The Buddha was taken by a German scientist to Germany in 1939 perhaps because there is a (flipped from the Nazi) swastika on the Buddha's chest. They say it affirms the Nazi's Aryan race theory or something. The buddha does not come from India though, but from Mongolia -- the meteorite is from the Chinga River in Tannu Tuva, a Siberian state in Russia north of Mongolia. (I have, by the way, a super cool side note about Tanna Tuva itself that I'll mention at the end of this post.) That's not exactly Nazi-ish Aryan "source" territory -- which is west central India -- but perhaps two thousand miles away, on the opposite side of the Himalayas. Anyway ...
What is very cool is that the Buddha was fashioned out the Chinga meteorite, which can be determined because meteorites have unique chemical compositions and the buddha can be matched back to it. How it was fashioned is not clear from the article; the article's assumption is it was carved but it may have been melted meteorite poured into a mold.
Regardless, no one seems to be picking up on the fact that the iron buddha was probably once shiny, though it's now tarnished. Indeed, that may be why it was made from the Chinga meteorite to start with. That's because artifacts from the Chinga meteorite are extraordinarily shiny when polished. This happens because the chemical composition of the meteorite (which is ataxite) is high in nickel. Here (click) are some examples.
Most meteorites other than the Chinga meteorite are not shiny when polished but show a Widmanstätten pattern -- a crystalline pattern of crisscrossing lines. The Chinga meteorite doesn't because ataxite has too high a nickel content to form crystals. Thus, its smooth when polished. In short, the chemical composition of the Buddha not only allows us to trace it to the Chinga meteorite but to realize it likely was intended to gleam rather than being a dull oxidized gray.
The article beginning this discussion is in New Scientist, which is based on an article in Meteoritics & Planetary Science that is behind a paywall. New Scientist paraphrases the Meteoritics & Planetary Science authors as saying "In Tibet, though, meteoritic iron was long known as namchag, or 'sky iron.'" They postulate that the Buddha has made from meteorite because of its sacred properties as an object from heaven.
Tibet is more than a thousand miles from Mongolia. Tibet and Mongolia have different cultures and languages. True, Mongolian Buddhism is derivative of Tibetan Buddhism. It's unclear how a Tibetan word is relevant to that. If that's the sole basis for believing the Iron Buddha's creator made it from meteorite -- to venerate "sky iron" -- it's based on a poor understanding of culture as well as Buddhism, since Buddhism does not as a practice venerate meteorites.
Of course, meteorites have sometimes been sacred to other religions. Most notable is the black stone in the Kaaba, central to the Hajj in Islam. Its veneration predates Islam, but current Muslim doctrine holds it fell to Earth to show Adam how to build an altar, and it supposedly was once bright white but was stained black with Adam's sins and perhaps those of all mankind. It is dubious the Iron Buddha falls into this category, though, since the Chinga meteor fell to Earth 10,000 to 20,000 years ago yet the statue was only made about 1,000 years ago.
And that brings us back to Tannu Tuva, where the Chinga meteorite landed. It happens that one of my namesakes, Richard Feynman, had a thing for Tannu Tuva. He and a friend, Ralph Leighton, attempted for over a decade to get there, stymied by the Soviet and U.S. bureaucracies and lack of means for travel. Feynman had cancer and he died shortly after they finally received their visas. His daughter made the trip in his stead twenty years later. There's a five part series of videos on YouTube that describe the quest: (part 1), (part 2), (part 3), (part 4), (part 5). This is a great series, not only if you'd like to hear the story, and not only if you like listening to Feynman's musings on physics or are interested in his life, but if you're interested in the world and looking at how it is. And, as a bonus, there's some Tuvan throat singing, which is awesome. In fact, here's some more Tuvan throat singing. If you're going to mention Nazis and space rocks, I think you ought to also mention Tuvan throat singing.
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