the monument has been saved.

16

ENCASEMENT'Vi- ENCÁSEME

Damaged Buddha statues await repair. During the rescue operation a computerized stone registration system was used to keep track

of over a million stone blocks which were dismantled, cleaned, dried, restored and treated before being re-erected on new founda¬

tions. Some stones had to be stored carefully for 4 or 5 years before rebuilding.

ment continued to receive special attention; In 1948 two In¬

dian archaeologists were invited to survey it, and in 1955 the

Government asked for Unesco's assistance. Regular measur-

ings carried out in 1959 revealed alarming irregularities; the

actual differences may have seemed insignificant but since

the slightest movement of a leaning wall might have been

fatal no deviation could be neglected.

Since Chandi Borobudur is so integrated and deterioration

was so widespread, it could not be effectively safeguarded by

partial restoration measures. Thus a bold plan was evolved:

to dismantle and rebuild the square terraces and at the same

time install an efficient drainage system behind the walls and

under the floors.

It was also decided that the earth-core of the monument

would have to be hydrologically isolated from the stone

masonry, and for this purpose it was proposed to install a

combination of filter layers and impervious structures when

building the new foundations. In any case, the weakness of

the foundations dictated a reconstruction of walls and floors

on new foundations of reinforced concrete. Adequate

strengthening of these foundations could only be achieved by

the construction of concrete slabs which would spread the

weight of the walls and the balustrades over a wide surface.

Another imperative was to maintain a certain flexibility in

the monument. Thus it was decided to construct independent

ring-like foundations under each of the galleries. I

FROM REDISCOVERY TO RESTORATIONSome time after being founded by a

king of the Sailendra dynasty of central

Java in the 9th century AD, Chandi

Borobudur is abandoned.

1814. // is rediscovered by Sir Stamford

Raffles and the envelope of rubble and

vegetation around it is gradually remov¬

ed. Specialists study all aspects of the

monument, recording its features in

drawings and photographs.

1885. Discovery of the "Hidden Foot",

bas-reliefs concealed by a retaining wall

built to prevent the edifice from

collapsing.

1907-1911. Restoration work carried out

by Theodoor Van Erp. "Thanks to him

the disappearance of the monument wasavoided". He dismantles and rebuilds the

three circular terraces and the stupas.

1929. A new commission appointed to

identify damage sources and propose

means of arresting further decay.

1950. The Republic of Indonesia joins

the United Nations and Unesco.

1955. Indonesia asks Unesco to advise on

problems of counteracting stone

weathering on Indonesian monuments,

especially Borobudur. A comprehensive

restoration plan is proposed.

1967. The Indonesian Government again

asks Unesco for technical assistance.

1968. Experts from several countries

carry out on-site studies in close co¬

operation with the Indonesian Ar¬

chaeological Institute and Government

agencies.

January 1971. International panel

meeting in Yogyakarta unanimously

agrees that the only way to save

Borobudur from disintegration is to

dismantle and rebuild the square

terraces.

April 1971. Indonesia sets up the Badan

Pemugaran Candi Borobudur (Agency

for the Restoration of Chandi

Borobudur) to handle all aspects of the

restoration project.' A Unesco co¬

ordinator appointed.

December 1972. International Con¬

sultative Committee set up. Unesco laun¬

ches international appeal.

29 January 1973. The Government of In

donesia and Unesco sign a formal agree¬

ment for the implementation of the

Borobudur Restoration Project. On the

same day agreements regarding volun¬

tary contributionsfor the preservation of

Borobudur are also signed between

Unesco and several donating Member

States. A special International Trust

Fund established, being managed by the

Director-General of Unesco assisted by

an Executive Committee comprising

representatives of Member States con¬

tributing to the project.

1975. Work begins on north façade.

Restoration will take 7 years after

dismantlement.

Early 1981. Reconstruction of east and

west façades well advanced.

October 1982. Final restoration work

completed.

23 February 1983. Grand celebration in¬

augurated by the President of the

Republic of Indonesia.

Total cost amounts to over S 20 million,

two-thirds of which are provided by the

Government of Indonesia.

17

It was originally intended to open up the bas-reliefs of the"Hidden Foot" for permanent inspection by inserting acovered trench in the encasement around the foot of the

monument. However, this part of the plan had to be aban¬

doned because of the risk of sliding and collapse, especiallyduring earthquakes.

A vast amount of preliminary research was carried out

before the final design was adopted. The disciplines involvedin these preparatory activities included: airphoto analysis,archaeology, architecture, chemistry, conservation tech¬niques, engineering seismology, foundation engineering, tech¬

nology, landscape planning, meteorology, microbioloby,

petrography, physics, soil mechanics, surveying and ter¬

restrial photogrammetry. It can easily be imagined hat aproject of such complexity and magnitude as this requiredspecial measures for organization and management.

International involvement at first consisted of the provi¬sion of expert advice and assistance in the training of Indone¬

sian personnel. Then Indonesia asked Unesco to launch acampaign to mobilize international support for the operation

(see box page 17).

The execution of the project has been in Indonesian hands.In April 1971 the Indonesian Government established a

special agency, the Badán Pemugaran Candi Borobudur

(Agency for the Restoration of Chandi Borobudur). Staffedby senior engineers and archaeologists and assisted by scien¬

tific advisors from several universities, the autonomousBadan has handled all aspects of the project, technical andadministrative, national and international. The setting up of

the Badan and the simultaneous appointment of a Unesco

CONTINUED PAGE 23

Before restoration, many of the superb Borobudur reliefs

were fractured and dislocated as a result of the strains

imposed on the colossal sanctuary by tropical weathering.

COLOUR PAGES

Opposite page. On the three circular upper ter¬races of the great sanctuary of Borobudur (In¬

donesia) stand three symmetrical rings of 72 bell-

shaped stupas, or shrines, with perforated walls.

Each shrine contains a statue of a Buddha (belowleft). Above, one of the statues whose shrine has

crumbled faces a line of smaller stupas which pin¬

nacle the walls of the colossal monument which is

adorned with the world's largest and most com¬

plete ensemble of Buddhist reliefs. Detail of carv¬ing, below right, shows grace and simplicity with

which the sculptors treated the themes of Buddhisticonography.

Photo bottom left Michelangelo Durazzo © ANA, ParisOther photos © Bann Namikawa, Tokyo

Centre pages. As if suspended in mid-air above the

mist-wreathed plain the majestic upper terraces are

plain and unadorned. Close at hand, in the twilight

of the fretted stupas, the pilgrim can just discern

the meditating Buddhas. Surrounded by a sea of

light, his gaze encompasses the chain of volcanicpeaks rising on the horizon.

Photo © Kyodo News Enterprise, Japan

Page 22. Above, Borobudur is set on an un¬

dulating plain bordered on practically all sides

by rugged mountain ranges. Lower photos, in¬spired by sacred scriptures and working with

consummate skill and precision of detail, the

ancient sculptors embroidered stone master¬

pieces which have now been saved forposterity.

Photos © Bann Namikawa, Tokyo

18

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»,

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 18

co-ordinator proved to be of the greatest benefit. Awarenessof a common responsibility soon developed complete mutual

understanding and the closest co-operation.

The Badan has carried out all the photographic and non-

photographic documentation and survey work, stone

restoration, dismantling, stone conservation work and

reconstruction, including the construction of the watertight

layers behind the walls. Over 600 technicians and labourers

have been involved.

Among the new techniques introduced for the project have

available for damaged stones, bas-reliefs and statues. On

average it took about two weeks to treat and repair each

stone. Then the blocks had to be moved back to their million

positions. An additional task was that of identifying some

ten thousand stones that had fallen off the building over (he

years, matching them with the existing architecture and

finally restoring them to their original places.

Despite the vast scale of the undertaking re-erection of the

terraces on their new foundations has proceeded according

to timetable allowing for the reinauguration of the monu¬

ment in March 1983.

The same relief in 1910 (above) and in the late 1960s (below). Chemicals picked up by water seeping from inside the monument

to the surface and secretions from various organisms caused considerable changes in the appearance of the reliefs, as well as physical

and chemical modifications.Photo from Chandi Borobudur, by R Soekmono © Unesco

been the use of airborne and terrestrial photogrammetry for

precision surveys, the analysis of aerial photography, the ap¬

plication of geophysical surveys as aids to archaeological

prospection, and the use of computer facilities for work

planning and project management.

The task has been colossal. After the completion of the

photogrammetric survey of the monument more than a

million stone blocks were dismantled by a forest of hand-

operated cranes in an order carefully planned beforehand to

prevent the risk of unbalancing the monument.

Each stone was identified and coded then transported to

the nearby treatment area where a battery of restoration

measures ranging from cleaning with water or dry brushing

to the application of a clay and chemical "facepack" were

The Borobudur project thus constitutes an example of

very close multidisciplinary collaboration between a large

number of specialists from many different fields all con¬

tributing to the preservation and better understanding of a

monument which is a highlight in mankind's cultural, artistic

and technical achievements.

It has reflected a nation's desire to preserve its cultural

heritage for the future; the wish of a people to permit the

greatest possible number of persons to enjoy the artistic crea¬

tion of the past; and the solidarity of the international com¬munity in preserving a masterpiece that belongs to the

universal cultural heritage.

H R. Soekmono

Caesar Voûle

23

TASHKENT

The capital of Uzbekistan celebrates

its two thousandth anniversary

by Erkin Yussupov

TASHKENT, the capital of the

Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic

and one of the major cities of cen¬

tral Asia, is two thousand years old.

