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| Monday, 27 October 2003 |
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Austria returns stolen Buddha idol to Nepal KATHMANDU, Sunday (AFP) Austria's ambassador to Nepal handed over a 17th-century idol of the Buddha which was stolen near Kathmandu last year and seized when a German art dealer tried to sell it in Vienna, officials said. The one-meter (two-and-a-half foot) mask, adorned with turquoise and precious stones, is one of 50 images paraded each year in a special incantation by the Buddhist community of Patan on Kathmandu's outskirts. The icon of the crowned Buddha, known as the Dipankar Buddha, vanished in January 2002 when it was being kept by a family in Patan. It resurfaced four months later when a Cologne-based dealer tried to sell it to the Ethnographic Museum in Vienna for 200,000 euros (235,000 dollars), officials said. Museum curator Christian Schicklgruber suspected the image may have been stolen and started an investigation that led to a theft case being filed in an Austrian court, officials said. The Austrian government decided to return the icon to Nepal. "I am very much delighted to hand over the historic Buddhist icon after its 15-month sojourn in Austria," Austrian Ambassador Jutta Stefan Bastl said at the function at Nepal's culture ministry. The Buddha icon was authenticated by Alexander von Rospatt, a scholar of South Asian religion at the University of Vienna and the University of California at Berkeley. "This is a precious item of major religious significance, not a normal object of commercial trade," Rospatt said here. |
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