Lost Mongolian Buddhist Art Treasures Found After 70 Years

Buddhist art treasures thought lost for 70 years have been found in the deserts of Mongolia. A Buddhist monk buried 64 crates of treasures in the Gobi desert sands during Soviet and Mongolian Communist purges in the 1930s.

The BBC says the crates, which contain statues, artworks, manuscripts and the personal belongings of a famous 19th Century Buddhist master, Danzan Ravjaa, which were buried at the time by a monk named Tudev. He passed on the secret to his grandson, who unearthed some of the crates in the 1990s and opened a museum in the small southern Mongolian town of Sainshand, 400 kilometres south of the capital, Ulan Bator. Now a joint Austrian-Mongolian team have found two more boxes. Team leader Michael Eisenriegler described the finds as “the most amazing Buddhist art objects.” He added:

It is of tremendous value for Mongolian culture because Buddhism was almost extinct in the Communist times, especially in the 1930s. I'm totally exhausted right now but I'm also totally impressed with what I've seen.

Some 20 boxes remain hidden in the desert. The origins of Mongolian Buddhism are to be found in Tibet and reach back to the 16th Century when a Mongol leader sought spiritual backing from the Dalai Lama of the time.