Associated Press
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — The biggest statue of a sitting Buddha in Southeast Asia was consecrated in an elaborate ceremony Sunday that capped seven days of prayer at a temple in Malaysia.
The ceremony making the massive statue sacred was attended by about 10,000 Buddhists, including 500 monks from across Southeast Asia and many tourists from Malaysia and abroad.
The statue at the Manchimmaram Temple near Kota Baharu, 390 miles northeast of Kuala Lumpur, is 98 feet high and 155 feet around. It cost about $1 million to build.
Before the start of the ceremony, people dressed up as lions and others hoisting yards of cloth on sticks to represent dragons danced to the beat of 100 huge Chinese drums.
Then the Grand Patriarch and Royal Monk of Thailand, Somdet Prhat Sangkharat, placed the Sarira — a 3-foot-high bronze heart representing the heart of Buddha — into the chest of the statue.
For the past week, devotees have been visiting the temple to pray and place gold and silver needles at the foot of the statue in the hope that they will be blessed with smart children. The mood in the temple compound was festive, with hundreds of stalls selling food, drinks, souvenirs and religious items.
More than half of Malaysia’s 23 million people are ethnic Malay Muslims, but there are large Buddhist, Hindu and Christian minorities.
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