Mummy Found Inside A 1000-Year-Old Buddhist Statue

In a Buddhist statue that is as old as the 11th or 12th century, scientists have scanned the head that reveals a mummy inside. Some samples of the mummy's internal details have also disclosed some pieces of paper with some ancient Chinese characters.

On the computed tomography scan, the scientists detected a human skeleton glowing through the statue's silhouette, at the Meander Medical Center in Amersfoort, the Netherlands, according to rt.com.

Gastrointestinal and liver doctor Reinoud Vermeijden and radiologist Ben Heggelman probed the "oldest patient ever" during their spare time, said the center's website.

It was the mummified body of the Buddhist master Liuquan, which was described as "one of a kind" and the only one that was available for research in the West.

They did it through an endoscopy on the mummy, and the scientists are sure that their "discovery is unique".

Some scraps of paper with ancient Chinese characters were found among the rotted material in various places in which organs used to lie.

Some pieces of bone were removed and taken for DNA testing. The results were disclosed in a monograph on Master Liuquan, that will later be published.

The statue with the mummy was then carted away for medical tests, from the Drent Museum in Assen, where it was displayed in an exhibition. Since then, it was brought to the National Museum of Natural History in Budapest, a spot where it will stay till May 2015.

A few meditating monk Buddhists confirm that similar mummies "aren't dead" but are involved in an advanced state of meditation.

Some practice "self-mummification" as an advanced state of spiritual attainment, especially by the 'sokushinbutsu', or the Buddhas in the flesh, whose 'well-preserved corpses have been discovered in Japan, primarily in Yamagata Prefecture, as well as in China and India. Almost 24 individuals, who were practitioners of Shingon Buddhism, have been found to be self-mummified, their deaths going back to the 12th and early 20th centuries AD, according to io9.com.