The earliest references to it occur in

certain Chinese chronicles of the second

century BC which speak of the oasis of

Tashkent. A century later this oasis is

called Yuni or Yuini, and is described as

forming part of the powerful State of

Kangyu, with a town of the same

name Yuni at its centre. The distin¬

guished orientalist V.V. Bartold, who

analysed these chronicles, advanced the

theory that the region of Yuni was iden¬

tical with that now occupied by Tashkent.

Professor M.E. Masson, a specialist in

the history of Tashkent, came to the same

conclusion.

Later the region came to be known as

Chzhesi, which apparently renders the

Chinese pronunciation of Tashkent's an¬

cient name, Shash or Chach.

Information about the history of

Tashkent is also found in the writings of

the Greek astronomer and geographer

Ptolemy, who refers in his Guide to

Geography to a city called "Stone

Tower". The great scholar and en¬

cyclopaedist Abu Rayhan al-Biruni

(973-1048), who was familiar with

Ptolemy's work, wrote that the city

which was called "Stone Tower" in

Greek was actually Binkent, the capital

of Ash-Shash, "which in the Turkic

tongue is Tashkand".

The name Chach is found in early

eighth-century documents originating in

Sogdiana, the historical area which now

forms part of Uzbekistan. The famous

ninth-century mathematician and

astronomer al-Khwarizmi mentions the

names of Shash and Tarband (probably

today's Otrar). Valuable information

concerning the history of medieval

Tashkent may be gathered from Arabic,

Persian and Turkish manuscripts of the

ninth-twelfth centuries. The city's ex¬

istence was known in Russia as early as

the fourteenth century, and is mentioned

in the "Book of the Grand Design"

under the name of Tashkur.

ERKIN YUSSUPOV, Soviet educator, is vice-

president of the Academy of Sciences of the

Uzbek SSR. He is the author ofseveral scientific

works.

24

All these references have received a

surprising amount of backing from the

latest archaeological discoveries on the

site of modern Tashkent. Particularly in¬

teresting are the results of excavations

carried out at Shash-Tep (the "hill ofShash", situated in the southern part of

the city) in an area covering some twenty-

five hectares along the banks of an an¬

cient tributary of the Dzhun river, and on

This year the two million inhabitants of Tashkent, capital of the Uzbek SSR and the

fourth largest city of the USSR, are celebrating their city's two thousandth anniversary.

Above, a view of modern Tashkent showing the boulevard and square of "Peoples'

Friendship".

One of the oldest cities of central Asia, Samarkand is famed for its fine, mausoleums,

mosques and madrasahs (Muslim schools) which span six centuries of central Asian

architecture. Above, the Ulugh Beg madrasah in Rigestan Square.

Cotton plantation at the Moskwa State Farm, near Andizhan, in the fertile FerganaValley, a vast area devoted to the growing of sub-tropical crops and known as "thePearl of Uzbekistan".

Part of an ancient fort, dating from the 2nd or 1st century BC, excavated at the site of

Shash-Tep (the "hill of Shash") to the south of Tashkent. Arrow-shaped loop-holes

were a feature of central Asian fortifications.

the site of the ancient town of

Manguryuk, where remains of dwellings

and fortifications have been unearthed.

The archaeologists have established that

here, in the earliest years of the modern

era, craftsmanship and trade were

developing alongside agriculture and

livestock-raising.

During the Middle Ages, Tashkent

underwent many changes of fortune. In¬

vasion first by the Arabs, then by the

hordes of Genghis Khan, incursions by

neighbouring nomad tribes and wars bet¬

ween the various feudal States led more

than'once to devastation and ruin, but

the city never totally disappeared. Its

favourable geographical position and the

strong traditions and solid relationships

established over the ages in the fields of

craftsmanship and commerce, invariably

provided the incentives for renewal.

Restoration of the natural tributaries of

the Chirchik river, the construction of

canals, the transformation of the city in¬

to a major commercial, industrial and

cultural centre and the growth of new ur¬

ban settlements in the vicinity all con¬

solidated the reputation of Chach as "the

land of a thousand cities."

The Middle Ages were a period of great

expansion for Tashkent. Its skilled crafts¬

men produced metal tools, weapons,

decorative objects and household articles

of the highest quality. Others excelled at

processing farm products, and others still

produced cotton and wool textiles, pot¬

tery and glassware. In terms of the

. number of its merchants, Tashkent held

third place among the great trading cen¬

tres of central Asia, after Bukhara and

Samarkand. At the same time, the

world's scientific and cultural heritage

was enriched by the achievements of the

many scholars and writers who have lived

and worked in Tashkent. These have in¬

cluded the philosopher, poet and

theologian Abubakir Kaffalon Shoshi

(10th century), the physician Abu Ab-

dullakh Mukhammad ibn Yusup al Iloki(11th century), the eye specialist

Ubaidulla ibn Yusup Ali Alkakhal (16th

century), the poets Badir Chachi (14th

century), Kulfat (18th century) and

Komy Tashkandi (19th century) and the

linguist Kamaliddin Khafuz Kokhakki

(16th century).

The development of production, com¬

merce, science and culture in ancient and

medieval Tashkent did not take place in a

backwater. Study of the objects unearthed

by archaeologists, of manuscripts, ar¬

chitecture, and the age-old trades and

ceremonial customs of the people of

Tashkent reveals a combination of purely

local traditions with influences from

other lands. This is not surprising;

peoples and cultures cannot develop in

isolation. As a result of immemorial links

with- neighbouring regions and with the

more distant countries of the east, the

cultural traditions, the language and the

literature of Chach underwent external

influences and in turn exercised their own

influence elsewhere.

The seventeenth and eighteenth cen¬

turies saw a strengthening of commercial

and economic ties between Tashkent and

Russia, as the mutual advantage of such

relationships became increasingly ap¬

parent. The merchants of Tashkent

travelled to the Russian frontier towns of

Siberia. In 1739-1740, the first Russian

caravan made its way to Tashkent from

the newly-established city of Orenburg,

in the Urals.

The absorption of Tashkent, together

with the whole of central Asia, into the

Russian empire in the second half of the

nineteenth century opened a new chapter

in the city's history. The seemingly

endless period of internecine wars cameto an end, industry continued to develop,and by the beginning of the twentiethcentury Tashkent had been transformed

into the economic, cultural and ad¬

ministrative centre of the governorate-

general of a multinational province,Turkestan.

After the October Revolution of 1917,

the city began to expand more rapidly

than ever before, thanks to the

disinterested and fraternal collaboration

of the different peoples of our country.

During the darkest days of the Civil War,

a decree adopted on the initiative of V.l.

Lenin created the first institution of

higher education in the Soviet East the

Turkestan State University, which at¬

tracted noted scholars from Moscow,

Petrograd and other cities. A "science

train" carrying books, personnel and

equipment set out from Moscow and ar¬

rived two months later at Tashkent,

whose people will never forget the names

of the engineers, teachers and doctors

who fostered the rapid development of

education, health services, science and

culture, and who did so much to

eradicate illiteracy, build new schools,

and create institutions of higher educa¬

tion and scientific and cultural centres.

In a relatively short time, Tashkent

became a major centre of social,

economic and intellectual progress for

the whole of central Asia, as the city

where many writers, politicians, scien¬

tists and intellectuals from all the Central

Asian republics and from Kazakhstan

came to complete their education.

25

Between 1941 and 1945, the city played

an important part in the struggle against

the Hitlerite invaders. Hundreds of

thousands of its people fought valiantly

on the battlefields. As a city far behind

the front, Tashkent gave refuge to hun¬

dreds of thousands of evacuees from the

areas then occupied by the Nazis,

lavishing particular care on the children

who had lost both parents during the

fighting. Among the moving episodes of

this period, the exemplary behaviour of

Shaakhmed Shamakhmudov, a foundry-

worker, and his wife is still remembered.During the darkest time of the war they

adopted and brought up no fewer than

fifteen orphans of eight different na¬

tionalities. Their gesture was emulated by

tens of thousands of their fellow-citizens,

who became foster-parents to children in

similar circumstances.

No history of Tashkent would be com¬

plete without mention of the disastrous

earthquake of 1966 which destroyed or

damaged some 36,000 buildings, in¬

cluding 100,000 apartments, and left

hundreds of thousands of people

homeless. Damage was also caused to

factories, cultural institutions, hospitals

and community centres, schools, univer¬

sities and many other facilities. Represen¬

tatives of all the republics of the Soviet

Union joined in providing relief, and it

was not long before Tashkent had been

extensively rebuilt, and had become

View of the interior of

the Museum of Applied

Arts, Tashkent.

Photo © Progress Publishers,

Moscow

Carved from a single block of stone, this sculpture of the Bud¬

dha, seated under the Bodhi tree (tree of enlightenment) and

flanked by two disciples, dates from between the 1st and the

3rd centuries AD. Discovered near the city of Termez,

Uzbekistan, it is now preserved in the Museum of the History

of the Peoples of Uzbekistan, Tashkent. The Museum houses

some 50,000 items from prehistoric times to the 1 9th century.

Part of a 2nd-century ivory drinking horn found during the

excavation of Shash-Tep.

again one of the most attractive cities in

the country.

