By News18 Reshmi Dasgupta
It’s a measure of what India is up against that the story of India intervening to stop the sale of literally priceless relics of the Buddha was carried by BBC on May 8, 2025 with the headline “Sotheby’s halts Buddha jewels auction after India threat”. It makes India sound like a bellicose local bully besides underplaying the importance of the Piprahwa hoard that included sacred remains of the Buddha as well as gems, which international conventions decree cannot be sold.
Had it not been for the concerted effort of one of India’s foremost authorities on art and aesthetics, Professor Naman Ahuja of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, these holy relics may well have been auctioned like artefacts. Apart from the gross disrespect and ignominy of such an act, that the sacred gems may have gone to China (or some Chinese moneybags) as they were to be auctioned in Hong Kong cannot be ruled out either. And the significance of that is manifest.
As Prof Ahuja recounted at a talk given at the India International Centre on Wednesday, his urgent appeal to External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar alerted India to the imminent sale and the Ministry of Culture promptly sent a notice to stop Sotheby’s and the Peppe family—the “owners” of this hoard that originally comprised fragments of Buddha’s remains and 1,800 gemstones and crystals—from going ahead with the auction. The letter made crucial points.
India averred that the gems constituted “inalienable religious and cultural heritage of India and the global Buddhist community. Their sale violates Indian and international laws, as well as United Nations conventions”. A delegation from India also took up the matter with Sotheby’s leading the auction house to release a statement saying that in light of the matters raised by India “and with the agreement of the consignors, the auction … has been postponed”.
The notice was sent to Sotheby’s Hong Kong and the seller, Chris Peppé, one of three heirs of William Claxton Peppé, a British colonial landowner who in 1898 excavated five caskets of relics and gems from a 2,000 year old stupa buried on his “estate”—Birdpur—in Basti district on the border with Nepal. The Peppes’ portion of those gems (also regarded as part of the ‘sarira’ or body of the Buddha) were expected to fetch HK$100m (£9.7m) at the May 7 auction.
Auctioning part of what is regarded by scholars as one of the greatest archaeological finds ever because of convincing epigraphic evidence that the fragments in the caskets were that of the Buddha profoundly upset academics like Prof Ahuja and Buddhist leaders. India rightly pointed out in its notice to Sotheby’s that the proposed auction of the Piprahwa relic-gems had offended the global Buddhist community. And their sacredness was long evident.
Prof Ahuja wrote in a recent article, “What is being offered for sale is from the holy stupa of Piprahwa regarded as the site of the relics of the Buddha himself, which his paternal family buried with his ashes…India has not taken this stance with regard to all stupas, particularly those where the relics have been taken from uninscribed reliquaries, where the identity of the person whose relics they are is unknown… When the evidence is as strong as Piprahwa, the case changes.”
The 19 December 1898 edition of London’s Morning Post said in a report from Calcutta headlined Buddhist Relics Discovered that “The King of Siam is sending an Envoy to India to receive the relics of Buddha discovered some time ago on the Nepaul Frontier, which were offered to his Majesty by the Indian Government. The King, who gratefully accepted the offer, has agreed to distribute portions of the relics among the Buddhists of Burma and Ceylon.”
It went on to say, “…In January last a well-preserved stupa was opened at the village of Piprahwa on the Nepaul Frontier in the Basti district… This village was in the Birdpur grant…owned by Mr William C Peppé and his brother. Inside the building was found a large stone coffer, crystal and steatite vases, bone and ash relics, fragments of lime, plaster, and wooden vessels, and a large quantity of jewels and ornaments placed in two vases in honour of the relics.”
Significantly, the report added, “A careful list was at once made of all the articles, and Mr Peppé generously offered to place them at the disposal of the Government. The special interest of the discovery lies in the fact that the relics in honour of which the stupa was erected appear to be those of Gautama Buddha Sakya Muni himself and may be the actual share of the relics taken by the Sakyas of Kapilavastu at the time of the cremation of Gautama Buddha.”
This important conclusion was arrived at because the inscription on one of the caskets was translated from Brahmi to say, “This relic-shrine of divine Buddha is the donation of the Sakya-Sukiti brothers, along with their sisters, sons and wives.” Although there were later ‘controversial’ translations that averred the relics were only of the clansmen, the 2013 translation reiterates the original one and establishes the relics interred with the gems were of the Buddha.
