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China, Holland and a mummy-filled Buddha

The discovery of human remains inside an ancient statue has sparked a tug of war over ownership
China, Holland and a mummy-filled Buddha

Local newspapers in Beijing have carried a growing number of stories about the allegedly stolen Buddha statute. (Photo by ucanews.com)

Published: March 27, 2015 09:50 AM GMT
Updated: March 26, 2015 11:39 PM GMT

For nearly two decades, an anonymous architect in Holland has owned a sitting Buddha statue without so much as a word of complaint.

Then last month, CT scans led researchers to make an unlikely discovery: beneath its gold casing sits the mummified body of a Buddhist monk dating back 1,000 years.

“It is not only a unique discovery, it is also the only Chinese Buddhist mummy available for scientific research in the West today,” said Erik Bruijn, a Buddhist expert who is due to publish a book on the statue by next year.

If China has its way, the statue is unlikely to remain in the west for long. Following an uproar in the state press and on social media, the mummy was last week pulled from an exhibition in Hungary as China seeks to reclaim what it says is a priceless stolen artifact.

State media has in recent days followed every twist and turn of what has become a de facto campaign in newspapers and television reports across China.

Last week, the anonymous owner pulled the statue from a mummy exhibition at the Natural History Museum of Hungary in Budapest “due to the recent media attention”, according to a statement from Holland’s Drents Museum, which holds the statue on the owner’s behalf.

Then yesterday, a statement to the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad prompted Chinese to rejoice after the owner expressed willingness to return the statue if it can be proven stolen.

“In support of you, Dutch collector, thanks to you our heritage, our treasure can still be returned,” said one user on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, where initial outrage blogged by thousands of Chinese has in the past 24 hours turned into hope that the statue may soon be returned from foreign soil.

Still, major obstacles remain. Although there is little doubt the statue came from China, proving it was stolen is expected to be a major challenge for China’s State Administration of Cultural Heritage.

The Dutch owner has admitted the statue looks similar to that shown in photos by Chinese authorities. But proof of ownership shows it was already in Holland by mid-1995, while Chinese reports said the Buddha went missing afterwards in October or December of the same year.

Further clouding the facts surrounding the alleged robbery, villagers in Yangchun, southeastern Fujian province, appeared not to notice the statue had disappeared at first.

“The Buddha statue is our master, and we have been searching for it for many years,” a villager surnamed Lin told China’s state news agency Xinhua, adding that the monk had been worshipped by villagers in Yangchun over generations.

Radiocarbon dating places the origin of the statue to between 1022 and 1155 during the Song Dynasty. The body inside is believed to be that of Liuquan, a master monk who died between the age of 30 or 40 years old due to still unknown causes.

Aside from a major tooth abscess that would have caused the monk severe pain, there are few signs of any serious ailment.

“After being mummified, he was declared a saint and worshipped for many centuries in his monastery,” said Bruijn.

The inclusion of human remains within the statue may increase China’s chances of repatriating the Buddha, one of at least 17 million Chinese relics estimated to be scattered across the globe.

However, Holland is not a signatory to the latest United Nations convention on returning relics that allows “restitution claims to be processed directly through national courts”.

China’s best chance of recovering the Buddha, therefore, rests on diplomatic pressure or the hope a rich Chinese buyer might spend millions of dollars to bring it home, as has happened in the recent past.

In 2007, Macau casino tycoon Stanley Ho paid US$8.84 million to buy and return an auctioned bronze horse head that was looted from Beijing in the 19th century after the Summer Palace was sacked by French and British troops during the Second Opium War.

Meanwhile, Chinese media has reported that relics experts have called for a diplomatic solution to return the Buddha mummy.

By coincidence, Holland’s Prime Minister Mark Rutte was due to meet with President Xi Jinping as part of a state visit to China this week, although trade and investment were expected to dominate talks on the sidelines of the Boao Forum in Hainan province.

“Chinese authorities have not contacted us about the statue,” a spokesman at the Dutch embassy in Beijing told ucanews.com.

As China looks set to step up pressure on the Dutch collector to return the rare Buddhist statue, further tests are due in a bid to reveal yet more of its secrets.

“There is still a long way to go before we know the fate of this unknown monk,” said Bruijn.

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