An ancient shrine that could contain Buddha's skull has been found in China

Archaeologists have uncovered what they think could be a skull bone of Buddha inside a 1,000-year-old model Buddhist shrine, located in an underground crypt in Nanjing, China.

Inside the crypt, which lies beneath the ruins of an ancient Buddhist temple, researchers found the ornate, 1.2-metre-tall (4-foot) model shrine made of sandalwood, silver, and gold, and decorated with crystal, glass, agate, and lapis lazuli beads. Inside was a tiny gold casket containing a fragment of skull bone.

Just to give you an idea of how special this single bone fragment is, whomever buried it encased it in a tiny golden casket adorned with images of lotus patterns, phoenix birds, and sword-wielding gods. 

The golden casket was found inside a larger silver casket, decorated withapsaras - female cloud and water spirits - playing musical instruments. Both caskets were placed inside the model shrine, or stupa, which is a hemispherical structure containing relics or remains of Buddhist monks or nuns, used as a place of meditation.

The shine was hidden inside an iron box, which was enclosed in a large stone casket in the crypt below a once-renowned Grand Bao'en Temple, so clearly a lot of work was put into keeping this single piece of bone safe. (You can see pics of everything below.)

So how likely is it that the fragment actually belonged to Buddha, orSiddhartha Gautama, as he was also known? 

The fragment of parietal bone - which forms the side and top of the cranium - was found alongside the remains of Buddhist saints, contained inside three crystal bottles and a silver box.

It was also accompanied by inscriptions describing when the chest was made, and also attributing the bone to to Buddha, written by a man named Deming, whose qualifications have been translated as, "Master of Perfect Enlightenment, Abbot of Chengtian Monastery [and] the Holder of the Purple Robe."

According to the inscriptions, the chest and its various parts were constructed during the reign of Emperor Zhenzong, around 997 to 1022 AD, and they were originally housed in the Grand Bao’en Temple, until it was destroyed during a series of wars. They were then relocated to the underground crypt on 21 July 1011 AD, Deming says.

"Deming praised the emperor for rebuilding the temple and burying the Buddha's remains, wishing the emperor a long life, loyal ministers, and numerous grandchildren," Owen Jarus from Live Science reports.

"May the Heir Apparent and the imperial princes be blessed and prosperous with 10,000 offspring; may Civil and Military Ministers of the Court be loyal and patriotic; may the three armed forces and citizens enjoy a happy and peaceful time," this part of the inscription reads.

Deming’s inscriptions also recount how the Emperor agreed to rebuild the temple and have the Buddha's parietal bone, and the remains of other saints, buried in an underground crypt, which is where they’ve now been found.

"Engraved on the outside of the model are several images of the Buddha, along with scenes depicting stories from the Buddha's life, from his birth to the point when he reached 'parinirvana', a death from which the Buddha wasn't reborn - something that freed him from a cycle of death and rebirth, according to the Buddhist religion," says Jarus.

At this stage, it's still all circumstantial evidence, so experts aren't ready to say for sure that this the the skull bone of Siddhartha Gautama, but it's a pretty incredible find regardless.

Strangely enough, the find was actually uncovered back in 2008 by a teamarchaeologists from Nanjing Municipal Institute of Archaeology, and was put on display in Hong Kong in 2012, before being housed permanently in Qixia Temple, a Buddhist temple on Qixia Hill in Nanjing. It's only now coming to the attention of the western media with the publication of an English report of the find in the journal Chinese Cultural Relics.
_________________
Reference:

Crew, Bec. 2016. “An ancient shrine that could contain Buddha's skull has been found in China”. Science Alert. Posted: July 4, 2016. Available online: http://www.sciencealert.com/an-ancient-shrine-that-could-contain-buddha-s-skull-has-been-found-in-chinese-crypt

Ancient Buddha Carved From Meteorite

Photo Information and Credits: The 'Space Buddha' statue. Credit: Elmar Buchner.

German scientists have discovered an ancient Buddhist statue with extraterrestrial origin.

Depicting Vaisravana, the Buddhist god of wealth or war, the sculpture was carved from an ataxite, a rare class of iron meteorite with high contents of nickel.

"The statue was chiseled from an iron meteorite, from a fragment of the Chinga meteorite which crashed into the border areas between Mongolia and Siberia about 15.000 years ago," said Elmar Buchner of the University of Stuttgart.

In a paper published in Metoritics and Planetary Science, Buchner and colleagues reported their geochemical analysis and the story of the "Buddha from Space," which almost reads like an Indiana Jones movie.

Known as the Iron Man, the 9.5-inch-high statue was discovered in 1938 by an expedition backed by SS chief Heinrich Himmler and led by zoologist Ernst Schäfer. The expedition roamed Tibet to search for the roots of Aryanism.

t is unknown how the sculpture was unearthed, but it is believed that a large swastika carved into the center of the figure may have encouraged the team to take it back to Germany.

Once it arrived in Germany, the Iron Man became part of a private collection and it wasn't until 2009 that cientists could study it, following an auction.

