'15 feet snake covers the statue of Buddha'? No, the snake was digitally created - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
June 14, 2021
A video accompanying a post is being widely shared on social media claiming that a 15 feet snake surrounds the statue of Buddha every year during rains. Let us fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: 15 feet snake covers the statue of Buddha every year during the rains.
Fact: When observed clearly, the eyes of the snake in the video are glowing in red indicating it to be a digitally created one. Multiple older uploads mention that a boy from Sri Lanka has used technology to create Muchalinda cobra shown in the video. As per Buddhist mythology, Muchalinda is the name of a naga, a snake-like being, who sheltered Buddha from rain for seven days while he was deep in meditation. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When reverse image search was done on the screenshots of the video, we found a YouTube video uploaded on 13 May 2017 with the same exact visuals. This video is titled ‘Sri Lanka Buddha on snake Gautam Buddha’, and the channel’s name is ‘Sangha Tv’. Taking a cue from the video that it was from Sri Lanka, we searched for videos of snakes covering Buddha in Sri Lanka. We found several videos with similar visuals of snakes covering Buddha, which can be seen here, here, and here.
Taking a cue from the videos of snake covering Buddha in Sri Lanka, we found ‘Muchalinda Nagadaranaya’ being frequently used in those videos. Upon simple google search of the word ‘Muchalinda Nagadaranaya’, we found a YouTube video with same visuals published on 13 May 2017 with the title, ‘A boy from Sri Lanka uses robot technology to create the Muchalinda cobra’, the description of the video says that this video was a Muchalinda Nagadaranaya with robot technology. Muchalinda is the name of a Naga, a snake-like being, who protected the Gautama Buddha from the elements after his enlightenment.
The words seen in the initial part of the video seem to be written in Sinhala and appear to represent the word ‘Muchalinda Nagadaranaya’ as translated from Sinhala.
Also, when observed clearly, the eyes of the snake in the video are glowing with red light and the sounds, lighting used in the video is seen to be typical of an artificial setting seen in other Muchalinda Nagadaranaya videos on YouTube, rather than in an original setting.
To sum it up, a digitally created snake surrounding Buddha’s statue is being shared as visuals of 15 feet snake covering the statue of Buddha every year during the rains.