Talk:Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov

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A fact from Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 20 February 2006. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the body of Dashi-Dorzho Itigelov, who led the Russian Buddhists from 1911 until his death in 1927, is said to exhibit no signs of physical decay?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2006/February.

Wikipedia

Sources

Not to sound overly skeptical, but can someone find some non-Russian, non-Buddhist sources for this. Who were these "scientists"? Is this even real? Is it confirmed by the scientific community, or simply claimed by a few people and not universally accepted or proven? The article is 3 days old, so it has not gone through significant enough changes to evaluate it. - Che Nuevara: ^{Join the Revolution} 00:49, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Science is "I must personally see it to be true," not "all knowledge comes through the senses." This story does not lack prima facie plausibility just because it wasn't reported in some fancy smancy "scientific" journal like Nature. Many high-end scientific journals have corrupted their raw perception of the world by prestige and politics. Maybe someone should look into the reality of this matter regardless of what western scientists think. --John Gilmore

Yeah, this sounds awfully dubious to me. Even if it's a fake, it still makes for an excelent nihilartikel. --205.206.139.41 01:13, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hey it was reported in Pravda, so it has to be true!! :P --Jquarry 01:41, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Error

In Life After Death, at the end of the paragraph, the link : Brome doesn't seem to redirect towards the good page. Is it Brome, the grass, or Bromine, the chemeical element? Since Tsar Nicholas II had abdicated on March 2 (Julian Calendar)/ March 15 (Gregorian Calendar), there is no way he could have been invested with the Order Of St. Stanislas on March 19, 1917.

Spelling?

Is the spelling right? Dashi-Dorzho Itigelov return only 6 Google results with a "Did you mean Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov?", which returns 160.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Emcee2k (talk • contribs) 23:18, 19 February 2006.

I noticed the same thing, and have moved the page accordingly. --DarrenBaker 15:53, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Face?

What happened to the body's face in the picture?

Yeah, it doesn't quite look like the face of someone who died 36 hours ago! And with some other editors above I agree that this article is in desperate need of more reliable sources. Who were these scientists? — mark ✎ 12:36, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

According to the Izvestiya, the body was examined by several commissions of forensic experts. They interviewed Prof. Viktor Zvyagin, who runs the Personality Identification Department of the Russian Center of Forensic Medicine. According to him, they analyzed the samples of Itigelov's hair, skin, and nails and found no substantial difference from those samples taken from living people. They also explained a sweet smell the body exudes by its long preservation in a box made of cedar. --Ghirla | talk 12:46, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like he has something (probably ceremonial) attached to his face, covering his eyes. However, the most interesting thing to me is the fact that there's a white powder along the base of the corpse. I have to wonder if that's salt. Packing the body in salt for decades would have preserved it, but I think the body would have needed to be stuffed, or it would desicate like a mummy. -Harmil 15:20, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Salt is said to have been added to the grave by followers during the second exhumation, in the 1970s. --Ghirla | talk 15:25, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe his testament also mentioned that he wanted to have seasoning? Bobak 16:06, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No decay, right? [1] Renata 16:35, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Still, pretty good for someone who has been dead (and supposedly kept outdoors) for over 75 years. --205.206.139.41 23:07, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Packed in Salt?

An image of the chest in which the body was kept seems to indicate that it was wrapped and then packed with salt. The wrappings might have prevented total mummification (as someone mentioned above), and the salt would of course create very dry conditions within the sealed box.

The AlJazeera report also says the body was packed in salt. This combined with the rumour that salt was added at the previous exhumation indicates that it has NOT been a "natural mummification" since at least 1973. --OzJuggler (talk) 14:04, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

At least above-mentioned Dr. Zvyagin said that there was no salt in the coffin before 1973. 94.179.231.92 (talk) 17:12, 10 November 2009 (UTC) LetimmitiL[reply]

This image shows the face from another angle, and it's clear the nose has indeed decayed.

That actually appears to be a mirrored and cropped version of the same image that it is in the article.

No neutral sources

The lack of neutral sources indicates that this article is not very credible. If the body is really incorruptible how come there hasn't been any neutral scientist who has examined him and corroborate the story? Surely this is one of the biggest mysteries in this world, and scientists love mysteries. Unless they have done that and came up with the conclusion that the body has been embalmed. --84.188.156.21 18:21, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There is no mystery, since everyone can see the body has indeed decayed quite a bit. If the body had been pristine, I’m sure scientists would have been more interested! Bossk-Office (talk) 01:55, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Be sure that the tissues have been seriously examined by serious specialists. Dr. Zvyagin, for example, is a very professional expert (he used to analyze the bodies of killed tzar's Nikolai II family) and of course a real scientist. Maybe there is no serious info in English but only in Russian. And perhaps you, mr. Bossk-Office, have never seen a really decayed body if you say such nonsense...178.92.165.16 (talk) 02:50, 5 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

First temple in Europe????

"He took part in the Tercentenary celebrations of the House of Romanov and opened the Gunzechoyney datsan, the first Buddhist temple in St. Petersburg and indeed in Europe."

Didn't the Buddhist Kalmykia have any temple? Really hard to believe, as the first thing kalmyks exiled in Belgrad after Russian Revolution did was to build a temple. --95.120.56.248 (talk) 07:03, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No sign of decay?

How can you repeatedly be saying that while showing a picture of a person that is beyond any healthy skin color or body shape? Compare the first with the second picture and tell me you notice no signs of decay. 2003:57:EC3D:65D5:7DF0:8103:334A:2454 (talk) 11:34, 19 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sokushinbutsu

There is no mystery here. This is just an example, in Russia, of a well known Buddhist practice of self-mummification. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokushinbutsu — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.220.255.42 (talk) 23:56, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]