India halts auction of sacred Buddha relics unearthed at Piprahwa in 1898. Scholars demand repatriation over colonial legacy.

Gemstones, precious metals, and some cremated remains of the Buddha were unearthed during an excavation in 1898 ...

The letter argued that their sale would violate Indian and international laws, as well as United Nations conventions on cultural property. Piprahwa stupa in Uttar Pradesh. Photo:Wikipedia ...

He informed that during the trip, the visiting delegation explored important sites such as the Ananda Bodhi Tree, Jetavana Monastery, Piprahwa Stupa, Mahaparinirvana Stupa, Dhamek Stupa, Ashokan ...

His ancestor, Mr. William Claxton Peppé, a British colonial engineer, excavated the Piprahwa Stupa in 1898 in what is now Uttar Pradesh. Without archaeological training, he removed sacred gems ...

The slick online catalogue entry for“Premium Lot 1, The Piprahwa Gems of the Historical Buddha” on the Sotheby's Hong Kong website was abruptly repla ...

Stephen A Murphy is a Senior Lecturer at SOAS, University of London. Prior to this he was a senior curator at the Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore, from July 2014-October 2020 where an ...

In 1898, the family's great grandfather, William Caxton Peppé, excavated a Buddhist reliquary monument (known as a stupa) on his estate in Piprahwa, northern India.

They are possibly the most sacred of all the Buddhist relics in the world. Five ancient urns, packed with ashes, gold, and sparkling gems, were found more than a century ago in a stupa in Piprahwa.

To that end, the letter, in a section you didn’t quote, went so far as to call William Claxton Peppé’s original excavation in 1898 at the Piprahwa Stupa a “grave robbery”.

This epoch making discovery was at a stupa site, Piprahwa. The first exposition of the sacred Relics of Kapilavastu outside India was in Sri Lanka in 1978. Subsequent expositions of the Relics took ...

In 1898, Peppé dug them out of a stupa on his estate in Piprahwa, present-day Uttar Pradesh, India. He sorted the relics into bone fragments and ash on the one hand, and what he considered gems and ...