Today Tashkent is a city where two

million people, of some hundred dif¬

ferent nationalities, live together in amity

and harmony. Its highly developed and

diversified industries produce aircraft,

tractors, excavators and machine-tools

which, together with the products of light

industry and food-processing plants, are

exported to seventy-five countries.

Tashkent is also a major scientific and

cultural centre, the home of the Academy

of Sciences of the Uzbek SSR, the Cen¬

tral Asian Department of the Academy

of Agricultural Sciences, and many other

high-level scientific institutions. Young

26

people from . sixty countries study

alongside Soviet students in more thantwenty establishments of higher educa¬

tion. There are a large number of

technical high schools and hundreds of

primary and secondary schools. The

quality of the city's medical services ishigh.

It would be difficult to enumerate all

the features of life in this effervescent,

kaleidoscopic modern city. Tashkentregularly hosts meetings of writers fromAsian, African and Latin American

countries. Its international film festivals,

eight of which have been held since 1968,

have won a high reputation. Every year

international conferences and symposiaare held on themes related to social pro¬

gress, science and technology. All these

activities contribute to the strengthening

of mutual understanding, friendship and

peace among peoples. The international

prestige of Tashkent is also reflected in

the fact that it was there that the leaders

of India and Pakistan met in January

1966 to settle a number of controversial

issues between their two countries; the

result of this meeting was the historic

"Tashkent Declaration".

Visited by increasing numbers of

tourists, Tashkent is a member of the

United Towns Organization and hasspecial links with Tunis, Skopje, Mar-

rakesh, Potiala, Seattle, Tripoli and anumber of other cities.

The two millennia of Tashkent's

history are spanned by an invisible

bridge, whose outline may neverthelessbe discerned in the city's architecture and

also in the domains of science, literature

and art. The songs, dances, poetry, music

and popular wisdom of ancient Chach,

constantly enriched through contacts

with the cultural achievements of dif¬

ferent countries during different periods

in history, have won their place in the

modern world.

Modern dance, spoken poetry, and the

applied arts are not merely echoes from a

distant past; they are also achievementsof our times. Traditions of popular crafts¬

manship acquired during generations of

meticulous labour find a place in modern

industry. Cloth woven of gold thread,

national costumes and decorative art ob¬

jects are universally admired. Thedancers of the Uzbek State Ensemble

"Bakhor" and the singers and in¬

strumentalists of the "Yalla" and

"Navo" companies combine the tradi¬

tional and the modern in their

repertoires.

Drama has also followed a long path

from past to present in Tashkent, whose

people took pride in the fact that the

Uzbek Academy of Music, the Alisher

Navoi, was selected to represent the

USSR at the 1982 Berlin International

Opera Festival.

This fusion of the traditional and the

contemporary finds an echo in the hearts

of millions of people, whatever their

aspirations. May the invisible bridge

which spans Tashkent's two thousand

years of history serve the cause of peace,

brotherhood and friendship between all

peoples of the West and the East.

Erkin Yussupov

A golden treasury

of manuscripts

Á,0\ " rr

TpaMOTHbid TBOft ¿lour oóywb HerpanoTHbix!

""-

Published in Tashkent, in 1920, at the start of a literacy cam¬

paign, this poster bears the message, in Uzbek and Russian: "It

is the duty of those who are educated to teach the illiterate toread and write".

by Muzaffar Khayrullaev

IN the history of the East, central

Asia and its citiesBukhara,

Samarkand, Khiva, Tashkent,

Urgench and Termez are renowned as

centres of an ancient civilization.

The region, which in Antiquity lay on

the Silk Road and was in the Middle Ages

MUZAFFAR KHAYRULLAEV is director of

the Abu Rayhan al-Biruni Institute of Oriental

Studies, Tashkent. He is a corresponding memberofthe Academy ofSciences ofthe Uzbek SSR and

the author of many scientific publications.

one of the most highly developed and"

prosperous parts of the Arab caliphate,

was for centuries involved in exchanges

with other peoples. Among the great

achievements of the culture that was born

of this process are architectural

monuments, works of popular crafts¬manship, and also a heritage of il¬

luminated manuscripts.

In Uzbekistan many of these

manuscripts have been preserved, either

in city libraries or in private hands. The

State provides for the restoration and

conservation of the documents, which

27

are gradually being concentrated in the

Institute of Manuscripts of the Academy

of Sciences. However, the richest collec¬

tion is that of the Abu Rayhan al-Biruni

Institute of Oriental Studies.

At present the Institute's manuscript

holdings amount to more than 18,000

volumes containing over 40,000 works,

as well as a considerable collection of

deeds and official documents evoking the

grandeur and decline of the feudal States

of central Asia.

The manuscripts cover a period of

almost a thousand years from the mid-

tenth to the early twentieth centuries and

an area ranging from the Near East to

northern India, Iran, the Arab countries

and the Maghreb.

For the most part, the texts are in

languages which were common in the

Muslim East during the Middle Ages:

Arabic, Persian and various Turkic

languages. Urdu and Pushtu are also

represented.

Thematically, the manuscripts encom¬

pass virtually all the domains of medieval

written culture the natural and exact

sciences, the humanities (history, poetics

and philology), literature, music, ar¬

chitecture and philosophy. Some are

devoted to Islamic themes: the Qur'an,

the Qur'anic sciences, the hadith,

jurisprudence, Sufism, and other cur¬

rents of Islamic thought. Others are con¬

cerned with various crafts, with

agriculture, commerce, and with subjectsrelated to construction. There are many

dictionaries, encyclopaedias, glossariesand other works of reference.

Some of the manuscripts are unique,

either because copies are to be found

nowhere else in the world's archives,

because they constitute the most com¬

plete example of a given text, because no

earlier version exists, or because as works

of art they have no equal.

One outstanding example in the

Museum of the Peoples of Uzbekistan is

the seventh-century Qur'an of Uthman,

transcribed on parchment. A unique

specimen of the treatise on chemistry by

ar-Rhazes (ninth-tenth centuries)

discovered in the Institute of Oriental

Studies is a valuable source of knowledge

concerning research in the natural

sciences in the medieval East.

The Institute also contains several

works by the great Ibn Sina (Avicenna,

tenth-eleventh centuries), notably several

pages from his Canon of Medicine, the

oldest of which dates from the thirteenth

century. There are many works by Al-

Biruni (tenth-eleventh centuries) the most

precious being a copy of his en¬

cyclopaedic work "The Book of

Understanding of the Elements of

Astrology" which deals with matters

related to astronomy, mathematics,

geodesy and other subjects. The

manuscript dates from the thirteenth cen¬

tury and is considered to be one of the

oldest transcriptions of this text.

A unique seventeenth-century volume

entitled "Collected Writings of Wise

Men" contains 107 treatises by the great

thinkers and scholars of Antiquity and

the Middle Ages: Aristotle, Plato and

Galen among the Greeks; Al-Kindi, Ibn

28

Rushd (Averroes) and Ibn Badzh among

the Arabs; Farabi and Ibn Sina from cen¬

tral Asia; Bakhmaniar from Azerbaijan;

and many others. These documents

create a complex picture of the intellec¬

tual inquiry and philosophical systems of

the great minds of the past. The

manuscript was written in Damascus,

doubtless by an amateur of philosophy

who devoted much of his time to collec¬

ting philosophical works.

In the Middle Ages literature and

especially poetry constituted the most

widespread and popular form of express¬

ing spiritual and emotional experience.

They were also, especially in the hands of

the great masters of verbal expression, a

means of transmitting popular wisdom,

ding musician who introduced many in¬

novations into Indian music and is con¬

sidered to have invented the sitar. He

wrote on many subjects but he was most

famous of all in India for the songs which

he wrote in the Hindi vernacular. The

copy in the Institute's possession is par¬

ticularly valuable because three of the

five poems were transcribed by the great

poet Hafiz (fourteenth century).

Another of the Institute's treasures is

an album containing original letters by

fifteenth-century scholars, poets and

writers compiled for the Uzbek poet and

statesman Ali Shir Navoi. It includes let¬

ters by the famous Abd al Rahman

Djami. These letters deal with the social,

economic and cultural life of Khorassan

Letter written by the

15th-century poet

Abd al-Rahman

Djami to the Uzbek

poet and statesman

Ali Shir Navoi. Djami

authenticated his

letter by signing

each sheet in the top

right hand corner.

r^ítiMe*

'JÓlrjl J.-tu,-

*>. s,

* * >, >-jJ** %

-77-

JE-»*

X, : >a~~*-jJ>y¡,

"in

u j'j > .-»

ft

^i

¿te -i^í"'

-~^^-t¿ -y »i

*Vr- . " *"" -

*- -

"

the historical experience, and reflection

on the meaning of existence.

The poetry of the medieval East is

represented in the Institute's archives by

the works of great artists of central Asia,

India, Iran, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan,

and the Arab countries. Examples in¬

clude a fourteenth-century copy of a

peom by Yusuf Balassagun entitled

"Knowledge, bringer of happiness".

The archives also contain a unique ex¬

ample of the Khamsah ("Pentology") by

the great fourteenth-century Indian poet

Amir Khusru. In the words of Jawaharlal

Nehru, Khusru was an outstanding poet

who wrote mainly in Persian but was also

a master of Sanskrit. He was an outstan-

and central Asia in the fifteenth century

and constitute an invaluable document

for the study of the history of the empire

of the Timurids.

Works by medieval historians are well

represented in the Institute's holdings.

