KATMANDU, NEPAL, February 26, 2010: Some people live charmed lives. In 2004, two years after he climbed Mt. Everest for the seventh time, American mountaineering legend Peter Athans took part in a charitable cataract operation project in northern Nepal that changed the lives of nearly 300 beneficiaries. That has led to a discovery that, once fully understood, could throw light on the early days of the oldest religions in the world.
“I made a lot of friends during the eye camp,” says Athans. “Some of them took me to a cluster of (man-made) caves that remain hidden due to the height and the difficulty to get inside… There was no knowledge of who created the caves and I thought this was an intriguing mystery, worthy of further research and discussion,” he said.
In 2008, the government of Nepal and the Department of Archaeology signed an agreement with Sky Door Foundation, an NGO started in Nepal by Athans, to explore the caves and make an inventory. Two years later, the exploring team came across major finds in the network of caves in Mustang, a remote mountainous district in northernmost Nepal that was once part of an ancient Tibetan kingdom.
The expedition has found caves designed at different levels with the lower levels usually used as granaries and the uppermost being burial sites. In between, the space contains murals that though now fading and crumbling down are still exquisite, two immense libraries containing almost 10,000 ancient manuscripts in old Tibetan script, some of which are beautifully illuminated, and the remains of 27 people, the oldest of whom dates back to 100 years BCE.
The cave artefacts show a fusion of Tibetan and Indian religious art. Some of it shows the influence of the art that prevailed in India during the Gupta empire of Hindu kings who ruled from 320-480 AD. “Some of the murals have images of men and women who were Indian mahasiddhas (yogis with supernatural power),” says Leisl, Athans’ wife.