Archeologists on Saturday removed an about 1,000-year-old miniature pagoda, believed to hold the top part of Buddha's skull, from an iron case found at a former temple site in Nanjing in July.
It is believed to be one of the 84,000 "pagodas of King Asoka (273 BC - 236 BC) that contain Sakyamuni's sarira, or his remains found in the cremation ash. Sarira are highly sacred for Buddhists.
Asoka was an Indian emperor who converted to Buddhism after a bloody war with a king in the eastern part of the country. According to Buddhist records, Asoka collected all the parts of Buddha's sarira, divided them into 84,000 parts, and stored each one of them in a pagoda-shaped shrine. Then he sent the sacred relics to different parts of the world. China is considered to have 19 of them.
Photos and full story here from. Sina English
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