Tuesday, 19 July 2011

Secret revealed of gold thread wrapping up Sakymuni

Under the head "60th anniversary of the Tibet's peaceful liberation" CCTV has put on their site a webpage fully dedicated to this subject.
Whoever knows the long history of Tibet ( which is definitely much longer than 60 years) will not be fooled by this cheap way of influencing the public opinion ( you have to be really stupid to fall for these kind of nonsense stories) but anyway, the history bits about Tibet are good, as usual with CCTV.

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In 1987, Famen Temple was in the world's spotlight when over one thousand relics dating back to one thousand years ago were unearthed there. Over the following decades, experts have been researching the rare findings of the Tang Dynasty. The latest discovery has unveiled the secret of the gold thread silk that was used to wrap the relics of Sakymuni.
The five pieces shown here are the silk that packed Sakymuni's bones and the pearl-like beads found among the cremated ashes of the Buddhist spiritual master. They were among the over one-thousand pieces of findings discovered in the underground palace of Famen Temple. With a history of more than 17-hundred years, Famen temple is also known as the ancestor of the pagoda temple in the Guanzhong area or the lower valley of the Weihe River in northwest China.
Over 700 pieces of silk were found. They were used to wrap valuable jewelry offered by seven emperors of the Tang Dynasty. Most of the silk are decorated with gold threads, used exclusively for the imperial family in ancient China.
Deconstructed under the microscope, experts unveiled that those thin gold threads are composed of two parts: a very thin gold foil around a core of silk which is only one tenth of a millimeter in diameter. An analysis of 200 examples helps us to see that the gold foil is not pure but contains 15% silver.
Source CCTV

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