Researchers at the Drents Museum in the Netherlands found an unexpected guest inside a 1,000-year-old Buddha statue: a mummified Buddhist monk sitting in lotus position. Found during CT scans of the statue, the body is believed to be Lin Quan, leader of a meditation school around the year 1,100 CE.

The monk went through a grim and grueling process known as "self-mummification." He would have eaten nuts and seeds for 1,000 days before eating only bark for another 1,000, then drank varnish to poison himself. Lin Quan would have then lived in a stone tomb with an air tube, ringing a bell to indicate that he was still alive. Once the bell stopped ringing, the body would be left for 1,000 days, and venerated as a Buddha if successfully mummified.

The golden statue Quan sat inside was built to fit his mummy to near perfection. Prior to being placed inside the statue, his organs had been removed and replaced with a series of scripts. The self-mummification process originated in China before being practiced more widely in Japan, where two dozen such mummies have been found.

Source: Discovery News

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