Burma Offer to Build Pagoda for "Tsunami Idol" in India

February 25, 2005

The Burmese military junta offers to build a pagoda in Tamil Nadu, India to a deity, that local people believed to be wash ashore by the killer Asian tsunami waves in December. 

Villagers of the Meyyurkuppam village on the Kalpakkam coast in the southern India costal state, Tamil Nadu found the idol on 26 December, which they thought to be a statue of Buddha floated from Burma. 

" The idol is that of Jalagupta [different in Burmese]. The Myanmar embassy will not take the idol back to Burma, they will report to the concern agencies and try to build a pagoda here", said Mr. K. Gurumurthy who was appointed to verify the idol by the Burmese Embassy in New Delhi.

However, he suspects the idol came floating on the tsunami waves. 

It is a common practice of the Burmese Buddhists to float the idol of Sangha Shin Upagupta into a river or sea after holding a short worship ceremony, generally in raining season.

He said the Burmese Embassy would request land for the purpose from the Tamil Nadu government.

The idol would have to be moved to higher ground, along the east coast road and away from the seaside, as environment laws forbid any construction within 500 metres from the coast. The temple set to start built next month.

According to Local reports, the idol brought by the tsunami waves across 1000 km was found a shore with a vase, a robe with a Burmese inscription on it on a floating raft in Meyyurkuppam village, 80 kilometers away from Chennai, the capital southern India state.

Though many coastal villages in the Kalpakkam coast were destroyed by the tsunami, the Meyyurkuppam village was relatively less damaged. And locals attributed their safety to the pot-bellied idol they had found on their shores days after the tsunami. The villagers, mostly Buddhists, then began to worship the idol at the same spot where it was found.