The entire Piprahwa hoard, thus, was of unique reverential value, not just artefacts of archaeological import. No wonder the report also noted, “The relics, being a matter of such intense interest to the Buddhist world, were offered by the Indian Government to the King of Siam, who is the only existing Buddhist monarch, with a proviso that he would not object to offer a portion of the relics to the Buddhists of Burma and Ceylon.” India’s claim to the relics is clear.
Interestingly, the British Crown laid claim to the Piprahwa relics under the Indian Treasure Trove Act of 1878 and took it upon itself to disperse most of the relics and 1,800 gemstones to the Indian Museum in Kolkata and the King of Siam; the Peppé family was allowed to “retain” a portion of the gems which were deemed to be “duplicates” of the major ones. But the fact that the gems were interred along with the sarira of the Buddha made them sacred objects too.
The flurry of excavations of stupas in the 19th and early 20th centuries led to the discovery of many exquisite reliquaries containing sacred remnants of the Buddha. The British as the rulers of India had magnanimously decided to distribute them to “Buddhist nations” like Burma, Ceylon and Thailand. So, the three fragments found in the ‘Kanishka reliquary’ at a stupa near Peshawar in 1908-09 were sent off to Burma while the casket is still in Pakistan.
The 2.5-inch solid gold Bimaran reliquary found at a stupa near Jalalabad in Afghanistan during excavations from 1833 to 1838 contained only burnt pearls, precious and semi-precious stone beads and four coins. But the Kharoshti inscription on its steatite container said, “Bhagavata śarirehi Śivarakṣitasa Muṃjavaṃdaputrasa daṇamuhe” or “With relics of the Lord, donation of Śivarakṣita son of Mujavada”. Gems were obviously deemed relics too.
Although Sotheby’s claims the auction has been merely “postponed”, Prof Ahuja’s lecture made it abundantly clear that the parties concerned are not on very strong grounds on the relics—and that includes the gems too as they are regarded as part of remains—and that their repatriation rather than sale is the only acceptable recourse. And that process is governed by international laws and conventions on sacred human remains as well as national legislations.
Prof Ahuja pointed out that the existing Antiquities and Art Treasures Act, 1972 is not enough to ensure that the current Piprahwa case and any future sacred relics (of Buddhist or other genesis) that may be discovered can be rightfully restored to India. A more specific law on sacred relics needs to be enacted, particularly when it comes to recovering those in private or personal collections as some museums are already working to repatriate such items in their collections.
The Pitt Rivers Museum of Oxford University, for instance, met the elders of the Hoho Naga tribe in early June this year to discuss the repatriation of Naga ancestral human remains and also the care of other Naga artefacts, which had been taken away from India to Britain during the Raj a century ago. The earliest Naga ancestral human remains were “donated” by a British ICS officer and amateur anthropologist JH Hutton; other such “donations” had followed.
The case of the relics of the Buddha’s two seniormost disciples Sariputra and Moggallana excavated at Sanchi and Satdhara in 1851 by Alexander Cunningham and FC Maisey is instructive too. The Satdhara relics were sent to London’s Victoria & Albert Museum in 1866 and eventually bought by it, while the Sanchi relics were lost at sea on way to the UK. Pressure by Buddhist organisations to return the relics to Asia (note, not just to India!) began to build not long after.
The British government finally conceded to this in the early 20th century despite strong objections from the museum, but the world wars delayed their return. They were finally sent to Colombo Museum in Sri Lanka in 1947 and began tours of other parts of Asia two years later. Eventually the disciples’ relics were divided in 1952, with parts sent to the Kaba Aye Pagoda in Rangoon, Burma, the Maha Bodhi Society temple in Colombo and the Chethiyagiri Vihara at Sanchi.
It is clear that India has to bolster its legal arsenal, as Prof Ahuja urged in his talk at IIC, in order to get back the sacred remains removed and disbursed by the British as they wished. The Piprahwa case in every sense is a test of India’s will to reclaim its sacred legacies. Only a part of relics of Buddha’s disciples were returned to India in 1952; the same cannot be allowed to happen to the sacred relics of Buddha himself embodied in the Piprahwa gems in 2025.
The author is a freelance writer. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.