The 500-year old Mummy of Lama Tenzin

Mummification – Embalming & Enfolded in Linen

 
Normal mummification seems to be quite exceptional which needs settings of great temperature together with dry air in order to preserve the body. Several of the mummified bodies seen in museums and text-books had been mummified with the help of chemical process known as embalming and thereafter enfolded in linen.

However, the Buddhist monks in Japan and Tibet seem to have a unique way of mummification and when the monk is alive he tends to have a gradual process of starving and termination of eating barley, rice and been that have a tendency of adding fat to the body. Moreover in preparation for death, he has candles along his skin, which dries it out. The monk is said to die of starvation in a seated position and the fat decomposes after death.

On eliminating the body of fat, the monk can be preserved in a better manner. After his death, he is placed in an underground room for three years to continue the process of drying once again and treated with candles whereby the monk tends to become a statue in prayer. An earthquake that had taken place in 1975 in northern Indian had exposed an old tomb comprising of the mummified body of monk Sangha Tenzin.
 

Preserved with Skin Intact

 
The local police had excavated the tomb in 2004 and had discovered the mummified body which was amazingly well preserved with the skin intact and with hair on his head. He is said to have died in a sitting position having a rope around the neck and thighs. This is an obscure practise which has been recorded in some of the documents of the Buddhist.

A consulting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Victor Mair had quoted that the mummy had been at least 500 years old. It is a strange fact that the manner of the mummified body seems to be a natural one with no chemicals utilised in order to preserve the same and it seems to have a certain kind of freshness. As per the report, the mummified body had been preserved for its age.

Local legends claim that he had requested his followers to preserve him during a scorpion infestation in that area and after his spirit had left his body, a rainbow seemed to appear and the scorpions had disappeared.
 

Mummy – Sangha Tenzin

 
The town is said to be around 30 miles from the Tabo Monastery which dates back to 996 CE. The mummified body of Sangha Tenzin is said to be on display in Gue village in the cold and remote Spiti district in a temple two miles from where he had been discovered, in Himachal Pradesh region on the border of Tibet around 6000 metres above sea level. It seems too difficult to reach the town since it is controlled by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police and secluded in the Himalayas.

The temple where the mummy is placed for display is open to the visitors who intends visiting that place. The mummy of Sangha Tenzin is not the only lonely mummy in that region but there are other mummified bodies too in Tibet which had been buried by the Tibetan immediately after the invasion of the Chinese.