1935 Samye Monastery Soul Cleansing Buddha carving, Soul to Soul.

Late 17th century temple practice was for 3 of the Temple Monks to absorb all the souls pain and suffering for the Monks and Temple activities.

Each Monk is directed toward different events to complete the Temple soul cleansing.

During the Sino-Tibetan War period of the 1930s, one of the temple practices was to hand manufacture products to support the temple and war effort by selling anything it could to raise funds for weaponry. These statues were hand carved and sold to political visitors of the temple to help fund the war effort.

Each Monk carving was slightly different because of the group of Monks making it but all were carved from a single tree foundation. The tree was cut during a heavy sap draw period for extra strength to avoid any future cracking and a daily cleansing chant was placed upon the works while carving.

The Temples fund raising campaign with the 3 Buddhist Monks brought on a Temple back lash from other area Temples and the practice stopped.

When being produced nature was being destroyed for monetary gain and this was against the Temples rulings.

The Monks stopped carving them and went on with other means of raising war time funds for the Temple.

And a market was created:

Indonesia started putting out cheap copy versions because of their value by using cheap dried wood, no spiritual cleansing, etc. Example in the last photos. Next other companies tried copying them but can not complete them with the same expertise as the originals and the statues start cracking because of their wood drying methods. Legs are out of shape, hands are deformed, ears are not raised and so on. It is hard to make a replica of something with a chisel without an expert, which would once again out price the market.

And so, the Weeping Buddhas Story was created:

You can buy a lot of junk copies. The market flourished with the idea of the Monks and created the Buddhas crying or weeping for the world. Sounds good but this is a man made advertisement marketing gimmick and so a new market was created. Shops everywhere started selling replicas and mini monks for the tabletop and garden and telling people they would have great luck by rubbing the monks head.

Even Tibet has there Walmart competitors. Now they are made everywhere with bad carving techniques, no ears extended when carved, cuts in the head area of the face that look like a face shield is on the Monk, and wood that starts cracking after the first few years as it dries out.

Sold as the weeping Buddhas, world crying Monks, etc. A total man-made fabricated market.

I purchased this over 40 years ago from a family friend, whose father had gotten it as a diplomat during the China war campaign and brought it home. His family also sold me a Tibetan war mace that I will be listing. His Father was a constantly visiting Tibet during the war as a political official and the Family had no interest in his collection after he passed.