A woman looks at a Buddha statue,which was reportedly stolen from China, at the Natural History Museum in Budapest on March 4, 2015. Photo: CFP

A 1,000-year-old Buddha statue that contains a mummified monk was withdrawn from an ongoing exhibition at the Hungarian Natural History Museum on March 20, after residents of a Chinese village stated that it was stolen from their temple in 1995.

China's State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH) told the Global Times on Wednesday that based on photos, local archives and witness statements, the Buddha statue appears to be the one stolen from a temple in Yangchun, a village in East China's Fujian Province in 1995.

The statue was a part of the "Mummy World" exhibition that opened in October 2014 and was originally scheduled to be on display till May 17. The Hungarian Natural History Museum borrowed the statue from the Drents Museum in the Netherlands, but it belongs to a Dutch private collector who said that he bought it in 1996.

The collector's spokesman stated that he withdrew the statue "at least for the time being" to "calmly and critically evaluate the unexpected situation," the Xinhua News Agency reported, adding that the relic was put on display for research purposes, but recent revelations have increased media scrutiny and concerns from the Chinese Buddhist community about the mummy's safety.

The statement also noted that the collector first saw the statue in mid-1995, and that the previous owner had it in possession in 1994, before the Chinese villagers discovered their Buddha statute was stolen.

After two of the bronze zodiac heads looted from the Old Summer Palace around 1860, depicting a rat and a rabbit, were returned to China after many twists and turns, the discovery of this Buddha statue has again raised the issue of China's lost cultural relics, with experts debating the best way to bring the artifacts back.

The truth will out

The statue's hidden secret was revealed by a CT scan conducted at the Meander Medical Center in Amsterdam last year, which found that there was a mummy of a 30 to 40-year-old Buddhist monk who lived around the 12th century inside the statue.

The Fujian provincal Cultural Relics Bureau told the Global Times that ample evidence points to the fact that the Buddha is likely the one stolen from the village's temple in Datian county. "There are Chinese characters written on the side of the pillow on which the monk sits, showing the monk's name was Zhanggong Zushi," said an official surnamed Wang.

"The Buddha statue is our 'Zushi' [master], and we have been searching for it for many years," said a villager surnamed Lin, adding that the monk had been worshipped by the villagers for generations.

Lin said that according to the records kept by their clan, Zhanggong Zushi's body was mummified and put into a statue during Song Dynasty (960-1279).

"The statue went missing on December 15, 1995 and we soon reported the theft to police. However, nothing has been found since then," Lin said.

Fan Chengyao, a police officer in Datian, said that they have found records that show villagers reported the loss of the statue on December 26, 1995, the Beijing Times reported.

Fan said that they are now reviewing the investigation records.

Difficult to return

According to the collector's statement, the current owner bought it in 1996 from another collector who acquired it between the end of 1994 and the beginning of 1995 in Hong Kong. It said that the previous collector obtained the statue from a Chinese friend.

Inge C. van der Vlies, a professor of constitutional and public law and art and law at the University of Amsterdam, told Xinhua that if the original owner can prove that the statue was theirs and had been stolen, they can file a law suit in the Netherlands.  

The SACH said that they are collecting more evidence and actively working with other departments to bring the relic back.

However, experts have pointed out that there are many difficulties ahead.

Huo Zhengxin, a law professor with the China University of Political Science and Law, told the Global Times that there are two major international conventions that can be applied to facilitate the return of stolen relics, the 1970 UNESCO Convention and the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention.

The 1970 Convention is aimed at preventing the illicit import, export and transfer of relics. As a complementary instrument to the 1970 Convention, the 1995 Convention allows "restitution claims to be processed directly through national courts." The 1995 convention also stipulates that all cultural property must be returned.

The 1995 Convention cannot be applied to this case as the Netherlands has not joined the convention, while "there might be difficulties in applying the 1970 Convention to this case as well, as the Netherlands joined the convention in 2009 but the collector said that he bought the statue in 1996," said Huo. "We still could start repatriation procedures based on the convention and ask the Dutch side to assist in the investigation."

Huo stressed that the collector's account of how he came to own the statue presented in the statement is too vague and that the collector needs to provide more solid evidence.

A commercial purchase, diplomatic negotiations and a donation could also be ways for the relic to make its way back to China, added Huo.

Liu Yang, a lawyer with the Beijing Jingxi Law Firm, said that authorities should focus on police records to establish the whole process of how the statue was stolen and smuggled. 

Protection of cultural relics

Huo noted that repatriating relics is a remedial measure and that is more important for Chinese authorities to pay attention to the protection of cultural relics, and especially focus on preventing relics from being smuggled out the country in the first place.

Liu added that the Buddha statue belonged to the villagers' private collection and is therefore not under the protection of the government.

"Similar relics are not common in China as they are mainly found in places with the specific culture of worshiping 'zushi' like Shanxi Province. This incident may help to raise the government's attention to adopt more measures to protect such relics," said Liu.

A resident surnamed Zhang from Qixian, Shanxi Province said that there are many similar statues on the local mountains and they are under no protection. "Visitors can touch them freely."