From Burma with Love

In December 2004, some fishermen off the coast of Tamil Nadu, India, spied something floating on the sea, glinting  in the sunlight. Curious, some of them went to investigate and returned with a make-shift bamboo raft, festooned with silver foil flowers, and carrying a small metal icon. There was nothing to identify it, except a few vases, some candles, and a maroon monk’s robe with ‘Burma’ sewn on it.

These simple fisherfolk of Meyurkuppam, were unable to recognise the 5 inch idol for what it was – a Jalagupta Buddha, revered in Burma. The Burmese embassy, alerted to its presence, sent a representative to verify the rumour that it was a valuable antique. That rumour proved false. It was only a ‘commonplace modern statuette’. Not so to the people of Meyurkuppam. This incident just happened to co-incide with the Asian Tsuanami - a time when thousands of lives were lost in the coastal areas of South India. Oddly though, all the 980 inhabitants of Meyurkuppam, most of them fishermen and their families, escaped intact.

If it’s a miracle, the villagers know who to thank. They believe their ‘Buddha Swami’ (Lord Buddha) has protected them, and they pay him the same homage as their other gods. The fishermens’ families offer him daily prayers, and the Burmese generals have apparently agreed to fund a temple. 

“This is part of a wondrous cycle,” said Phra Vivek, a Bangkok monk. “Buddhism arrived in the river deltas of South-east Asia in the third century when the Indian emperor Ashoka sent missionaries to the Golden Land. Now the ocean has carried Buddhism back to its source.”