CT Scan Reveals Mummy Inside Chinese Buddha Statue

Drents Museum(NEW YORK) — The Buddhist tradition is full of visual representations and sculptures of the religion’s titular deity. But a statue hundreds of years old, recently analyzed in Europe, is a rarity: a full mummy of a meditating monk resides inside it.

Researchers at Norway’s Meander Medical Center found the preserved body of a Buddhist master who likely died around the year 1100, believed to be named Liuquan, in a statue that had been exhibited last year at the Drents Museum in Netherlands.  Its display at the Museum marked the first time the statue had been outside of China, reports Discover Magazine.

Scientists had known the statue contained a mummy, but even so, the CT scans of the statue reveal unprecedented information about an extreme form of meditation.  The practice might sound like a grim effort to take one’s life, but that wasn’t its intent: self-mummification was only for the most devoted of religious monks, and the practice was seen as a path to enlightenment or an advanced spiritual state.

Following the close of the Drents Museum exhibit, the statue was taken to the Meander Medical Center in Amersfoort, Netherlands for CT scans. The imaging confirmed the existence of Liquan’s mummy. The monk, believed to be a member of the Chinese Meditation School, had practiced self-mummification.

The process involved first a rigorous, year-long diet of water nuts, berries and other similar foods, abstaining completely from grains and more substantial food, reports CNET. Afterward, the monk would be sealed inside the statue, fed a tea made from a toxic lacquer tree, given a tube used for food and air, and a bell for the monk to use to indicate he was still alive.

When the bell stopped ringing, the monk would be sealed in a tomb for three more years, and when reopened, a monk found intact would be said to have reached true enlightenment; those who perished and decomposed would have been considered to fall short of their goal, though their attempts were still honored.

This particular monk’s organs have been removed and replaced with scrolls of paper inscribed with ancient Chinese characters. The Drents Museum says  more research is needed into the existence of the scrolls and their meaning.

The statue will be on display at the Hungarian Natural History Museum until May 2015.

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