In the fall of 2024, a video about a man who is called the living Buddha for his extraordinary longevity became popular on Russian-language blogs. We figured out if it was true.
The video tells about an unusual man: it is stated that he is 198 years old, he weighs 11.5 kg and from old age his skin began to degrade and turn white, and his hands shriveled. In addition, he has never worked and has never touched a woman, and he starts every morning with meditation. As the creators of the video say, local residents call him the living Buddha, worship him and believe that he is a celestial being who descended to earth. This video has 7.2 million views on "VKontakte"and 2.5 million in Facebook. In addition, it is also popular in Instagram.
The video consists of fragments of clearly stock videos and conversations between the journalist and a certain man with a long white beard, atrophied arms and spots vitiligo on the skin. We do not hear their remarks; the sound track consists only of voice-over text in Russian. In addition, at the beginning of the video we are shown a photograph of a very old man wearing an orange knitted hat. He doesn't have a beard, and otherwise he doesn't look like the man to whom most of the video is dedicated.
Using a reverse image search, "Verified" found that this photo depicts Luan Pho Yai, a Buddhist monk from Thailand, deceased in 2022 at the age of 109. As for the second character in the video, we found a video about him with original voice acting on Reddit. Unfortunately, the video and accompanying post do not say where exactly the filming took place, but the conversation in the frame is in Urdu, one of the two official languages of Pakistan. Based on this, we can assume that the video was most likely filmed either in this country or in neighboring Afghanistan, where Urdu is also widespread.
The video does not say anything about the hero’s age - only that, despite extremely cramped life circumstances and disabilities (his atrophied arms may indicate polio), he lives a more or less full life and does not lose heart. In addition, he is a Muslim - the footage shows him committing namaz (the Russian voiceover at this time talks about meditation). At the end, the presenter encourages viewers to help such people. This video became the basis for a meme that went viral on TikTok spring 2024 year (in Russian-language social networks this meme was not particularly widespread).
“Verified” was unable to find out for which TV channel or Internet project the video was filmed. Using a facial recognition service PimEyes We found many reports featuring the same presenter (his name is not specified) on the website of a British charity Orphan Care, but we didn’t find this particular video there.
According to data verified by the organization LongeviQuest and recorded by the Guinness Book of Records, the oldest person in the world at the time of writing this analysis is a Brazilian nun Ina Canabarro Lucas, which turned 116 years old on June 8, 2024. According to LongeviQuest, the title of the person who lived the longest life on record belongs to a French woman. Jeanne Louise Kalman, who lived 122 years and 164 days. She died on August 4, 1997, and since then no one has broken her longevity record.
Thus, the viral video shows us two different people. One of them was a long-lived Buddhist monk (though not 198 years old), but died in 2022. We don’t know anything about the age of the second one, but the original video only talked about his disability. There is no reliable information about the existence (either currently or in the past) of a person who lived 198 years. The verified longevity record belongs to Jeanne Louise Calment, who lived 122 years.
Cover photo: still from viral video. Source: screenshot from VKontakte
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