Buddha Relics Whose Jewels Nearly Went To Auction Reach A Himalayan Monastery

Relics of the Buddha held at India’s National Museum have been carried to the Himalayas for public veneration, beginning a three-week exposition at monasteries in Arunachal Pradesh, in the far northeast of the country.

Image Via: PIB India

The relics were received on 31 October at Tawang Monastery, the largest Buddhist monastery in India and the birthplace of the sixth Dalai Lama, by the state’s chief minister and the union culture minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat. They remain there until 7 November, move to Bomdila until 13 November and then to the Golden Pagoda at Namsai until 20 November, returning to Delhi the following day. The arrival coincided with Lhabab Duchen, which marks the Buddha’s descent from the heavenly realm in the Tibetan tradition.

They come from Piprahwa in Uttar Pradesh, a site that is associated with ancient Kapilavastu and with the Shakya clan into which the Buddha was born, and they have a bit complicated history.

In 1898 a British estate manager, William Claxton Peppé, excavated a stupa on his land there and found bone and ash in caskets, alongside roughly 350 jewels. An inscription identified the deposit as relics of the Buddha of the Shakya clan, making it one of the most significant finds in Buddhist archaeology. The colonial administration took possession and presented much of it to the king of Siam, who passed portions to Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Peppé was permitted to keep about a fifth of the jewels, and they stayed in his family for four generations.

Last year his great-grandson consigned them to Sotheby’s in Hong Kong, where they were expected to fetch around 13 million dollars. He said an auction was the fairest way of returning them to Buddhists. India objected, arguing the sale breached Indian and international law and United Nations conventions, and threatened legal action. The sale was called off. The collection of 349 jewels was subsequently bought by the industrialist Pirojsha Godrej, in an arrangement the government described as a public-private partnership, with part of it lent to the National Museum for five years. The price was not disclosed.

An exhibition travelling with the relics sets out that history, from the excavation to the return. A conference on the spread of Buddhism through the Himalaya was held at Tawang on Monday. The exposition is organised by the culture ministry with the Arunachal Pradesh government, the International Buddhist Confederation and the National Museum.