Lama Sangha Tenzin was a Buddhist monk. He is thought to have died in the 1500s. His remains are preserved as a

mummy A mummy is a dead human or an animal whose soft tissues and organs have been preserved by either intentional or accidental exposure to chemicals, extreme cold, very low humidity, or lack of air, so that the recovered body does not decay fu ...

, which was discovered in 1975 in

Gue The gue is an extinct type of two-stringed Bowed string instrument, bowed lyre or zither from the Shetland Isles. The instrument was described in 1809 by Arthur Edmondston in ''View of the Ancient and Present State of the Zetland Islands'':"Before ...

, a small town in the Indian state of

Himachal Pradesh Himachal Pradesh (; ; "Snow-laden Mountain Province") is a state in the northern part of India. Situated in the Western Himalayas, it is one of the thirteen mountain states and is characterized by an extreme landscape featuring several peaks ...

. Tenzin's tomb was established in the village near the

Line of Actual Control The Line of Actual Control (LAC), in the context of the Sino-Indian border dispute, is a notional demarcation lineAnanth KrishnanLine of Actual Control , India-China: the line of actual contest, 13 June 2020: "In contrast, the alignment of ...

(LOC) in the

Spiti Valley Spiti (pronounced as Piti in Bhoti language) is a high-altitude region of the Himalayas, located in the north-eastern part of the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. The name "Spiti" means "The middle land", i.e. the land between Tibet ...

. His body is the only mummy of a Buddhist monk in India that was naturally mummified (self-mummification). However, the mummy was buried in an

earthquake An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from ...

, leading the body to be rediscovered by

ITBP The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) is a border patrol organization of India deployed along its borders with Tibet Autonomous Region. It is one of the seven Central Armed Police Forces, established in 1962 in the aftermath of the Sino-Indi ...

personnel in 2004 when they were constructing roads in the area. When found, the body was naturally preserved in a thick glass box without the use of chemical preservatives. Originally from

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa people, ...

, Sangha Tenzin came to Gue for

meditation Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally cal ...

when he was 45-years old.

Folklore

According to local folklore, Tenzin sacrificed his life for the survival of the village from scorpions. Legend says the mummy is alive and hence became known as "living Buddha". Legend claims that the hair and nails are still growing. The mummy is self-mummified, meaning that it was not artificially preserved or exposed to chemical preservatives, making it a "natural mummy". It belongs to a 15th-century

Buddhist monastery Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

. Some local people worship the mummy as a "living God". It is believed that when Tenzin's soul left his body, a rainbow appeared in the sky and the village was freed from

scorpion Scorpions are predatory arachnids of the order Scorpiones. They have eight legs, and are easily recognized by a pair of grasping pincers and a narrow, segmented tail, often carried in a characteristic forward curve over the back and always end ...

s forever.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tenzin, Sangha Buddhist pilgrimages Buddhist relics Mummies