They include a twenty-volume universal

history by Ibn al-Assiri and a history of

the ancient and medieval world by Ibn

Muhammad al-Djuwayni (thirteenth cen¬

tury). The pearl of the collection is an

early (fourteenth century) copy of a text

by Rashidaddin ibn Imadovla, who was

famous throughout the East. There are

also Uzbek translations of historical

works in Arabic and Persian, from the

seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.

Examination time at the Miri-Arab

madrasah (Muslim school) at

Bokhara, Uzbekistan. The curriculum

of a madrasah is traditionally centred

on the Qur'an but, in addition to

Islamic theology and law, grammar,

literature, mathematics and some¬

times medicine are studied.

Below, one page from a manuscript

copy of The Book of Understanding of

the Elements of Astrology, an en¬

cyclopaedic work by the great scholar

and scientist Al-Biruni (973-1048)

which deals with subjects such as

astronomy, mathematics and geodesy.

Dating from the 13th century, this

manuscript is believed to be one of the

oldest existing transcriptions of Al-

Biruni's text.

Photo © V Seleznev, Moscow

Some of these manuscripts are

veritable works of art. Their pages are

embellished with brightly coloured orien¬

tal designs and illuminated with gold

paint, and the texts are executed in ex¬

quisite calligraphy. Works by the great

poets Firdusi, Nizami, Saadi, Navoi,

Amir Khusru, Hafiz and Dzhami are

decorated with miniatures of exceptional

artistic quality.

All these manuscripts, which relate todifferent periods in the history of the

peoples of a vast region, constitute an

irreplaceable source of information

concerning the social, economic and

spiritual life of the peoples of the Near

and Middle East, of central Asia, India,

Afghanistan, Pakistan, and eastern

China.

Before the October Revolution of

1917, the department of Eastern

Manuscripts of the Tashkent Public

Library, whose archives formed the basisof the collection now conserved by the

Al-Biruni Institute, possessed no more

than a few hundred works. Today the In¬

stitute's holdings are growing every year

thanks to subventions from theGovernment.

There is also an active programme for

the exchange of microfilms with other

manuscript archives throughout the

world. The Institute already possesses

more than 3,000 microfilms. Each year it

receives hundreds of requests for

photocopies of rare texts from the United

States, the Federal Republic of Germany,

Afghanistan, the Arab countries, India,

Czechoslovakia, the United Kingdom,

and other countries. Research students

from many countries come to work at the

Institute.

In recent decades, the orientalists of

Uzbekistan have done much to place the

study of manuscripts on a more

systematic footing. Ten volumes of

manuscripts have already been published

and three more are in preparation. There

is also an ongoing programme for the

publication of catalogues of works by in¬

dividual thinkers and poets. Manuscriptsbelonging to the Al-Biruni Institute also

formed the basis for the publication inRussian and Uzbek for the first time of

Avicenna's Canon of Medicine, in six

volumes; a six-volume selection of works

by Al-Biruni; a multi-volume edition of

the works of the great Uzbek poet Ali

Shir Navoi; works by Farabi, the

"Aristotle of the East"; as well as works

by Zahir ud-din Babur, and the tenth-

eleventh century historians Narshakhi

and Baikhaki, and other writers.

Preparations are currently being made

to celebrate the 1,200th anniversary of

the birth of the great scholar Mukhamm-

ed ibn Moussa al-Khorezmi, whose nameis linked with the invention of algebra

and the logarithm. Plans have been made

for the first-ever edition, in Russian and

Uzbek, of his major works on

mathematics, astronomy and geography.

The work of the Institute of Oriental

Studies on the rich cultural heritage of

the peoples of the East has been recogniz¬

ed by the award of the first International

Avicenna Prize. The study and publica¬

tion of the works of the great humanists

of the East, the propagation of their

noble ideals, the strengthening of scien¬

tific contacts and the exchange of

manuscript material make an important

contribution to international cultural and

scientific co-operation and hence to

friendship between peoples.

Muzaffar Khayrullaev

29

Culture

in a cold climateThe reindeer herdsmen of Lapland

by Pekka Aikio

Members of the "Lapp Parliament" at work during the annual session of the

representative body founded in 1973 as an expression of Lapp identity and as a means

of preserving traditional rights.

BECAUSE of its latitude, Finno-

scandinavia the geographic to¬

tality of Finland, Sweden and

Norway constitutes the most densely

inhabited "desert" in the world. In

fact, the historical development of nor¬

thern Scandinavia owes much to the

temperate influence of the Gulf

Stream. Without this warm current the

land of the Lapps, at the northern ex¬

tremity of Finland, Norway and

Sweden, would be a sparsely populated

arctic tundra, like the vast tundra zone

of North America.

Around a million people live on the

PEKKA AIKIO, president of the Lapp parlia¬

ment of Finland, is a specialist in reindeer far¬

ming. He is currently contributing to research into

reindeer rearing being carried out by the univer¬

sity ofOula and the Finnish Academy.

30

Nordic ice-cap, the region of Sweden,

Finland and Norway north of the Arc¬

tic Circle. It is not easy to say how

many of them are Laplanders since on¬

ly Finland has attempted to define what

might be called the "Lapp ethnic

group" and the criteria on which this

definition is based are not accepted in

either Sweden or Norway. In Finland,

a person who speaks Lapp as his

primary language or whose parents or

one of whose sets of grandparents

spoke Lapp is considered to be a

Laplander. On the basis of this defini¬

tion the Laplanders of Finland elect a

representative body commonly called

the "Lapp Parliament", yet the situa¬

tion remains paradoxical since Lapp

does not have the status of an official

language and in the statistics it is not

recognized as a mother tongue.

-~.n

- ml* "

-ft

fi- **

w

MI..H-.* '***«*"T^"*"*

^ gt

Definition of a "Lapp cultural iden¬

tity" is an even trickier question in the

neighbouring countries of-Sweden and

Norway, where the Lapp ethos has

always been closely linked with

reindeer herding, to such an extent

that, at times, only Lapp reindeer

farmers have been considered

Laplanders.

In 1973, Lapp territory was defined

in Finland as consisting of the com¬

mons of Enontekiö, Inari and Utsjoki

and the Lapp community's domain of

Sodankylä. It was at this time that

language was designated as the

criterion for belonging to the Lapp peo¬

ple. This definition increased the Lapp

population of Finland to somewhat

more than 4,500 people, ten per cent of

whom live outside their territory, in

southern Finland or abroad. This may

appear at first glance a conservative

estimate.

Sweden and Norway undertook

demographic studies of the Laplanders

in the 1970s. It was found that while the

Swedish Lapp population numbered

from 17,000 to 20,000 individuals, only

2,000 of them were reindeer farmers.

Norway was found to have approx¬

imately 2,500 Lapp reindeer farmers,

for eighty per cent of whom reindeer

farming was their main professional ac¬

tivity, out of a total of between 35,000

and 50,000 Laplanders. These figures

ijr* - p¿

i* '

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It.fW-

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w* »*" - *> ~«

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***** 5* ^î <^_ T^* , ^- - gt

. «**AÎ*

"A

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During their seasonal migrations reindeer herds cover very considerable distances, ranging in Norway, for example, from 300 to

400 kilometres. Special agreements allow the reindeer herders, who live a nomadic or semi-nomadic life, to cross the national fron¬tiers of the Scandinavian States with their herds.

do not take into account the coastal

Lapps, the "Maritime Laplanders",

who pose extremely complicated prob¬

lems of cultural'identity. Thus it ap¬

pears that neither the use of the Lapp

language nor the practice of reindeer

farming are adequate criteria for judg¬

ing who is to be included in the Lapp

population.

The wild reindeer, from which our

modern herds are descended, were at

one time to be found throughout the

northern hemisphere. From very early

times the species branched out into two

distinct types: the arctic mountain

reindeer and the forest reindeer,

adapted to the conifer forest zone. The

nordic reindeer is descended from the

mountain reindeer, while the forest

reindeer, increasingly rare, has almost

A Lapp reindeer-farmer feeds his herd. In the Finnoscandinavian countries, with the

growth of domesticated herds,pasturelands are coming under pressure and at times the

reindeer are faced with local shortages of graze.

disappeared from the Finnoscandina¬

vian environment.

Traditional forms of domestic

reindeer husbandry have survived only

in Eurasia. Broadly speaking, all the

Eurasian zone north of the zero degree

isotherm can be considered reindeer-

raising territory. Of the world's four

and a half million reindeer, about three

million are domesticated, seventy-

seven per cent in the Soviet Union,

twenty-one per cent in North America,

and much smaller numbers in Scotland

and Greenland. Small herds have also

been relocated in remote places such as

the islands adjacent to the Antarctic

continent, where they have adapted

very well.

According to Soviet specialists, there

is enough pastureland in the USSR to

maintain three and a half million

reindeer, while North America is

estimated to have pasturage available

to feed three million. But in the Nordic

countries the number of reindeer can¬

not be appreciably increased; the

Swedish and Finnish pasturelands are

overgrazed and from time to time in

certain areas reindeer herds are faced

with famine.

There are four principal zones of

Eurasian reindeer-raising. To the ex¬

treme east the nomadic Chukchi and

Koryaks raise very large herds. They

use reindeer as draught animals and as

31

a source of milk. In western Eurasia,

however, the Lapps have developed a

totally or semi-nomadic husbandry

with the reindeer serving as both pack

and draught animals as well as for the

production of milk. On the Soviet

coastline of the Arctic Ocean, the total¬

ly nomadic Samoyed* use their reindeer

neither for milk nor as pack animals.

