Sitting in the lotus position, the mummy fits within the statue perfectly.
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| Mummies: Life Beyond Death (DM) |
"On the outside, it
looks like a large statue of [the] Buddha," the museum said in a release. "Scan research has shown that on the inside, it is the
mummy of a Buddhist monk who lived around the year 1100."
Glowing through the statue's golden cast, the human skeleton is believed to belong to Buddhist master Liu Quan, a member of the Chinese Meditation School [
Ch'an the Chinese pronunciation of the Buddhist practice of Pali
jhana, "meditative absorption," Sanskrit
dhyana].
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| I may become a Middle East mummy (reuters) |
To further investigate the mummy, the researchers took the statue to the
Meander Medical Center in Amersfoort [Netherlands] and carried out an endoscopy and additional CT scans.
They found out that Liu Quan's internal organs had been removed and replaced with scripts covered in Chinese writing.
The museum speculates Liu Quan may have "self-mummified" in order to become a "living Buddha."
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| Mummies are creepy, but "Mumia" medicine powder for cannibals is creepier! (Drents) |
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| Buddha gets a CT scan? Not quite (DM) |
Practiced mainly in Japan, self-mummification was a grueling process that required a monk to follow a strict 1,000-day diet of nuts and seeds in order to strip the body of fat. A diet of bark and roots would follow for another 1,000 days.
At the end of this period, the monk began drinking a poisonous tea made from the sap of the Japanese varnish tree, normally used to lacquer bowls and plates. The tea caused profuse vomiting as well as a rapid loss of bodily fluids, possibly making the body too poisonous to be eaten by bacteria and insects.
A living skeleton, the monk was then placed in a stone tomb barely larger than his body, which was equipped with an air tube and a bell.
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Researchers thought remains dating back to the 11th or 12th Century were in the statue, but the CT scan revealed that the mummified monk's organs had been removed (Daily Mail).
|
Never moving from the lotus position, the monk would ring the bell each day to let those outside know that he was still alive. When the bell stopped ringing, the monk was presumed dead, the air tube removed and the tomb sealed.
After another 1,000 days the tomb would be opened to check whether the monk had been successfully mummified. Of the hundreds of monks that tried this horrifying process, only a few dozen actually became self-mummified and venerated in temples as [an actual] Buddha.
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| Budapest has Buddhism? |
Researchers aren't certain when or how this monk's organs were then removed and replaced with scripts.
The Buddha statue is currently on display at the
National Museum of Natural History in Budapest [
NHMUS.hu/en]. It will remain there until May.
More
Mysterious Siberian Mummies
The Siberian Times via News.discovery.com
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| Russian archaeologists resume excavation in a remote site near Arctic Circle to solve mystery of mummies clad in copper masks (Kate Baklitskaya/The Siberian Times). |
.
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| Copper, reindeer, beaver, wolverine, bear |
The artifacts discovered near the copper-clad mummies included an iron combat knife, bracelets, silver medallions, and bronze figurines. The archaeologists also found bowls originating in Persia [Iran, Central Asia, geopolitical Middle East], some 3,700 miles to the southwest, dating from the 10th or 11th centuries. The finding suggests that around one millennium ago Siberia was not a remote and inhospitable site but an important trading crossroad (Natalya Fyodorova/Siberian Times).
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| The archaeologists admitted the graves feature burial rites they had never seen before. They hope to solve the riddle on the mysterious people by carrying further excavations and genetic tests (Kate Baklitskaya/The Siberian Times). |
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| Archaeologists found 34 1,000-year-old shallow graves with seven male adults, three male infants, and one female child. Buried with a hoard of artifacts, some of the bodies had shattered or missing skulls and smashed skeletons (Natalya Fyodorova/The Siberian Times). |
