Scan Reveals Mummy Hidden in A 1000-Year-Old Buddha Statue

Whenever one sees the Buddha statue, it’s an instant reminder of Gautama Buddha’s teachings and travels. Besides that, the common postures, poses, and physical attributes that define its meaning and purpose also add to the uniqueness of this statue.

By mummy, we don’t mean someone’s mom. Instead, we’re talking about a preserved human body! According to findings, the mummified remains were that of a monk who lived in the statue.

A Buddhist expert, Erik Bruijn, decided that it’ll be a wise idea to put a name to this discovery. So, he led a study that revealed its identity as a Liuquan, a Buddhist master. Liuquan was believed to have been a member of the Chinese Meditation School.

As we mentioned already, the gold-painted Buddha statue’s secret was first discovered by researchers (preservationists) who needed to restore the statue many years ago. However, the mummy didn’t undergo extensive study until late 2021 when researchers took scans and tissue samples of the human remains.

The Buddha statue is a paper-mâché with a seated person’s dimensions. Covered in gold paint and lacquer, this statue has a mysterious history. It is believed that it was housed in a Southern Eastern Chinese monastery for centuries before the Cultural Revolution around 1966.

In 1996, a private owner contacted someone to fix the cracks and chips on the statue’s exterior. But the restorer found two pillows with Chinese text displayed on them under the statue’s knees. It was when he took the pillows off that he discovered the mummy.

Discovering the mummy in a gold-plated statue isn’t the only surprise in this story. Drents Museum at Meander Medical Centre, Amersfoort, Netherlands, received another shocker as they carried out the CT scan and endoscopy of the mummified Buddha.

The CT scan at Meander Medical Centre was only a follow-up to a previous one. In 2013, researchers took the mummy through a CT Scan at Mannheim University Hospital in Germany to view it in extensive detail. However, it was only at the Meander Medical Centre that tiny paper scraps with Chinese texts were found.

The paper scrolls with Chinese writing are one of the pointers that the Buddhists must have undergone self-mummification. While no one knows for sure how Liuquan transformed into a mummy, Van Vilsteren says that self-mummification is a common tradition in Asia, especially in China, Japan, Korea, and Laos.

Self-mummification, called Sokushinbutsu in Japanese, is a process where Buddhist monks avoid all forms of indulgence and observe extreme self-discipline to a deadly point.  In Sokushinbutsu, the monks will enter mummification even while they are still breathing. While self-mummification is most popular in Japan, there are also reports of this practice in China and India.

Some Buddhists see self-mummification as the highest form of religious enlightenment and reserved it for the most devout monks. To enter a state of self-mummification, the monks had to pass through a long meditative process to attain enlightenment. This involved avoiding grains and other major meals while sticking to a strict diet of nuts, berries, water, etc.

After entering the statue, the monks will be fed a special tea from a toxic lacquer tree (Urushi). The monks only had a tube that they used to eat and receive air. They also had a bell placed on them to notify people that they were still alive.

If the monk was found in one piece when the tomb was reopened, they had reached true enlightenment. However, if the deceased monk decomposed like every other dead body, their aim of reaching true enlightenment failed.

The practice of honoring a Monk’s intact, self-mummified body comes from the Buddhist belief that an incorrupt body signifies holiness. This is similar to the beliefs held by Eastern Orthodox religions and Roman Catholics. However, the Buddhists went a step further to place the incorrupt mummified corpses in a temple where followers adorned and tended to them.

It’s important to note that every action during self-mummification serves an important purpose. For example, the poisonous tea from an Urushi tree sap was to make the monks too toxic for maggots to eat. Their strict nut, seed, and berry diet (barks and roots were eaten later) were to strip their body of fat.

Liuquan’s full name is Liuquan Zhanggong and was believed to have died around 1100 AD. The statue where he was found became the subject of a disagreement between China and the Netherlands.

According to a study, Liuquan Zhanggong was 37 years old at the time of death. From his body, it’s clear that there are two possible causes of death—a disease or prolonged abstinence periods.

You should have already guessed by now that this wouldn’t be the only mummy found in a Buddha statue. And you’re right! Researchers also found a 200-year-old mummy in Mongolia not so long ago.

According to the police, the 200-year-old mummy was stolen from a cave in another part of the country by someone who wanted to sell it off. An unidentified official said the thief hid it in his Ulaanbaatar home pending when he would leave the Mongolian border to sell it at a very high price.

Out of the hundreds of people that have attempted Sokushinbutsu, only about 30 of them have been successful. Daijuku Bosatsu Shinnyokai-Shonin of the Dainichi-Boo Temple of Japan was one of the most famous and successful ones.

Luang Pho Dang of Thailand is another famous successful mummy who quit his career as a businessman to become a Buddhist monk. He underwent self-mummification in 1972 and died while meditating at 79 years old.

Since mummies pass through the same procedures for self-mummification, why are only a few succeed in the act? The answer is pretty simple—successful self-mummification is a difficult nut to crack and requires striking a very challenging balance, especially when the monks were old.

Today, anyone who visits some Buddhist Temples will find remains of mummified monks in them. Buddhist believe that these monks have cheated death and will return many years from now.

Self-mummification isn’t the only strange practice in Buddha and there are many lesser-known facts surrounding this religion. For example, Buddhists have different sects, and the popular Dalai Lama heads just one of them—Tibetan Buddhism. This Buddhist sect is different from the ones practiced in South Asia, South Eastern Asia, Japan, and China.

Women, including female spirits and deities, only occupy secondary positions in many Buddhist traditions. The only female deity who has managed to play a significant role among the Theravadins (a Buddhist sect), is goddess Pattini.

The ancient gold-plated Buddha statue is now sitting pretty and on display at the Hungarian Natural History Museum. This museum dates back to 1802 and houses the region’s largest collections of natural history.