Some views of Buddhas in the Longmen cave temple near Luoyang in Henan province, China. They date to the period between the Northern and Southern dynasties and (mostly) from the Tang Dynasty. Major artifacts were removed by collectors and souvenir hunters in the 1930s and 1940s, and many of the 100,000 statues were vandalized and destroyed during the Cultural Revolution (1966 until 1976). Here we see two Buddhist statues before and after the restoration following the looted heads being returned by foreign collectors.
What dos it take to get a collector to return what is obviously a piece smashed off from a complete whole for profit - and if collectors really do 'care about the past', why are there so many headless Buddhas?
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