Weighting about 23 pounds, the statue wasn't exactly carved from the most appropriate material. Buchner and colleagues noted that the artist who created it from the extremely hard meteorite may have known that the material was special.

"The fall of meteorites has been interpreted as divine messages by multitudinous cultures since prehistoric times," they wrote.

According to Buchner, the statue was likely carved about 1,000 years ago by the pre-Buddhist Bon culture of the 11th century. However, the exact origin and age of the statue remains unknown.

"While the first debris was officially discovered in 1913 by gold prospectors, we believe that this individual meteorite fragment was collected many centuries before," Buchner said.

Although other meteorites are known to have inspired worship from many ancient cultures, the Iron Man statue is pretty unique.

"It is the only known illustration of a human figure to be carved into a meteorite, which means we have nothing to compare it to when assessing value," said Buchner.

"Its origins alone may value it at $20,000. However, if our estimation of its age is correct and it is nearly a thousand years old it could be invaluable."
_________________________
References:

Lorenzi, Rossella. 2012. “Ancient Buddha Carved From Meteorite”. Discovery News. Posted: Available online: http://news.discovery.com/history/meteorite-buddha-120926.html

Ancient Statue Reveals Prince Who Would Become Buddha

In the ruins of a Buddhist monastery in Afghanistan, archaeologists have uncovered a stone statue that seems to depict the prince Siddhartha before he founded Buddhism.

The stone statue, or stele, was discovered at the Mes Aynak site in a ruined monastery in 2010, but it wasn't until now that it was analyzed and described. Gérard Fussman, a professor at the Collège de France in Paris, details his study in "The Early Iconography of Avalokitesvara" (Collège de France, 2012).

Standing 11 inches (28 centimeters) high and carved from schist — a stone not found in the area — the stele depicts a prince alongside a monk. Based on a bronze coin found nearby, Fussman estimates the statue dates back at least 1,600 years. Siddhartha lived 25 centuries ago.

The prince is shown sitting on a round wicker stool, his eyes looking down and with his right foot against his left knee. He is "clad in a dhoti (a garment), with a turban, wearing necklaces, earrings and bracelets, sitting under a pipal tree foliage. On the back of the turban, two large rubans [are] flowing from the head to the shoulders," writes Fussman in his new book. "The turban is decorated by a rich front-ornament, without any human figure in it."

The monk stands at the prince's right side, his right forearm shown upright. In his right hand the monk holds a lotus flower or palm (now broken), and in his left is a round object of some kind.

Based on the iconography of the stele, particularly the pipal leaves, Fussman believes the prince is Gautama Siddhartha Sakyamuni, who is said to have achieved enlightenment, become a Buddha — someone of divine wisdom and virtue — and founded the religion of Buddhism. This stele shows him at an early moment in his life, when he has yet to start his fateful journey of enlightenment.

Siddhartha's story

According to the story, Siddhartha's father wanted him to follow a worldly path and tried to keep his son cloistered in a palace.

"Lotus pools were made for me at my father's house solely for my use; in one, blue lotuses flowered, in another white, and in another red," says Siddharthain ancient writings attributed to him. "A white sunshade was held over me day and night so that I would not be troubled by cold or heat, dust or grit or dew." (This translation is from Rupert Gethin's "The Foundations of Buddhism," Oxford University Press, 1998.)

The prince's life would change when he ventured outside the palace and saw the real world. "As soon as he left the palace he became pessimistic," Fussman told LiveScience, "because by meeting these people, he knew that everybody is to work, everybody may become ill, everybody is to die."

He grew disenchanted with palace life and left, becoming a poor ascetic.

Tibetan clues

Fussman said that this stele supports the idea that there was a monastic cult, in antiquity, dedicated to Siddhartha's pre-enlightenment life. This idea was first proposed in a 2005 article inthe journalEast and West by UCLA professor Gregory Schopen. Schopen found evidence for the cult when studying the Tibetan version of the monastic code, Mulasarvastivada vinaya. [Religious Worship: Top 10 Cults]

It's a "cult focused on his image that involved taking it in procession through the region and into town," Schopen wrote. "A cult tied to a cycle of festivals celebrating four moments, not in the biography of the Buddha but in the pre-enlightenment period of the life of Siddhartha."

One section of the code authorizes carrying the image of Siddhartha (referred to as a Bodhisattva) on a wagon.

Whether or not the newly discovered stele went on a wagon ride, Fussman said the depiction of Gautama Siddhartha Sakyamuni before he became a Buddha provides further evidence of the existence of this cult. "Here also you have an instance of it," he said in the interview, "the Buddha before he became a Buddha."

Excavations continue at the Mes Aynak site as scientists explore the complex in an effort to save the artifacts before the area is disturbed by copper mining.
_________________
References:

Jarus, Owen. 2012. "Ancient Statue Reveals Prince Who Would Become Buddha". Live Science. Posted: June 6, 2012. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/20799-ancient-statue-reveals-prince-buddha.html