KEAN KHLANG – People in a Cambodian village held a religious ceremony Thursday to ask spirits to help them recover Buddhist statues that their ancestors said were buried in a nearby riverbed.

Buddhist monks joined about 500 villagers in the ceremony by the Tonle Sap River, where divers have recovered eight small statues of Buddha and say they spotted another that is about 2 meters (6 feet) tall.

They asked the spirits of water and earth to help them raise any statues still buried as much as 20 meters (66 feet) underwater.

Ceremony organizers said stories passed down by villagers’ ancestors tell of the statues being buried in the riverbed hundreds of years ago to hide them from marauders from other areas or neighboring Siam, now called Thailand.

“Not only me, but several villagers were told by our ancestors that those statues were buried several hundred years ago under the river opposite the site where we held the ceremony,” said Sieng Chan Heng, one of the organizers.

She said that when divers last month collected two small statues from the river, they also spotted the larger one, but were unable to bring it up. She explained that some villagers believed they were unable to recover it because they had not held the proper religious ceremony, which is Hindu in origin, a reflection of the diverse cultural influences in Cambodia...
http://www.chiangraitimes.com/cambodian ... river.html

I suggest praying for a crane rig and someone with some diving gear

Here's the statutes they recovered last week
Beautiful.
http://bit.ly/2bs6cug

Rama wrote:Here's the statutes they recovered last week
Beautiful.
http://bit.ly/2bs6cug

Nice find, Rama. Would all cost about $4 at the Russian Market.