The forest Tungus, the Soyots and their

neighbours, who occupy a small area

between the Samoyeds and Chukchi

and the Koryaks, are semi-nomadic

reindeer farmers, milking their herds

and using them as beasts of burden as

well as for breeding.

Man's first contact with reindeer was

The coastal Laplanders were,

perhaps, the first to domesticate the

reindeer in Scandinavia. At first the

reindeer were used as harness, pack and

decoy animals, and for their milk. Not

yet very numerous, the reindeer accom¬

panied these primitive semi-nomadic

hunters in their search for game. As the

wild reindeer became more and more

scarce, the Laplanders increased the

size of their domesticated herds and in

their search for pasturelands gradually

became totally nomadic.

The first written evidence of reindeer

raising is contained in tax registers of

the 14th and 15th centuries. Since the

reign of Gustavus Vasa, the sovereigns

% "jwMtjjptr mi

Modem Lapp nomads use snowmobiles, motor-driven snow scooters,

to follow and round up their herds.

as prey to be hunted and snared by

means of traps, ditches and stockades.

Many traces of reindeer-herding

civilizations are to be found in Finland,

but little is known of more ancient

times when reindeer were. exclusively

hunters' prey. At Jiebmaluokta, near

Alta, however, a rock carving has been

found which depicts an enclosure for

reindeer. It is in the shape of a four-

leafed clover in which were enclosed

reindeer and elk. Several reindeer are to

be seen entering the enclosure while a

hunter, goad in hand, is herding them

into a corner. Since this carving is

thought to be between 5,500 and 6,000

years old, it would appear that a fairly

sophisticated form of reindeer hunting

was practised by the coastal Lapps as

far back as 3,000 BC.

* The editors of the Unesco Courierw/s/i to point

out that the Russian word "Samoyed" is used in

English and in many other languages as a purely

technical term without reference to its original

sense.

32

of Sweden have recognized the siidas

(traditional Lapp administrative

districts),- by virtue of which Lapland

was separated by a frontier from the

rest of the realm. Recent jurisprudence

seems to be unanimous in accepting

that since that epoch the right of the

Laplander to raise reindeer has not

been only a recognized, but also a

transmissible, hereditary, right.

At the end of the 17th century,

Lapland was still an undivided region

situated on the frontiers of the Nordic

States. The separation of the Kingdoms

of Denmark-Norway and of Sweden-

Finland, which was agreed to at

Strömstad in 1751, had significant

repercussions on the Laplanders' rights

and way of life. An annex to the treaty

of Strömstad specified that the Lapps

could cross the new frontier and make

use of the land and waters for husban¬

dry and fishing, but could own taxable

land in one State only. In addition, they

had to choose between Norwegian and

Swedish nationality. The Lapps lost

these rights when the frontier was clos¬

ed, first in 1852, then in 1854 and 1889.

The annex to the treaty of 175 1 con¬

tinues nevertheless to exert a certain in¬

fluence in Sweden and Norway. Thus, in

1972, the two countries ratified an agree¬

ment about the reindeer pasturelands,

according the Lapps of the siidas in

Sweden the right to use certain frontier

land on the Norwegian side as spring

and summer pasturage, the Lapps of

Norway having, reciprocally, the right

to use certain regions in Sweden for

winter pasture. As it now stands, the

agreement is criticized on both sides; it

seems to put the economic interests

related to reindeer-raising before the

political and national interests of the

Lapp community.

In Sweden and Norway, an essential

aspect of the annual reindeer-raising

cycle is the transhumance between

various seasonal pasturelands. These

migrations in Sweden follow ancient

custom, respecting the boundaries bet¬

ween the siidas. In Norway, these

migratory movements can cover

distances of up to 400 kilometres, going

from high mountain terrain to the

coastal archipelago of the Arctic Ocean

in the summer, and in the opposite

direction in the fall. Often a number of

communities follow the same itinerary,

the herds setting out at intervals of a

few weeks.

By means of what is designated as a

"reindeer-raising concession", the

right to raise reindeer is being granted

Photos Pal Nils Nilsson © G Bern. Paris

to non-Laplanders in Sweden. The

Lapps of the siidas fear that in the end

the owners of these concession lands

will have a decisive influence on ques¬

tions of reindeer-raising practice. In

northern Lapland, this has been the un¬

questioned prerogative of the Lapps. In

Finland, as we have seen, membership

The art of the lasso.

of this Lapp ethnic group is based on

the spoken language. But recent

juridical and historical research may

throw new light on the question of

ethnic roots. Most of the present-day

reindeer-raising domain of Finland

corresponds to the territories of the an¬

cient siidas, and it is highly possible

that the majority of today's reindeer

farmers are its lawful'owners. Should

these ancient rights be recognized, if

only in part, the protection of the

reindeer pasturelands and the defence of

the traditional Lapp way of life would

undoubtedly be greatly strengthened.

Pekka Aikio

-

."**- - *-*' tí*"*" . , ^>

-*r - m

33

A strategy

for disarmamentby Constantin Ene

Since 1970, Sylvia Lind¬

ström of the Swedish Save

the Children Federation

has been gathering draw¬

ings on the theme The Tree

of Life by children from all

over the world. Left, The

Tree of Life as drawn by

Ana Maria, aged 12, of

Spain.

Photo Co Rabén and Sjoren, Stockholm

THE ending of the arms race and

the achievement of disarmament

have become a fundamental

challenge of primary importance and

urgency. Under the present cir¬

cumstances of grave international ten¬

sion the attainment of real disarma¬

ment measures has emerged as the main

path to the revival of the policy of

détente, mutual confidence and co¬

operation.

CONSTANTIN ENE, Romanian specialist in

international affairs, was formerly his country's

permanent representative at the United Nations,

New York.

Since its inception the United Na¬

tions has devoted much time and effort

to international action for disarma¬

ment. Yet, even today the traditional

way pursued by humanity the search

for security through the possession of

arms still has a strong appeal. Effi¬

cient action in favour of disarmament,

commensurate with its intended goal,

should include, along with a strong

political campaign, a reasoned orga¬

nization of efforts.

Disarmament requires deeper insight

and analysis. The first special session of

the United Nations General Assembly

devoted to disarmament had this in

mind when it proclaimed a "strategy"

for disarmament. Unesco has also tried

to achieve the same objective by apply¬

ing international co-operation in the

fields of education, science, culture and

information to the search for ways of

removing obstacles to disarmament

and of stimulating further thought and

action.

The main task of the second United

Nations Special Session on Disarma¬

ment, held in June 1982, was to develop

these efforts further. A prospective

view on disarmament should discover

in the investigation of the arms race

and its dynamic not only the roots of

34

the escalating spiral of competition

but, above all, the source of a dynamic

and a more rational approach towardsdisarmament.

The existence of nuclear weaponsand the continuing arms race havebrought the world to a very criticaljuncture.

In military terms the accumulated

destructive power, especially of nuclear

weapons, the emergence of a new

military technology and the armament

dynamic pose a most serious threat to

international peace and security andconfront mankind with the prospect of

self-extinction. In economic terms, the

arms race causes a huge wastage of

financial, material and human

resources, produces particularly grave

distorting and destabilizing effects on

economic growth and considerably

diminishes the economic and social ad¬

vancement of all peoples; in political

terms, it perpetuates the use and the-

threat of force in international life,

hinders' the solution of other vital

problems facing mankind and stifles in¬

novating processes.

Historical experience proves that

periods of détente were never accom¬

panied by a relaxation of the arms race.

This is, in fact, one of the reasonsbehind the unprecedented tension we

are experiencing in international life to¬

day. And the existing tension is used as

an excuse to step up the arms race even

more feverishly.

Indeed the early part of the current

decade shows clear signs of a new

round of arms escalation, under the

powerful impact of modern military

technology, which is destabilizing by its

nature, and of new military doctrines.

The 1970s produced a series of

technical solutions designed to over¬

come many of the factors of inhibition

and restraint over the use of political

and military pressure, while the under¬

lying strategic doctrines enlarged their

operational area to cover both peace¬

time and war-time periods.

Of special gravity is the deployment

of nuclear missiles of intermediate

range in Europe, on a continent where

the existing vast arsenals, of nuclear

weapons alone, already pose an in¬

calculable threat to the European na¬

tions and where the two military ,

alliances face each other.

The seriousness of the present condi¬

tion is evinced by the fact that the

reassessment of the military and

strategic relationship is being under¬

taken against a background of an un¬

precedented exacerbation of interna¬

tional tension, in a world climate load¬

ed with numerous unsolved complex

problems and dominated by acute

mistrust. Any of these moments of ten¬

sion could become the trigger of partial

or all out use of existing weapons, in¬

cluding nuclear ones.

Disarmament talks are manifestly

stagnant. Mankind is justifiably disap¬

pointed with the sterile results of the

WAR. Doll sculpture by Christiane de Casteras

and Andrée Marquet, Paris

Photo © Christiane de Casteras and Andrée Marquet, Pans

WAR. Oil on canvas by Dado.

Photo © Private Collection

Unger Franz (Austria)

debates and the negotiations held dur¬

ing the past two decades, which pro¬

duced no more than resolutions on

disarmament, while the arms race, far

from being slowed down, was given a

new and strong impetus.

