TWENTY years ago, a seated Buddhist saint — Patriarch Zhanggong — was reported missing from the village of Yangchun in Southeast China’s Fujian Province. This March, the gold-lacquered statue was discovered in the possession of a Dutch art collector in the Netherlands.
With a centuries-old smile that seems to radiate from the inside, the Buddha impresses all who look at it. It also sparked debates among experts and the public in China and overseas. How was the monk’s body preserved? Who was the monk? Why is he worshipped?
Scientific studies
According to a 1997 examination, when the statue was removed from its base plate, a handful of dead beetles fell out along with a linen cushion inscribed with Chinese characters. The inspection revealed a number of brittle bones poking through dried skin, and the remains suggest the statue contained the mummified body of a Buddhist monk.
In 2013, the statue was taken to Germany, where a CT scan was conducted under the German Mummy Project. The results showed that inside was a perfectly mummified body, with the entrails removed.
“There was also some tissue-like stuff where the lungs would have been, so we thought they had been preserved, but they turned out to be paper with Chinese characters,” said Vincent van Vilsteren, curator of archaeology at the Drents Museum.
Carbon-14 radioactive isotope dating showed that the Buddha died between 1022 and 1155, proving that the Buddha lived during the Song Dynasty (960-1297). It was also estimated that the monk died when he was between 30 and 40 years of age.
Erick Bruijn, a Dutch expert in the field of Buddhist art and culture, took part in a study of the mummified Buddha by the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim, Germany. According to Bruijn, the monk might have died of disease or an abstemious, vegetarian lifestyle.
“He obviously pined away, perhaps fasting near the end of his life to prepare for his mummification,” Bruijn said. “The monk must have suffered excruciating recurring pains over a long period of time.”
Some monks would live on dried linseed biscuits and yellow wax beans only, which meant that after two years they tended to be near death and would have skin as tough as leather. This is how mummified monks were preserved.
A benevolent master
The Buddha Zhanggong, who is still worshiped by villagers in Yangchun, was a monk named Zhang Qisan. He was known for his benevolence.
Historical records show that Zhanggong was a skillful doctor who healed many patients. It is said that his efforts helped save locals from a plague, which is why many people in Yangchun worship him as an ancestor, or “zushi” in Chinese.
Worshipping Zhanggong has been a tradition maintained for centuries. Renovations of the statue were also traditional, with the most recent renovation taking place in 1944.
Inscriptions in classical Chinese on the linen cushion where the statue was seated indicated when and why the tradition of renovating the statue began. Lin Zhangxin, a village leader, and his colleagues called on residents to donate money to renovate the statue in the hope that a renovated Zhanggong would reverse the declining population trend, help people be happy and result in a rich harvest.
The inscription also says that the first renovation was done on a particularly auspicious day decided on through divination — at the hour of Yisi, on the day of Renchen, during the month of Yisi in the year of Renchen.
According to research by Li Zhen in Hungary, the private overseas coordinator for Yangchun, the exact time would have been between 9 and 11 a.m. May 18, 1292. On the traditional Chinese calendar, the date was the first day of the fifth month of the year of Renchen, the 29th year of the Zhiyuan Period. Zhiyuan is the reign title of the Yuan Dynasty’s first emperor Kublai Khan (1215-1294), grandson of Genghis Khan.
Li also believes that another renovation of the Buddha statue was conducted during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). A local historical writing entitled “The Records of Puzhao Temple” says that it happened in the year of Bingchen during the era of Emperor Wanli, which was 1616.
Bruijn says the lucky symbols and the dragons on the clothes of the Buddha were designed with more care and attention than other decorations in “a style of the Ming Dynasty,” which also confirms that the statue was redressed and gilded again during that time.
The Buddha’s origin
The seated Buddha wears two sets of clothes. A grey lining can be seen inside the wide collar, and on top of it is delicately carved Buddhist garb.
Auspicious clouds and curved lines are knitted on the clothes. On the wide collar, there are pictures of flowers. Carved dragons decorate the right sleeves and around the stomach.
“The ornamentations on the clothes show that the statue was renovated during the Ming Dynasty, which corresponds with the local records of that time,” said Chen Qizhong, a museum curator in Datian, Fujian Province.
The patterns on the clothes are auspicious, and “dragons embody longevity and irresistible power,” said Bruijn, adding that the words and adornment also reveal a lot of information.
On the left shoulder hangs a black belt, with its two ends on the left side of the Buddha’s chest and back. On the left back of the statue, the Chinese character “佛” (Buddha) is written.
A philosophy ring also hangs on the left of the chest, and below the ring hang some ladder-shaped decorations, which read a variant of “吽” (hum), the last syllable of the Sanskrit mantra “Om mani padme hum,” meaning “disasters turning auspicious” and “delivering all living creatures from torment.”
While on exhibition at the Hungarian Natural History Museum, the Buddha was shown holding a flywhisk in his right hand, the symbol of the office of a chan (meditation) Buddhist master. “The waving movement related to a flywhisk is a metaphor for sweeping away all doubts, worldly thought and desires, therefore, symbolizing the obliteration of all obstacles on one’s path to enlightenment,” Bruijn said.
(SD-Agencies)
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