[Buddha-l] Genetics

[jkirk]

>> the gene of awakening will finally be isolated from the Buddha's tooth.
>
> Have to say, I love this idea. Cloning the Buddha may be out of the 
> question, but perhaps identifying his genetic characteristics would be 
> helpful in our own training to be strengthen the qualities we deem he had. 
> Writing this, I realize this is not entirely insane or un-dharmic. But 
> it's a ways off. Meanwhile, have there been conversations about doing 
> dating of relics of the Buddha (as with the Shroud of Turin)?
>
> Curiously,
>
> Franz
=============
Suspect that if they start studying DNA from tooth and bone relics of the 
Buddha, they will find that most of them date back only to, say, the 7th c 
CE at the most distant, and a lot might date far closer to our time. Then of 
course there are the various bone and sometimes full skeletal relics of 
Christian saints reposing in various churches and shrines. Doing DNA and 
carbon14 studies on them would be interesting too.

Speaking of which, it would be a fun study for some grad student to compare 
DNA from the bodhi tree at Bodhgaya and the one in Sri Lanka that supposedly 
was carried there as a twig? slip? baby tree?  by the emperor Ashoka's 
daughter (if I recall rightly).
However, such studies probably won't happen.
Joanna