The Mystery Of The Self-Made Mummy: Stranger Than Fiction (five): HERE was a real life detective story more compelling than any fictional whodunit although, strictly speaking, this was more of a mixture of howdunit and whydunit.

The serious-sounding narrator announcing, "Now for the first time," at the start didn't inspire much hope. This is standard talk for this type of documentary claiming to unravel a centuries-old mystery but which all too often turns out to be a bundle of old theories and footage adding up to very little.

This mystery provided better than that. Anthropologist Professor Victor Mair was the expedition leader, the Inspector Morse of the story. His team travelled high in the mountains of Tibet to investigate "a corpse like no other" - not the skeleton of an abominable snowman but the remarkably well-preserved mummified body of a Tibetan man seated in meditation. He was found under the rubble after an earthquake nearly 30 years ago.

What's remarkable is that the mummy, now treated as a holy body by the monks and villagers, appears not to have been preserved by the usual methods.

The team were allowed just six hours to examine the unappealing-looking corpse by the Indian military.

It's amazing how much they learnt in a short time by taking hair and fabric samples - with the local monks' permission, they pointed out - and digital X-rays. The evidence showed that he died 500 years ago, that he'd had little to eat in the months before his death, and that he was in some advanced Buddhist meditation posture. The curvature of the spine, caused by a life of meditation, indicated he was a monk.

All fascinating stuff as forensic experts, radiographers and radiologists added their thoughts based on the evidence. Mair was still puzzled by the meditation chord tied round the mummy's neck and under his thumbs.

His inquiries discovered that monks were able to increase their skin temperatures through meditational heat yoga. They could dry wet sheets by wrapping them round their bodies and thinking hot, thus doing away with the need for a tumble dryer. The mummy could have changed his body in the same way - literally drying himself out.

As for the chord, this was some form of self-asphyxiation or partial strangulation to improve the act of meditation, a method also association with dangerous sexual practices.

He literally starved and strangled himself to become a mummy, a holy body to protect the people of his valley.

It was a fate both terrible and heroic - and, the narrator warned in a chilling postscript, the ultimate sacrifice that some monks are willing to emulate today.

Published: 20/05/2004