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NOTES AND QUERIES
CHINESE PRESERVED MONKS (肉身塑像)
The preservation by both Taoists and Buddhists of the bodies of famous monks and abbots by lacquering, varnishing or coating and embalming in clay was not as uncommon as one would think. It is only too easy to see how after the death of a particularly wise and beloved abbot, his presence would be badly missed throughout the monastic community. They would begin to venerate his memory and perhaps even a cult might emerge. Again we can visualise that his contemporary detractors, should there have been any, would eventually die and their prejudice, jealousy or even dislike perhaps, would fade in time. The opposite however, would be true of the memory of his wisdom, piety and gentleness. Another major motive for the preservation of such saints and very religious monks was the very mundane desire to obtain more funds for the religious institution by exhibiting the body to the faithful. In some monasteries such mummies were kept in private apartments hidden from public gaze. They had been members of a community, so their brethren claimed, and only other members had the right to see them. Most monks were cremated after death and their ashes retained in reliquaries in their monastery.
Some of the more famous "preserved monks", or 'fleshy bodies' which is a direct translation from the Chinese, displayed or kept for personal reverence, were to be found in the following temples and monasteries:
Pai Sui Kung on Chiu Hua Shan, Anhui
Tsu Shih T'ien on O Mei Shan, Szechuan
Tien T'ai Ssu in the Western Hills near Peking
Yuch Lin Ssu in Chekiang
Nan Hua Ssu in Northern Kwangtung
Tien An Fu below T'ai Shan in Shantung
Hui Chu Ssu in Pao Hua Shan, Kiangsu.
There is also one such in the Temple of Ten Thousand Buddhas above Sha Tin, Hong Kong.
A Danish architect, J. Prip Møller1 spent a considerable time in the early thirties touring around many monasteries throughout China in his research into monastery construction. He referred on several occasions to 'fleshy bodies' set up as images in monastery