The Meander Medical Centre in the Dutch city of Amersfoort has treated many senior and aged citizens, but none nearly as old as the 1,000-year-old patient who came in for tests and a checkup in early September 2014.
Researchers brought a statue of the Buddha that was made a thousand years ago and was on loan to the Drents Museum in the Netherlands to a modern hospital in the hopes that modern medical technology could solve an old mystery. Inside the gold-painted figure was a secret: the mummy of a Buddhist monk who had died while sitting in a lotus position. The statue was shown outside of China for the first time. It was the highlight of an exhibition at the Drents Museum, which had 60 human and animal mummies from all over the world.
After 1,000 years, the statue was taken to the Drents Museum in the Netherlands to be restored. Researchers soon discovered the mummified remains of a person inside the statue. The statue seemed to be a mere shell encasing a mummified monk. But it wasn’t until a group of researchers and scientists did a CT scan that they realized the mummy was missing organs.
Img Src: alphafreepress.gr
To know more about what the hospital called its “oldest patient ever,” the Chinese statue was carefully placed on a gurney for doctors to examine. Buddhist art and culture expert Erik Bruijn, a guest curator at the World Museum in Rotterdam, supervised the whole examination. Ben Heggelman, a radiologist, slowly placed the mummified monk’s body into a high-tech imaging machine for a full-body CT scan and took a bone sample to test for DNA. Reinoud Vermeijden, a gastroenterologist, took samples from the mummy’s chest and abdomen using an endoscope.
Img Src: pinimg.com
The CT scan revealed that the monk’s organs had been taken out and replaced with a bunch of paper scrolls. Ancient Chinese characters were written on the scrolls. This helped the researchers discover the origins of the mummified monk. It was found to belong to Liuquan, a Buddhist master of the Chinese Meditation School.
Img Src: sindonews.net
The mummy was found sitting on a bundle of cloth with Chinese writing on it. He lived and died almost a thousand years ago. But researchers couldn’t figure out why his mummified body was placed inside the statue. The team at the Drents Museum looked into the idea that Liuquan tried to turn himself into a “living Buddha” by basically mummifying himself inside the statue to prepare for life after death.
Img Src: history.com
Self-mummification was most common among Buddhist monks in Japan, including places in Asia, like China. The process of turning oneself into a Buddha involved certain extremely difficult steps. First, they would have to slowly starve themselves by eating nuts, berries, tree bark, and pine needles. This is because fat and water in the body can speed up the decaying process.
For the same reason, they ate herbs, cycad nuts, and sesame seeds. They drank poisonous tree sap that was used to make lacquer so that the poison would keep insects away and spread through their bodies like an embalming fluid. After a few years of this, the monk would be buried while still alive. He would breathe through a tube made of bamboo and ring a bell to let people know he was still alive.
Img Src: sinembargo.mx
Once the bell stopped ringing, the tomb would be completely sealed, and the monk’s body would be left there for three years. If the monk had been properly mummified, the body would then be taken to a temple and worshiped. However, historical accounts reveal that the process usually didn’t work out, and the bodies weren’t well preserved. In most cases, the bodies were exorcised and buried.
Img Src: asia.si.edu
People had heard that this monk, who had meditated inside the statue for 1,000 years, was still alive in some way. This was because of bad translation and crossed wires that led to confusion, as the mummified monk was found in the “lotus position vajra” inside the Buddha statue.
Img Src: mega.ibxk.com.br
Ganhugiyn Purevbata, who taught at Ulaanbaatar Buddhist University’s Mongolian Institute of Buddhist Art, said that the position is meant to show that the person is not dead but is instead in deep meditation.
But the body inside the statue was definitely dead, no matter how it was posed. The good professor was likely speaking metaphorically and not saying that the body inside the statue was still alive.
Img Src: b37mrtl.ru
It is speculated that the mummy was on display and worshiped in a Buddhist temple in China for the first 200 years. But researchers are still waiting for the results of a DNA test so they can find out where exactly in China did the mummy come from. The statue was even sent to the National Museum of Natural History in Budapest. As part of an international tour, it was then moved to Luxembourg.
Img Src: alphafreepress.gr
It is thought that the mummified monk of Liuquan is the only one that has ever been found inside a Buddha statue. However, another mummified monk in a lotus position, thought to be around 200 years old, was found in a house in a remote province of Mongolia. But this mummy wasn’t encased within a Buddha statue and was instead wrapped in cattle skin.
Img Src: look4ward.co.uk