Buddhism

Researchers who made original finding say they expected such a reaction
By Stephanie Pappas Senior Writer
updated 10/25/2012 3:37:10 PM ET

Researchers who reported that a potentially ancient Buddha statue is carved from a meteorite said they are not surprised that an expert in Buddhist history believes the statue to be a fake.

"Honestly, that is what we expected," said Elmar Buchner, who along with his colleague reported on the statue in September in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science. "We heard so many opinions from so many experts in art history and experts for Buddhism on the origins and the age of the statue prior to and after the publication."

The most public of these consultations is a new report from Achim Bayer, a Buddhism expert at Dongguk University in South Korea. In a report released online, Bayer writes that the features of the statue are "pseudo-Tibetan" and are more likely to be a European reproduction dating from 1910 to 1970 than a true ancient carving dating back 1,000 years, as Buchner and his colleagues had estimated.

Bayer did not contest that the statue is a made of meteorite.

"The non-Asian features of the 'lama wearing trousers' should be immediately obvious to any scholar in the field," Bayer wrote, referring to the statue as a "lama" or guru. The shoes, pants and sleeves of the man's garments are all wrong for ancient Tibet, he wrote. The statue's hands, eyes and ears are also shaped unusually for Tibetan art, he said.

More: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49556803/ns/technology_and_science-science/#.UIogmIVGSCM