It is obvious that mankind has reach¬

ed a deadlock which can be overcome

only by a new and courageous ap¬

proach. More than twenty-five years

ago Bertrand Russell and Albert Eins¬

tein said: "We have to learn to think in

a new way. We have to learn to ask

ourselves not what steps can be taken to

give military victory to whatever group

we prefer, for there no longer are such

steps; the question we have to ask

ourselves is: what steps can be taken to

prevent a military contest of which the

issue must be disastrous to all parties".

The new approach, based on the

analysis and the appreciation of past

experiences should necessarily be

multidimensional .

The essential factor is the political

will of governments to overcome the in¬

ertia imposed by the technological arms

race. International effort always pro¬

ceeds from the national effort. To that

end States should give disarmament

priority in their foreign policy, par¬

ticipate in good faith in negotiations,

seek and propose solutions to the ex¬

isting problems and take unilateral in¬

itiatives, when necessary, as a

demonstration of good will and

readiness to increase mutual con¬

fidence. At times of tension, like the

one we are experiencing, unilateral in¬

itiatives are especially important.

History convincingly reveals the

value of such initiatives in the field of

disarmament. A positive experiment

was the decision taken by the USA and

the USSR in 1964-1965 to announce in¬

dividual reduction of their military ex¬

penditure on the basis of "mutual

example".

National example and unilateral in¬

itiative may play an important role as a

36

Hassan Rizig-alla Taha (Sudan)

confidence building measure. However,

only on the basis of negotiated measures,

under strict international control, can

disarmament be achieved.

A new approach to disarmament re¬

quires a fundamental revision of the at¬

titude of States, primarily of the heavi¬

ly armed States, towards the concept of

security.

The accumulation of weapons, par¬

ticularly nuclear weapons, today con¬

stitutes much more of a threat than a

protection. It is high time therefore, to

put an end to this situation and seek

guaranteed security by way of disarma¬

ment. Real security can be obtained on¬

ly through arms reduction and disar¬

mament. Since the arms race contains

in itself the cause of disruption of the

very military balance it seeks, the

military balance must be sought at

steadily lower levels.

Disarmament has become an integral

component of national security. The

history of the last two decades,

characterized by the departure from

disarmament efforts and their replace¬

ment by arms control, i.e. controlled

joint armaments, evinces the fact that

the policy of arms control cannot con¬

stitute the way of achieving genuine

progress towards disarmament.

When agreements of this type were

reached in the past a particularly dif¬

ficult process, with the slow pace of the

negotiations being constantly surpassed

by the fast-moving military technological

innovations, with destabilizing effects

the ceilings established under the

respective agreements were so high that

they served merely to codify a still

greater competition and a massive and

steady growth of nuclear armaments.

The arms control policy did not lead

to disarmament nor did it help build a

real and durable relaxation of tension.

The only viable alternative is a com¬

prehensive long-term programme of

genuine disarmament, within an agreed

step-by-step framework, leading to the

HALT

THE ARMS

RACE

In 1981, the United Nations

launched an international poster

competition on the theme of disar¬

mament. On these pages we pre¬

sent a selection from the 66 of¬

ficial entries from United Nations

Member States. The winning

poster was by Gerhard Voigt of the

German Democratic Republic (see

the Unesco Courier, March 1982,

page 6).

DEUXIEME SESSION EXTRAORDINAIRE

SUR LE DESARMEMENT

W

Riadh Larif (Tunisia)

ASSEMBLEE GENERALE

DES NATIONS -UNIES

DEUXIEME SESSION EXTRAORDINAIRE

SUR LE DESARMEMENT - 1982

-

Renée Weber (Luxemburg)

ultimate goal of general and completedisarmament.

Resolute action in favour of disar¬

mament must be organically integrated

into a long-term policy designed tobring about the ultimate removal offorce and war from international life.History proves that as long as the

military balance is considered the cor¬nerstone of an international system

based on force, in particular onmilitary force, the search for such abalance will only serve to conceal the

steadily soaring arms spiral, with all its

consequences for the peace, security

and progress of mankind.

The conclusion of internationaltreaties, both at world and regional

levels, on non-resort to the use and

threat of force in relations betweenStates, as well as of international in¬

struments to secure the settlement of all

disputes between them by peacefulmeans only, could substantially favour

progress towards disarmament.

By the same token, due considera¬

tion should be given to the natural rela¬

tionship between détente and disarma¬

ment, since progress achieved in thefield of détente is complementary to,and mutually conditional on progressin the field of disarmament.

Disarmament should be tackled indirect relation with the social and

economic needs of States, in particular

of developing countries.

The relationship between disarma¬ment and development embodies two

facets of one and the same imperative,namely, reshaping international struc¬

tures and the system of traditional rela¬

tions based on inequality and on

dominance by the more powerful.

Linking disarmament to develop¬

ment efforts may open new vistas and

provide new levers capable of setting

the disarmament process on a new

course, one which would meet the

needs of the broad masses of the people

and eliminate economic underdevelop¬ment. Such an approach could

materialize in a broad international ac¬tion aimed at the freezing and reduc¬tion of military budgets.

Any innovating approach to disar¬mament efforts should be based on theactive participation and contributionby all States. Disarmament is a matterof vital concern to all countries andpeoples, whether big or small, irrespec¬

tive of their military force or the typesof weapons they possess. Thereforedecisions in this field can no longer be

taken by a restricted group of States.

As a corollary of this, the United

Nations should be the focus of inter¬national activities devoted todisarmament.

The arms race directly affects the lifeand security of the people around the

world. Therefore they should be the

first to have a say in disarmament

negotiations and be able to protect theirown interests.

Public opinion has been lulled into

apathy by arguments that problems of

armaments, because of the high

technology involved, are too complex

to be understood and dealt with by

non-experts. The latest mass participa¬

tion in peace demonstrations all overthe world indicates mark a new mo¬mentum in the history of disarmament.

It should become the central task of

peace education to raise societal con¬

sciousness and activate public opinion totry to bring about change. As the presi¬

dent of Romania put it "one should not

expect to solve the vital problems of

mankind at the negotiating table only.The masses should defend by their own

force, the life, security and futuredevelopment of human civilization. Itis the masses who will be able to imposedisarmament...".

A primordial role devolves upon

scientists, who are best situated to

know the dangers overshadowing

mankind as a result of the huge ac¬

cumulation of nuclear weapons and of

other means of destruction. Conse¬

quently, they must be provided with

adequate conditions enabling them to

voice their views at the United Nations,in the Geneva Committee on disarma¬ment and in other negotiating fora.

Implementation of dynamic -con¬

cepts in the field of disarmament re¬quires efficient debating and

negotiating fora. The first United Na¬

tions Special Session on Disarmamentcreated a more democratic machinery.

It is essential now to use it more effi¬ciently. Far from being a matter of

form, the institutional and the pro¬

cedural aspects of the negotiating

bodies have a direct impact on the verycontent of the work. They may provide

or, on the contrary, deprive the

negotiating machinery of the necessary

instruments to mobilize the politicalwill of States. In this respect, the con¬

duct of negotiations outside militaryalliances, which, by definition,

stimulate mistrust and confrontation,is of special importance.

The task of the day is to resume the

disarmament negotiations. The decisivefactor for achieving genuine results is

the political will of States, especially ofthose possessing nuclear weapons. This

goal can only be reached by the mo¬

bilization of governments, politicalorganizations and social forces favour¬ing disarmament, by encouraging thepeoples and public opinion all over the

world to work together and to

recognize the urgent need to halt andreverse the arms race, in particular the

nuclear arms race. The international

organizationsthe United Nations,Unesco and other specialized institu¬

tions can make a major contributionto developing international action inorder to reach this goal.

I Constantin Ene

UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY

SECOND SPECIAL SESSION

ON DISARMAMENT 1982

/

Lasse Persson (Sweden) Renato Bisquera (Philippines) Hubert Chaillet (Mauritius)

37

G3 ib Gl rnü

Unesco issues medal

for Fez campaign

The latest medal issued by Unesco in sup¬

port of its campaigns to safeguard the

cultural heritage is devoted to the city of

Fez (Morocco). The first capital of the Sheri¬

dan empire of the Maghreb, Fez was found¬

ed at the end of the second century of the

Hegira, (8th century AD). For over 30 years

the old Medina of Fez has been the site of

social and economic developments which

have disturbed its traditional balance and

threatened its architectural heritage and

spiritual values. In recent years the Moroc¬

can Government has undertaken a vast ef¬

fort to safeguard Fez, and in 1976 Unesco

decided to support this effort by an interna¬

tional campaign. Launching the campaign

in April 1980, the Director-General of

Unesco, Mr. Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow, de¬

clared: "Fez must be saved. For its popula¬

tion whose well-being is linked to its

renovation; for Morocco, whose spiritual

capital it remains; for the Islamic world for

which it is a unique testimony of the many

cultural achievements of Islam; and finally

for the whole international community, for,

as the precious inheritance of all, it now

belongs to the common heritage of

mankind".

Enquiries about the medal, struck at the

Paris Mint in gold, silver and bronze, should

be addressed to: Philatelic and Numismatic

Programme, Unesco, 7 Place de Fontenoy,

75700 Paris.

1 36 sites on World Heritage List

Twenty-four sites of outstanding cultural

or natural interest have been added to the

World Heritage List by the World Heritage

Committee, which met at Unesco's Paris

headquarters from 13 to 17 December

1982 under the chairmanship of Mr. R.O.

