Researchers at the Drents Museum in Holland, were shocked to discover that a 1,000-year-old statue that they were scanning had a mummified corpse inside.

The mummy is sitting in the lotus position and fits inside the statue perfectly. The mummy’s internal organs have been removed and replaced by scripts covered in Chinese characters.

The mummy is believed to be Buddhist Master Liu Quan who lived around the year 1100 AD and he would have self-mummified in order to become a ‘living Buddha’.

The process of self-mummification, which originated in Japan, is a grueling and horrifying one. The monk must eat only nuts and seeds for 1,000 days to strip the body of fat and then eat only bark and roots for another 1,000 days.

The monk would then drink a poisonous tea that would cause profuse vomiting and loss of bodily fluids and possibly have the effect of making the body too poisonous for bacteria or insects to consume.

In the final stage, the monk would be sealed into a tomb in the lotus position and given a bell and an air tube. The monk would ring the bell to indicate that he was still alive. When the ringing stopped, the air tube would be removed, and the tomb sealed.

Another thousand days later, the monk would be removed to see if the mummification had been successful.

The statue is now on display at the National Museum of Natural History in Budapest.

Source: Discovery News

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