The 120-year-old monk claims he is virgin and puts his long life down to not having sex, and wants to get verified as world’s oldest man.
The 120-year-old virgin monk in India is now applying to Guinness World Records to verify his claim that he is the oldest man to have ever lived.
According to the Hindu monk, he has put his longevity down to abstaining from sex for his whole life.
According to his passport, Swami Sivananda was born on August 8, 1896, and has decided to settle into a routine of celibacy, no spices and daily yoga.
Currently, the oldest man to have ever lived title is held by Japan’s Jiroemon Kimura, who died in June 2013 aged 116 years and 54 days.
The passport authorities of India confirmed Sivananda’s age from a temple register, the only record many Indians even decades younger have of their date of birth.
But, it would be extremely difficult to independently verify his age.
Sivananda is from the holy city of Varanasi.
He grew up in extreme poverty and chose to become a monk, saying he owed his age to ‘yoga, discipline, and celibacy’.
‘I lead a simple and disciplined life,’ he added.
‘I eat very simply – only boiled food without oil or spices, rice and boiled daal (lentil stew) with a couple of green chillies,’ he said after a two-hour yoga session in Kolkata, the eastern Indian city where he had come for a short visit.
Sivananda is 1.58 metres (five feet two inches) tall.
As night, he sleeps on a mat on the floor and uses a wooden slab as a pillow.
‘I avoid taking milk or fruits because I think these are fancy foods.
‘In my childhood I slept many days on an empty stomach,’ he said.
According to him, he had not previously come forward to claim the record because he did not seek publicity, however, his followers eventually persuaded him to apply.
The monk lost both his parents before he was six.
His relatives gave him away to a spiritual guru, whom he traveled with around India before settling in Varanasi.