Slatyer, of Australia. The Committee, which

consists of delegates from 24 States, has

the task of implementing the Convention

for the Protection of the World's Cultural

and Natural Heritage which was adopted by

Unesco's General Conference in 1 972. The

Convention came into force in 1975, and

has now been ratified or accepted by 69

States. The 24 sites added to the List,

bringing its total number to 136, are: the

Tassilli n'Ajjer, the M'Zab valley, Djémila,

Tipasa and Timgad (Algeria); the national

parks of western Tasmania and the Lord

Howe Islands (Australia); the historic town

centre of Olinda (Brazil); the Tai National

Park (Ivory Coast); the old city of Havana

and its fortifications (Cuba); the historic

Cahokia mounds of Illinois (USA); the Royal

Salt Works at Arc-et-Senans (France); the

historic national park, the Laferrière citadel,

the Sans-Souci palace and the site of Les

Ramiers (Haiti); the Rio Plátano biosphere

reserve (Honduras); the historic centre of

Florence (Italy); the archaeological sites of

Leptis Magna, Sabratha and Cyrene

(Shahhat) (Libyan Arab Jamahiriya); the

Aldabra Atoll (the Seychelles); the Holy City

of Anuradhadpura, the historic city of

Polonnaruva and the ancient city of Sigiriya

(Sri Lanka); the Selous game reserve (Tan¬zania); and the ancient town of Shibam and

its wall (Democratic Republic of Yemen).

"Space Flight" sculpture

presented to Unesco

A bronze statuette entitled "Space

Flight" has been presented to Unesco by

the Government of the USSR. The

sculpture, which depicts a young woman

springing into space holding out an open

book, was carried aboard the Soviet space

vessel which returned to earth on 10

December 1982 after establishing a dura¬

tion record in orbit. It was presented to the

Director-General of Unesco, Mr. Amadou-

Mahtar M'Bow, during the "Soviet Days"

held at Unesco's Paris headquarters from

13 to 21 December 1982 to mark the 60th

anniversary of the formation of the Soviet

Union, by the First Deputy Minister of

Culture of the USSR, Mr. Yuri Barabash, the

permanent delegate of the USSR to

Unesco, Mr, Yuri Khiltchevsky, and the

cosmonaut SvetlanaSavitskaia. Concluding

the "Soviet Days", the permanentdelegates of Byelorussia, the Ukraine and

the Soviet Union presented to the Unescolibrary works published in Russian, Byelo¬

russian, Ukrainian, English and French.

BOOKSHELF

Recent Unesco publications

Where the Future Begins, by Amadou-

Mahtar M'Bow. A penetrating analysis of

the world problems which form the back¬

ground to Unesco's Medium-Term Plan,

1984-1989. 1982, 118 pp. (20 F).

Higher Education and the New Interna¬

tional Order, edited by Bikas C. Sanyal.

Contributions by eleven distinguished

specialists from both developing and in¬

dustrialized countries. 1982, 242 pp.

(100 F). Co-published with Frances Pin¬

ter (Publishers) Ltd., who have exclusive

rights in the UK.

Literacy and Illiteracy, by André

Lestage An overall view of literacy cam¬

paigns or activities conducted by Unesco

in different world regions. (No. 42 in

Unesco's "Educational Studies and Docu¬

ments" series) 1982, 31 pp. (10 F).

An International Survey of Book Pro¬

duction during the Last Decades, pre¬

pared by the Division of Statistics on

Culture and Communication, Office of

Statistics, Unesco. A statistical profile of

world book production from 1956 to

1977. 1982, 87 pp. (14 F).

Employment-Oriented National Youth

Programmes in Africa: Situations, Prob¬

lems and Prospects. A study which aims

to identify the problems facing the large

number of young people with neither

education nor employment in Africa, and

to analyse a number of employment-

oriented out-of-school training pro¬

grammes. (No. 44 in Unesco's "Reports

and Papers in the Social Sciences"

series) 1982, 61 pp (12 F).

Social Science in Latin America and

the Caribbean, 1 . Social Science needs

and priorities in the English-speaking

Caribbean and Surinam (No. 48 in Unes¬

co's "Reports and Papers in the Social

Sciences" series) 1982, 54 pp. (12 F).

The Economics of Book Publishing in

Developing Countries, by Datus

C. Smith Jr. under the auspices of

Franklin Book Programs, Inc. (No. 79 in

Unesco's "Reports and Papers on Mass

Communication" series. 1982 (first

published 1977) 44 pp. (10 F).

The UNESCO COURIER is published monthly.

Individual articles and photographs not copyrighted

may be reprinted providing the credit line reads

"Reprinted from the UNESCO COURIER", plus date

of issue, and three voucher copies are sent to the

editor. Signed articles reprinted must bear author's

name. Non-copyright photos will be supplied on re¬

quest. Unsolicited manuscripts cannot be returned

unless accompanied by an international reply

coupon covering postage. Signed articles express

the opinions of the authors and do not necessarily

represent the opinions of UNESCO or those of the

editors of the UNESCO COURIER. Photo captions

and headlines are written by the Unesco Courier

staff.

The Unesco Courier is produced in microform

(microfilm and/or microfiche) by: (1) University

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U.S.A.; (2) N.C.R. Microcard Edition, Indian Head,

Inc., 111 West 40th Street, New York, U.S.A.; (3)

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Ohio 44691, U.S.A.

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38

Statistical yearbook

annuaire statistique

anuario estadístico

OOON

1,211 pages

Trilingual English/French/Spanish

Hardbound: 295 French francs

Just published

The latest edition of Unesco's indispensable reference

book of statistics from some 200 countries and ter¬

ritories on:

Population

Education

Science and technology

Libraries

Museums and related institutions

Theatre and other dramatic arts

Book production

Newspapers and other periodicals

Paper consumption

Film and cinema

TV and radio

Prepared with the co-operation of National Commis¬

sions for Unesco and national statistical services, and

with the help of the Statistical Office and the Popula¬

tion Division of the United Nations.

Where to renew your subscriptionand place your order for other Unesco publications

Order from any bookseller or write direct to the

National Distributor in your country. (See list

below; names of distributors in countries not

listed, along with subscription rates in local cur¬

rency, will be supplied on request.)

AUSTRALIA. Hunter Publications, 58A Gipps Street, Coll-

ingwood Victoria 3066, Publications: Educational Supplies

Pty. Ltd. P.O. Box 33 , Brookvale, 2100, NSW. Periodicals'

Dominie Pty. Subscriptions Dept., P.O. Box 33, Brookvale

2100, NSW. Sub- agent: United Nations Association of

Australia, P O Box 175, 5th floor. Ana House, 28 Elizabeth

Street, Melbourne Victoria 3000 - AUSTRIA.

Buchhandlung Gerold and Co., Graben 31, A-1011, Vienna.

BANGLADESH. Bangladesh Books International Ltd., Ittefaq

Building, 1, R K. Mission Rd , Hatkhola, Dacca 3.

BELGIUM. "Unesco Courier" Dutch edition only N V

Handelmaatschappij Keesing. Keesmglaan 2-18, 2100

Deurne- Antwerpen. French edition and general Unesco

publications agent. Jean de Lannoy, 202, avenue du Roi, 1060

Brussels, CCP 000-0070823-1 3 - BURMA. Trade Corpora¬

tion No. 9, 550-552 Merchant Street, Rangoon. CANADA.

Renouf Publishing Co. Ltd., 21 82 St. Catherine Street West,

Montreal, Que. H3H 1 M7. - CHINA. China National Publica¬

tions Import and Export Corporation, P O. Box 88, Beijing

CYPRUS. "MAM", Archbishop Makanos 3rd Avenue, P 0

Box 1722, Nicosia. - CZECHOSLOVAKIA. - SNTL,

Spalena-51, Prague 1 (Permanent display); Zahranicni

literatura, 1 1 Soukenicka, Prague 1 . For Slovakia only: Alfa

Verlag. Publishers, Hurbanovo nam. 6,893 31 Bratislava

CSSR. DENMARK. Munksgaard Export and Subscription

Service, 35 Norre Sogade, DK 1370, Copenhagen K.

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Publications, No. 1 Talaat Harb Street, Cairo. - ETHIOPIA.

National Agency for Unesco, P.O. Box 2996, Addis Ababa.

FINLAND. Akateemmen Kirjakauppa, Keskuskatu 1,

SF-00100 Helsinki 10, Suomalamen Kirjakauppa Oy,

Koivuvaarankuja 2, 01640 Vantaa 64. - FRANCE. Librairie

de rUnesco, 7, place de Fontenoy, 75700 Pans, C C.P.

12598-48. - GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REP. Buchhaus

Leipzig, Postfach 140, 710 Leipzig or from Internationalen

Buchhandlungen in the G.D.R. - FED. REP. OF GERMANY.

For the Unesco Courier (German, English, French and Spanish

editions): Mr. H. Baum, Deutscher Unesco-Kurier Vertrieb,

Basaltstrasse 57, D5300 Bonn 3 For other Unesco publica¬

tions: Karger Verlag, Germenng/Munchen. For scientific maps

only: Geo Center, Postfach 800830, Stuttgart 80.

