Today’s Taiwan News had a piece about the giant Buddha statutes the Taliban dynamited a few years ago in Afghanistan. This line caught my eye:
Long before Genghis Khan wiped out Bamiyan’s population in 1222…Buddhists and Muslims coexisted until the Buddhists vanished around the year 1000.
Whaddya mean, they just "vanished"? Poof! Taken up to Nirvana during Buddhist Rapture now, were they? Teleported onto a Vogon constructor fleet? Sent back to earth’s past via the atavachron?
No thanks to the article, but I think I’ve got a pretty good idea about what happened to them. A pity though, that we have to read between the lines because writers are being intimidated out of using plain English.
*~@):~{>