Piprahwa Relics:
A portion of the holy Piprahwa Relics of Lord Buddha, brought from India, were on Saturday enshrined at Thimpu’s prominent monastery, Tashichhodzong, considered the seat of Bhutan’s highest spiritual and political institutions.
- The Piprahwa Relics are a collection of sacred artifacts discovered in 1898 at the Piprahwa Stupa in Uttar Pradesh,
- It is the site believed to be associated with ancient Kapilavastu, the homeland of Gautama Buddha.
- These relics are of immense archaeological and religious importance, as they are believed to be associated with Lord Buddha himself.
- These relics, unearthed by British colonial engineer William Claxton Peppé in 1898, include bone fragments believed to be those of Lord Buddha, along with crystal caskets, gold ornaments, gemstones, and a sandstone coffer.
- An inscription in Brahmi script on one of the caskets links the relics directly to the Sakya clan, to which Buddha belonged, indicating that these remains were enshrined by his followers around the third century BC.
- The British crown claimed Peppé’s find under the 1878 Indian Treasure Trove Act, with the bones and ash presented to the Buddhist monarch King Chulalongkorn of Siam.
- Most of the 1,800 gems went to what is now the Indian Museum in Kolkata, while Peppé was permitted to retain approximately a fifth of them.
- Piprahwa Relics are classified as ‘AA’ antiquities under Indian law, prohibiting their removal or sale.
- Further excavations by the Archaeological Survey of India between 1971 and 1977 uncovered additional steatite caskets containing 22 sacred bone relics, which are now preserved at the National Museum in New Delhi.
- A part of the Piprahwa Relics was passed down for generations in the Peppé family.
- These were put up for auction in Hong Kong in May 2025.
- However, it was successfully repatriated back to India through a public-private collaboration between the Government and the Godrej Industries Group.
