South Dovani

[Wu Han]

Does the Bodhita Weep for the Nation?
June 5646
By Theerapat Maneewong

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The heavy, protective silence that traditionally blankets the Ordination Hall of Wat Chai Mongkhon in the city of Rattanakhon was punctured, according to the resident monks, by a sound so small, rhythmic, and natural that it should have been inconsequential: drip, drip, drip.

When the Chief Abbot, Phra Khru Wimonthammaphon, rose from his 4:00 AM meditation on the ruby-carpeted dais, he did not find the expected scent of jasmine or incense. Instead, beneath the glittering crystal chandeliers and murals, the air was thick with the tang of copper. In his retellings, the scent immediately brought to the Abbot's mind ancestral memories of the clashing of swords, the searing heat of scorched earth, and iron-scent of spilled blood across ancient pathed roads; scenes from the Battle of Rattanakhon which opened the ancient capital of Ayotharam to invading armies many millennia ago.

Turning his gaze up towards the Luang Pho Worachetthayan, a 5 meter tall image of the Bodhita made of brick and mortar and covered in gold-leafed copper, he witnessed a dark, viscous fluid seeping from the inner corners of the Bodhita's downcast, and now seemingly mournful, eyes. It moved not with the fluidity of water but the viscosity of blood, carving its way through the 24-karat gold leaf coating the Bodhita's cheeks, before dripping into a small pool which had formed in the Bodhita's upturned left hand. With each drop from the statues cheeks, the pool of liquid had overflowed, tracing the curve of his folded legs towards the "terra-touching hand," cresting the wrist and accumulating at the tips of the fingers, which it stained a bruised and oxidized black, before the liquid finally dripped onto the floor below. Drip, drip, drip.

The distressing sight was reported almost immediately to the Ministry of Culture who, in similar fashion to the Srimahabodhi Suriyan issue in 5644, dispatched a team of scientists and researchers from the nation's top universities. The team, this time lead by Khattaya University's Dr. Khemanan Monkoltham, released a preliminary report that stripped the event of its mysticism, classifying it instead as a catastrophic instance of interstitial core leaching.

Dr. Khemanan argued that the "tears" were a byproduct of galvanic corrosion within the statue's complex internal structure. He explained that the hall’s poor ventilation had allowed sulfur dioxide and high humidity to acidify the moisture trapped within the statue’s porous brick-and-mortar core. Such an environment triggered a chemical reaction between the internal iron armature (the statue’s structural skeleton) and its cupric alloys. This, paired with subtle seismic shifts and earthquakes over the years, had opened hairline fissures in the three-thousand-year-old bronze skin, allowing the liquified oxidization of the statue's internal iron and copper core to leak out.

In a segment produced for NV12 Nightly News, Dr. Khemanan walked viewers through the science of the phenomenon, using animations, deep penetrating lasers, and an on-site walkthrough, hoping to dissuade concerns and spiritual distress among the public. Pointing a gloved finger at the massive bronze incense cauldrons near the altar, Dr. Khemanan turned to the camera: "You see the smoke? You think it rises and leaves. It doesn't. For many, many years now, the statue has been breathing – so to speak – the sulfur from those sticks."

"The Luang Pho Worachetthayan is not weeping," Khemanan concluded. "We are seeing a liquid discharge of copper salts and oxidized iron. It is a preservation crisis, not a spiritual one."

However, as the weeks passed and the "leak" refused to yield to professional sealants, corrosion inhibitors, and moisture-wicking compounds, among other attempts by restoration workers to repair the statue, the chemical explanation began to feel just as hollow as the biological one offered for the withering of the Srimahabodhi Suriyan. For the monks of Wat Chai Mongkhon and the tens of thousands who gathered at the temple's perimeter following news of the "Crying Bodhita," the phenomenon represented a divine manifestation of kamma that modern science alone cannot resolve.

The Venerable Hansadhamma, in a follow-up to his recent treatise "The Wheel and the Umbrella," argues instead that the Bodhita does not weep becuase of sulfur dioxide, but because the metaphysical White Umbrella of Protection has been shredded by nearly three centuries of secular greed. He pointed to the "History of the Future," noting that when a ruler abandons the Tenfold Virtues of Kingship, the protective Devas inhabiting the land's palladiums begin to depart in sorrow. That the path of the fluid stains the terra-touching hand is considered by theologians like Hansadhamma to be a devastating indictment; in Daenist myth, this hand represents the defeat of darkness, but here, with its slender fingers cloaked in dark liquid, the hand seems to suggest that darkness has returned to claim its due.

The Chief Abbot of the Wat, who has claimed to have difficulty shaking the images of the Battle of Rattanakhon from his mind, also noted a striking and haunting historical parallel: the legendary weeping of the Great Bodhita of Ayotharam in 2442. Historical chronicles claim that statue wept tears of blood just as the city’s outer walls were breached by invading armies. In that era, as in this one, the omen was interpreted as a signal that the merit of the city's rulers had been exhausted. Accordingly, the phenomena today is viewed by many Daenists as a final, silent witness to a nation that has lost its legitimacy, leaving its protective spirits to depart mournfully – a nation fated to bleed in the dark. Drip, drip, drip.

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Chai Jai (ใจใจ, "Head/Heart") is a monthly Daenist magazine published in South Dovani. The magazine is non-profit, though it receives a substantial annual endowment from the Jantarapong family.

OOC Note: This piece is inspired by the myth of the Buddha image at Wat Panan Choeng, and further relies upon the real-world symbolism of the Maravijaya attitude (specifically the Bhūmisparśa mudrā or "earth witness" mudra). Sources regarding the Anagatavamsa (which I have termed the "History of the Future") are difficult to find in English on the internet. I have derived this reference to, and interpretation of, the Anagatavamsa from the Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (2014) and Henry Clark Warren's Buddhism in Translations (1896). Note that this text played a large role as the charter of many different millenarian movements and uprisings, such as that which led to the foundation of the Konbaung dynasty of modern-day Myanmar.