Recently, archaeologists have discovered an ancient casket that is said to contain the remains of Gautam Buddha. According to reports, the remains were discovered by teams of experts excavating the Nanjing area in the Jiangsu province of China in 2010. However, the Chinese Cultural Relics journal has made the report public only recently, sparking off widespread curiosity about the contents in the box.
The story behind the same goes something like this - 1,000 years ago, a pair of monks from Mañjuśrī Temple of the Longxing Monastery in China’s Jingzhou Prefecture reportedly started off by collecting small bits of cremated bone from the world over which they thought were the remains of Buddha – it took them two decades to find the whole collection which has now been found.
However, there is no way to ascertain that the bones actually belong to Buddha or not, but in addition to this box, archaeologists have also found 260 statues, that tell a lot about Buddha’s life and history.
The box was discovered by Chinese villagers who were repairing a nearby road and the same was reported in Chinese journals 5 years ago. The reports were recently translated into English in the journal Chinese Cultural Relics.
Archaeologists report the inscription on the box says
(Source: Chinese Cultural Relics)
“The monks Yunjiang and Zhiming of the Lotus School, who belonged to the Mañjuśrī Temple of the Longxing Monastery in Jingzhou Prefecture, gathered more than 2,000 pieces of śarīra, as well as the Buddha’s teeth and bones, and buried them in the Mañjuśrī Hall of this temple.”
The word śarīra is a broad term describing any kind of relic claimed to be related to the Buddha. According to history, when Siddhartha Gautama – aka the Buddha died, his remain were divided amongst royal families from all over the world – of course, there is no way to support this.
No matter what the actual content of the box is, for many Buddhists, it could mean a prized possession with a deep spiritual meaning.
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