A mummified Mongolian Buddhist monk, which may be as many as 200 years old, has been discovered sitting in a lotus meditating position.
Information on the exact circumstances surrounding the mummified remains has not been reported, although they were found in the Songinokhairkhan province. The remains have been transported to the Ulaanbaatar National Centre of Forensic Expertise.
The Siberian Times quoted a report on the mummified find: “The mummified body sits in a lotus position, as if still meditating. Experts that only had time to carry basic visual test say they believe the body can be about 200 years old. So far there is no information as to where the body was found. The only details we learned was that it was covered with a cattle skin.”
The
New York Daily News said some have suggested the monk was a teacher to Lama Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov, whose body was also found “eerily preserved” in the lotus position after he died in 1927.
The New York Times explored Itigilov’s death in a 2002 article, saying that the religious leader ordered his followers to exhume him in 30 years.
“When the 30 years had passed — it might have been 28; the details are murky — Itigilov's followers did what he had asked, exhuming his remains from a cemetery in Khukhe-Zurkhen,” the NYT wrote. “What they found, as the story goes, was Itigilov's body, still in the lotus position, still perfectly intact, having defied nature's imperative to decay.”
At the time, the Buddhists reburied the corpse, the NYT said. The body was dug up again 75 years later, with witnesses, forensic experts, and a photographer. When the coffin was opened, Itigilov’s body was preserved.
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