In the late 1970s, an old temple complex (III-VII centuries AD) was found in the Chinese province of Sichuan. The historical building itself was accompanied by underground corridors and catacombs, deeply "digging" into the ground. Here and there walled up rooms met. They contain human remains and ritual objects. Whether it is a meditation room or an ancient crypt - it is impossible to tell exactly about the purpose of the cameras.
The most intriguing find was a walled up room at the end of a water-filled corridor. The scuba divers and archaeologists who opened it saw an unusual sight: 2 monks were sitting on the floor in a lotus position, next to them was a dog. It would seem that unusual? The bodies themselves. They seemed to be asleep or had just recently died.
The skin was not touched by decay, the hair, nails, and eyeballs were intact. Hearts beat at the speed of a beat per minute, the lungs habitually inhaled and exhaled air (however, life-giving oxygen and nitrogen had not been in the chamber for 2000 years already), and when trying to cut a living mummy, blood flowed. How is this possible?
Let's talk about the details
The find is associated with 2 amazing and little-explained events. First, there was a bowl on the floor next to the monks and the dog. There were traces of some unknown substance in it. The same substance covered the faces of the monks and the dog's muzzle. It is unknown what exactly this was. Maybe an elixir of immortality, turpentine with bromine, or just chamomile tea. But one can make an assumption - this substance is responsible for the "safety" of bodies.
Secondly, neither the monks nor the dog were dead in the full medical sense. The first scientific impulse is to revive. We decided to start with the dog. Oxygen was supplied to him, artificial ventilation of the lungs and a stimulator of the heart muscle were turned on. The experiment went well. Well, almost successful. The dog twitched its paws, opened its eyes and whined. She came to life. True, not for long. After 20 minutes, the heart stopped completely, and the body began to decompose rapidly. Experiments on humans decided not to continue.
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Is this case unique?
Yes and no. Imperishable relics are an object of worship not only in Buddhism, but also in Christianity. There are several monasteries in Italy with hundreds of bodies in the catacombs. They look wonderful (for the dead, of course) - not just skeletons, but bodies with flesh, preserved nails, hair and visible facial features.
The most well-preserved body is considered to be the girl Rosalina Lombardo, resting in the monastery of Santo Stefano. Preserved eyelashes, hair, smooth skin, eyeballs behind half-closed eyelids. It seems the waxy yellow baby is just asleep. True, the reason there is in competent embalming, with the use of glycerin and formalin.
And the rest of the bodies can be explained simply - the dead were bathed in mercury and arsenic, which stopped the decomposition processes, and some bodies were simply "lucky." After death, they ended up in very dry tombs with almost no oxygen access. The correct air humidity, little oxygen for the development of bacteria - and here we have a case of "spontaneous mummification".
Another thing is 2 notable Buddhist monks. One of them is the Siberian lama Dashi-Dorzho Itigelov. He plunged into his last meditation in 1885 and ordered the novices to "dig it up" 75 years later. In 1955, the sarcophagus was opened. What he saw was amazing: the body of the lama was not touched by decay. He was changed and sent back to "fill up". In 2002, his peace was disturbed again. This time, scientists were allowed to the body. They stated that the tissues and cells of the body are alive.
So what's the reason?
The Buddhist monks themselves explain this "vitality" of the remains by meditation. Chants, reflections, a correct lifestyle and long practices allow an enlightened monk to enter a state of nirvana.
Some of the mystics sins on the very same bowl with an unknown composition. The logic is simple - the dog also fell into "hibernation", and it certainly did not meditate and did not lead a deeply spiritual life. However, she has the remains of the same elixir on her face as that of the monks. So, the secret is in him. This composition allows you to "preserve" the body until better times, while preserving the work of the brain. And without any exotic in the form of cryochambers.
Different point of view
Its scholars and … Japanese treatises adhere. The fact is that the practice of self-mummification was at one time extremely popular in the Yagamata province. The monks of the Shingon school are "champions" in terms of the number of imperishable monks - there are 22 of them. The practice itself was called "sokushimbutsu" and consisted of three steps, each 1000 days long.
The monk fasted for the first thousand days. He refused meat and ate only what he found in the forests - roots, berries, herbs and nuts. The goal of this stage is to get rid of fatty tissue. In addition, the nuts contained a lot of bromine, which "quenched" the activity of the nervous system and accumulated in the body.
For the second thousand days, the diet was "cut". Only nuts and roots remained. By the end of the "diet", the person resembled a skeleton covered with leather. It was supposed to get rid of excess fluid in the body. To do this, for the third thousand days, they actively drank tea from the juice of a lacquer tree. Essentially poison. The body was poisoned and rapidly lost water, and the toxin from tea accumulated in tissues and cells, stopping the activity of bacteria.
After that, the monk descended into a specialized grave - a deep underground chamber with a thin ventilation shaft. He took with him only a bell, which he would ring daily, announcing that he was still alive. When the ringing stopped, the cell was preserved and reopened after 7 years. If there was enough toxin in the body, and the chamber was reliably isolated, the body did not decompose, but fell into suspended animation.
Whether the discovered Tibetan monks followed such a high-bromine diet is unknown. The composition of the mysterious elixir is also unknown to us. Scientists again mothballed the chamber with the monks - until better times, until it becomes clear how to properly remove them from the state of nirvana and not damage their bodies.
Natalia Illarionova