Buddha's Sacred Eyeball Kept as Relic

1893

It Is the Veritable Visible Organ of Buddha

The following on Buddha's sacred eyeball is from the pen of a traveler who visited the Orient in 1888:

"Among the sacred relics of Horluji is the veritable eyeball of Buddha. It looks like nothing else but the tiny, black, veil-boiled pearl that one so often finds in an oyster stew. This 'Eye of Buddha' is shown every day at high noon, special mass being chanted by the priests while the relic is being brought out and displayed.

"For a consideration, and for the welfare of the temple's treasury, the mass can be repeated at any hour. We sent for the old priest, who came in company with a brother whose office was that of holding a big yellow umbrella over the 'holy man's' head. First he knelt, touched a silver gong and played before a gilded shrine with closed doors and golden lotus ornaments. Next he drew from one side of the shrine a large bundle covered with a wrapping of rich old gold and red brocade and tied with silk cords. This was reverently laid on a low ornamented table near the altar. Then, with muttered chants of prayer going on all the time, the old priest untied and laid out bag after bag of brocade, each lined with some dull contrasting color and tied with silken cords. After the ninth bag had been taken out and untied, an upright box, covered with more brocade, appeared and, lifting it out, the priest opened it and produced a little rock crystal reliquary and set it upon a gilded lotus pedestal that stood near. This reliquary was shaped like the tombstones in a cemetery — a cube, a sphere and a pyramid being placed one above the other and held together with gold wire. In the hollow of the sphere lay the tiny little dingy relic, which rattled around like a pearl or pebble when the priest turned and tipped the box so that I could get a better view of the sacred object.

"He never stopped once in his muttered chant, and after a proper time had been given for me to see it to my satisfaction he replaced the relic in its ten wrappings and again consigned it to its sacred shrine."