A scan image of the skeletal remains of a mummified monk, shown on a television monitor, is reflected in the glass display than holds the statue, at the Natural History Museum in Budapest March 4, 2015.
 
Reuters
A mummified monk encased in a Buddha statue that China claims was stolen from a village in eastern China a decade ago may not have been the only such mummy to go missing from the region.
A similar mummy, also encased in a statue, was stolen from the Xianglin Temple in Fujian province’s Gekeng township in late 1996, said a local media report posted Thursday to a provincial government news portal and confirmed by a member of the temple committee.
The temple committee member, Su Dejin, said he called in with the information after seeing reports earlier this week that China’s State Administration of Cultural Heritage was attempting to recover a 1,000-year-old Buddha statue that was on display in the Hungarian Natural History Museum in Budapest. That statue became an Internet sensation earlier this month after CT scans revealed it contained the remains of a Chinese monk.
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That statue was pulled from display last week on a request of the Drents Museum in the Netherlands, which had been involved in the discovery of the remains inside it.
In a statement posted to its website on Tuesday, China’s state cultural preservation agency said an examination of photos, family historical records, attire and other evidence proved that the mummy in Budapest was stolen from a temple in the Fujianese village of Yangchun in 1995.
Another view of the Chinese Buddha statue displayed at the Hungarian Natural History Museum in Budapest, Hungary. Chinese authorities are gathering evidence that the statue that was displayed at a mummy exhibit belongs to a village in southeastern China, ahead of possible diplomatic talks to retrieve the treasure, an official said Tuesday, March 24, 2015.
 
Reuters
The statue’s owner, a private Dutch art collector, bought the statue legally in 1996, according to Drents.
While Drents has said it believes the monk encased in the statue in Budapest may have practiced self-mummification – a brutal act of religious devotionmost often associated with Japanese monks – China tells a different story. Citing local archives, the official Xinhua news agency said in a report this week that the statue likely contains the remains of Zhanggong Zushi, a local monk who won fame as a healer and was mummified following his death at age 37 so locals could continue to worship him.
The history of the Gekeng statue is equally mysterious. It was one of two housed in the Xianglin Tempe, Mr. Su said. According to local legend, the statues contained two monks who died around the same time and whose bodies resisted decay for months afterwards. Local people took the lack of rot as a sign the pair had attained enlightenment and mummified them, the story goes.
According to Mr. Su, one of statues was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. The other statue and a replica of the destroyed one were both stolen after being placed in a side room as the temple was undergoing renovations. According to Thursday’s report, villagers saw around 20 people carrying the statues, which they had wrapped in white cloth, to a waiting vehicle, not realizing until later that the people were thieves.
Police in Gekeng investigated the theft of the mummy at the time, but came up empty handed, according to the report. “We have been trying to find it for a long time but without success,” Mr. Su said, adding that he hoped press attention would aid the search.
Meanwhile, it remains unclear what China can do to recover the statue displayed in Budapest. Huo Zhengxin, a professor at the Chinese University of Political Science and Law, told Xinhua that China could attempt to use the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized crime to reclaim the relic. “But the theft can’t just be confirmed by the Chinese side,” he said. “We need confirmation from the other side as well.”
Lin Kaiwang, the Communist Party secretary in the village from which the statue was allegedly stolen, told China Real Time he was hopeful the relic would be returned. “If we do get it back, we’ll take very special care of it, including posting profession security around it,” he said.