In the beginning, they were the Bamiyan Buddhas: the Western Buddha statue, 55 meters high, and the Eastern, 38 meters high.
It had taken decades, from around 550 AD, to carve them out of porous sandstone cliffs and then model the intricate details in clay mixed with straw and coated with stucco.
Xuanzang, the legendary traveling monk of the early Tang dynasty who journeyed to India in search of Buddhist manuscripts, saw them in all their colored glory in the 7th century.
Then, with Islam taking over these high central lands of Afghanistan, local Hazara folklore slowly turned them into the Romeo and Juliet of the Hindu Kush.