GHANA. Presbyterian Bookshop Depot Ltd., P.O. Box 195,

Accra; Ghana Book Suppliers Ltd , P.O. Box 7869, Accra; The

University Bookshop of Ghana, Accra; The University

Bookshop of Cape Coast, The University Bookshop of Legón,

P.O. Box 1. Legón. - GREAT BRITAIN. See United

Kingdom. - HONG KONG. Federal Publications (HK) Ltd., 5A

Evergreen Industrial Mansion, 12 Yip Fat Street, Aberdeen

Swindon Book Co., 13-15, Lock Road, Kowloon. Hong Kong

Government Information Services, Publication Centre, Basker-

ville House, 22 Ice Street. - HUNGARY. Akadémiai

Konyvesbolt, Váci u. 22, Budapest V; A K V. Konyvturosok

Boltja, Népkóztársaság utja 16, Budapest VI - ICELAND.

Snaebjorn Jonsson & Co , H.F., Hafnarstraeti 9, Reykjavik.

INDIA. Orient Longman Ltd., Kamani Marg, Ballard Estate,

Bombay 400038; 1 7 Chittaranjan Avenue, Calcutta 1 3; 36a,

Anna Salai, Mount Road, Madras 2; 5-9-41/1 Bashir Bagh,

Hyderabad 500001 (AP); 80/1 Mahatma Gandhi Road, Banga-

lore-560001 ; 3-5-820 Hyderguda, Hyderabad-500001 . Sub-

Depots' Oxford Book & Stationery Co. 1 7 Park Street, Calcutta

70016, Scindia House, New Delhi; Publication Unit, Ministry

of Education and Culture, Ex. AFO Hutments, Dr. Rajendra

Prasad Road, New Delhi 1 10001 . - INDONESIA. Bhratara

Publishers and Booksellers, 29 Jl Oto Iskandardinata 111, Jakar¬

ta, Gramedia Bookshop, Jl. Gadjah Mada 109, Jakarta; Indira

P T., Jl. Dr Sam Ratulangie 37, Jakarta Pusat - IRAN.

Kharazmie Publishing and Distribution Co., 28, Vessal Shirazi

Street, Enghélab Avenue, P 0 Box 314/1486, Teheran; Ira¬

nian Nat. Comm. for Unesco, Ave. Iranchahr Chomali No. 300,

B.P. 1533, Teheran. - IRAQ. McKenzie's Bookshop, Al -

Rashid Street, Baghdad IRELAND. The Educational Com¬

pany of Ireland Ltd., Ballymount Road, Walkmstown, Dublin

12. - ISRAEL. A.B C. Bookstore Ltd., P.O. Box 1283, 71

Allenby Road, Tel Aviv 6 1 000 - JAMAICA. Sangster's Book

Stores Ltd., P.O. Box 366, 101 Water Lane, Kingston. -

JAPAN. Eastern Book Service Inc., Shuhwa Toranomon

3bldg, 23-6, Toranomon 3-Chome, Minato-ku, Tokyo 105,

KENYA. East African Publishing House, P.O Box 30571,

Nairobi. KOREA. Korean National Commission for Unesco,

P O. Box Central 64, Seoul. - KUWAIT. The Kuwait

Bookshop Co , Ltd, POB 2942, Kuwait; for the Unesco

Courier: Farafalla Press Agency, P.O. Box SAFA 4541,

Kuwait. LESOTHO. Mazenod Book Centre, P.O. Mazenod,

Lesotho, Southern Africa. LIBERIA. Cole and Yancy

Bookshops Ltd., P.O. Box 286, Monrovia. LIBYA. Agency

for Development of Publication & Distribution, P.O. Box

34-35, Tripoli. - LUXEMBOURG. Librairie Paul Brück, 22,

Grande-Rue, Luxembourg. MALAYSIA. University of

Malaya Co-operative Bookshop, Kuala Lumpur 22-11.

MALTA. Sapienzas, 26 Republic Street, Valletta.

MAURITIUS. Nalanda Company Ltd., 30, Bourbon Street,

Port-Louis. MONACO. British Library, 30 bd. des Moulins,

Monte-Carlo. - NETHERLANDS. For periodicals only: Dek-

ker and Nordemann NV, P 0 Box 1 97, 1 000 AD Amsterddam,

for publications only: KEESING BOEKEN B.V., Postbus 1118,

1000 BC Amsterdam. - NETHERLANDS ANTILLES. Van

Dorp-Eddine N.V., P.O Box 200, Willemstad, Curaçao. N A.

NEW ZEALAND. Government Printing Office, Govern¬

ment Bookshops at. Rutland Street, P.O. Box 5344, Auckland,

130, Oxford Terrace, P.O. Box 1721 Christchurch, Alma

Street, P.O. Box 857 Hamilton; Princes Street, P.O. Box 1 1 04,

Dunedin; Mulgrave Street, Private Bag, Wellington.

NIGERIA. The University Bookshop of Ife; The University

Bookshop of Ibadan, P.O. 286; The University Bookshop of

Nsukka, The University Bookshop of Lagos; The Ahmadu Bello

University Bookshop-of Zana. NORWAY. All publications:

Johan Grundt Tanum (Booksellers), Karl Johansgate 41/43,

Oslo 1; Universitets Bokhandelen, Universitetssentret, P.O B

307 Blindem, Oslo 3 For Unesco Courier only: A S. Narvesens

Literaturjeneste, Box 6125, Oslo 6. PAKISTAN. Mirza

Book Agency, 65 Shahrah Quaid-i-azam, P.O. Box No 729,

Lahore 3. - PHILIPPINES. The Modern Book Co.. 926 Rizal

Avenue, P.O. Box 632, Manila D-404. - POLAND. Orpan-

Import, Palac Kultury I Nauki, Warsaw; Ars Polona-Ruch,

Krakowskie Przedmiescie No. 7.00-068 WARSAW. - POR¬

TUGAL. Dias & Andrade Ltda. Livrana Portugal, rua do Carmo

70, Lisbon. - SEYCHELLES. National Bookshop, P.O. Box

48, Mahé, New Service Ltd., Kmgsgate House, P.O. Box 131,

Mahé SIERRA LEONE. Fourah Bay, Njala University and

Sierra Leone Diocesan Bookshops, Freetown

SINGAPORE. Federal Publications (SI Pte Ltd., No. 1 New In¬

dustrial Road, off Upper Paya Lebar Road, Singapore 19

SOMALI DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC. Modern Book Shop

and General, P.O. Box 951 , Mogadiscio. - SOUTH AFRICA.

All publications: Van Schaik's Book-store (Pty.) Ltd , Llbn

Building. Church Street, P O Box 924, Pretoria. For the

Unesco Courier (single copies) only: Central News agency,

P.O. Box 1033, Johannesburg. - SRI LANKA. Lake House

Bookshop, 100 Sir Chittampalam Gardiner Mawata P.O.B.

244 Colombo 2 SUDAN. Al Bashir Bookshop, P.O. Box

1118, Khartoum. - SWEDEN. All publications A/B CE.

Frltzes Kungl, Hovbokhandel, Regenngsgatan 1 2, Box 1 6356,

10327 Stockholm 16. For the Unesco Courier: Svenska FN-

Fdrbundet, Skolgrand 2, Box 1 50 50 S- 104 65, Stockholm

- SWITZERLAND. All publications: Europa Verlag, 5

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Geneva 11, C.C P. 12-236. - TANZANIA. Dares Salaam

Bookshop, P.O.B. 9030 Dar-es-Salaam. - THAILAND.

Nibondh and Co. Ltd., 40-42 Charoen Krung Road, Siyaeg

Phaya Sri, P.O. Box 402, Bangkok* Suksapan Panit, Mansion

9, Rajdamnern Avenue, Bangkok; Suksit Siam Company,

1715 Rama IV Road, Bangkok. - TRINIDAD AND

TOBAGO. National Commission for Unesco, 18 Alexandra

Street, St. Clair, Trinidad, W I. - TURKEY. Haset Kitapevi

A S., Istiklâl Caddesi, No. 469, Posta Kutusu 219, Beyoglu,

Istanbul. - UGANDA. Uganda Bookshop, P.O. Box 7145,

Kampala. - UNITED KINGDOM. H M. Stationery Office.

P 0. Box 569, London, S.E.I., and Govt. Bookshops in London,

Edinburgh, Belfast, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, for

scientific maps only. McCarta Ltd., 122 King's Cross Road,

London WC1 X 9 DS. - UNITED STATES. Unipub, 345 Park

Avenue South, New York, N.Y. 10010. - U.S.S.R.

Mezhdunarodnaya Kniga, Moscow, G-200.

YUGOSLAVIA. Mladost, llica 30/11, Zagreb; Cankaneva

Zalozba, Zopitarjeva 2, Lubljana; Nolit, Terazije 27/11,

Belgrade. - ZIMBABWE. Textbook Sales (PVT) Ltd , 67

Union Avenue, Harare.

SIMON BOLIVAR

Profile of a liberatorSimón Bolívar, the Liberator of Latin America (1783-1830) by the

Venezuelan art ist Héctor Poleo. The design is being used as a poster

to mark the launching of a biennial International Simón Bolívar

Prize established by the Government of Venezuela and awarded

under the auspices of Unesco. The Prize rewards activity of outstan¬

ding merit which has contributed to the freedom, independence and

dignity of peoples and to the strengthening of solidarity amor,

lions, or facilitated the quest for a new international economic, social

and cultural order. The award is being made for the first time this

year, the bicentenary of Bolivar's birth (see page 4).

j