In February of this year, the world press was discussing with unprecedented excitement a unique find made in an ancient statue of Buddha by a collector from the Netherlands. Inside the image of Buddha made of papier-mâché more than nine centuries old, scientists unexpectedly discovered the body of a walled up monk, or rather, his mummy.
There was no limit to the surprise of the researchers, such finds had never been seen in Europe. However, they might not have seen it now, the unique find was made quite by accident!
During the repair of the statue's pedestal, skin and bones suddenly emerged from it. The statue was immediately subjected to a computed tomography, which only confirmed a terrible guess: the statue of Buddha turned out to be a sarcophagus for a person walled up in it. Moreover, along with the body of the monk in the mummy, incomprehensible inscriptions in ancient Chinese were found, which have not yet been extracted.
Nevertheless, the name of the unfortunate monk is well established. It turned out to be someone Liu Quan, who left this world or, according to the Buddhists, who attained enlightenment around 1100 AD. e. A rug found at the base of the statue helped to establish the identity of the walled-up monk. Scientists read his name on it.
As it turned out, Liu Quan died while in the lotus position while meditating. Moreover, during his lifetime, the monk underwent an independent voluntary mummification. Compared to the longest Christian fasts, what Liu Quan had to endure looks like a real torture or a feat in the name of faith. But also how to look.
For many years, the monk lived on resin and pine needles. Then he was walled up in a special niche, he was left with only a small tube for breathing. After the monk died, his body, which did not succumb to decay, was removed from the niche and, removing the entrails, filled with manuscripts.
The story, whatever you say, is terrible. Nevertheless, to exclaim "about times, about manners!" it is too early, because the amazing practice of turning a living person into a mummy is still alive today!
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In modern Japan, in Yamagata Prefecture, several dozen of these mummies are still kept. Today, this religious ritual is strictly prohibited by law, but until relatively recently it was quite popular in the Land of the Rising Sun. - Online users (New version of the widget for Icms2 +) + 8
HOLY DIET
The Japanese monks, apparently, believed that if for many years in a row you lead a certain way of life, following special spiritual practices, you can be guaranteed to create from your own body the most real incorruptible relics.
For the first time, the unusual practice of turning your own body into a mummy was proposed by the Buddhist priest Kukai many centuries ago. The monk preached the idea of spiritual enlightenment through physical torture, during which the human body was gradually mummified. It is not surprising that the process of natural mummification took quite a long time. It took the monks ten long years to, observing a certain way of life, turn their body into a mummy.
At the beginning of the journey, the monk for 1000 days ate exclusively nuts and seeds, washed down with scanty food with pure spring water. But if an ordinary person during the diet reduces physical activity, then the monks, on the contrary, being on strict post, led an active lifestyle. They diligently did all the hard work of the monastery, trying to get rid of any fat deposits on the body.
Those of them who sustained the first diet, for the next 1,000 days, ate exclusively tree bark and roots, drinking them not with water, but with poisonous tea from the juice of the urushi tree. In modern industry, the sap of this tree is used for varnishing various surfaces.
It is completely logical that after such a meal the monks vomited terribly, but the body, saturated with poisonous juice, became inedible for worms, larvae and other insects that eat dead flesh. Those who honorably survived the second 1,000 days of "poisonous" fasting were placed in a stone crypt specially created for the proportions of the body of each of the monks.
Moreover, in an individual stone bag, the monk could be exclusively in the lotus position and did not even have the opportunity to move. He was really left with a pipe through which he could breathe, and a string with a bell tied so that the walled up monk could notify the brethren daily whether he was alive. From the moment the monk stopped calling, another 1,000 days were counted and only then the stone bag was opened. It was believed that incorruptible relics would be inside.
But in reality, from the opened stone cavity, as a rule, a disfigured, half-decayed body with a grimace of horror on his face fell out. Although it cannot be said that there were no positive cases of mummification at all. They were, but their number was no more than 10%, while disfigured bodies were removed from the crypts by the hundreds!
True, it would be unfair to say that people who created mummies of themselves exist exclusively in Japan. In Vietnam, near Hanoi, in the Dau pagoda, the mummy of the abbot of the local monastery Wu Khak Min, who more than 300 years ago closed in the chapel and, after 100 days of constant fasting and meditation, dies in eternal sleep. His body did not decompose for several months.
The monks of the monastery took this as a sign from above, covered their abbot with paint and carried him to one of the niches of the temple, where he remains today. In Russia, in turn, Khambo-la-ma XII (Itigelov) is well known, whose body, not subject to decay, was removed from the ground in 2002.
Swamp mummy
By the way, to create a mummy it is absolutely not necessary to use the creepy diets of the East or the methods of the ancient Egyptians. There are quite natural, and most importantly, quick ways to turn the body into an imperishable mummy. In nature, there are enough natural conditions in which the body of a person or animal mummifies itself.
It can be a swamp, hot and dry air, or, conversely, severe frost. In Europe, well-preserved mummies of medieval people are often found, but not in tombs, monasteries or pyramids, but … in a swamp.
It turns out that in the 1st millennium AD. e. in Northern Europe, there was a terrible ritual during which, in order to appease the gods, living people were thrown into peat bogs. However, the swamp influenced the bodies of the drowned in such a way that they were mummified and survived practically intact by time and decay to the present day. Often, experts can say with confidence what clothes or hairstyle a person who found his death in a swamp wore 2000-2500 years ago!
Today there are more than 2,000 bog people known, the most famous of whom are the Tollund man, the Elling woman, the Windeby bog body and the Lindow man. The age of the finds does not exceed 2,500 years, but if we talk about the "oldest" swamp drowned man, it is a woman from Kölbjerg, who died about 10,000 years ago. Swamp mummies are of particular value for history, since they allow extremely accurately restore not only the appearance and diet of our ancestors, but also their clothes.
Tollund Man
The description of the hairstyles of ancient people is extremely interesting. It turned out that more than 2,000 years ago there were some kind of mousses and hair sprays. The ancient people used a mixture of resin and vegetable oil as them.
Most swamp mummies have been found to date in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Ireland and Sweden. Even Tacitus wrote: “According to the custom established from ancient times, people of blood kindred gather at a certain time in the sacred forest. Here they perform barbaric rituals, including human sacrifice."
Usually, such sacrifices were made in early spring to the goddess of the earth, Nerta. She was asked to hasten the arrival of spring and to give a good harvest in the summer. For this, lots were thrown among the noble people of the tribe, after which a person was fed exclusively with plant food at a certain time and then, having killed, was thrown into a swamp, thereby bringing a sacrifice to Nerta.
Dmitry SOKOLOV