Righteous revolt against auctioning the Buddha's looted 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 replaced on May 7 with a single line notification: 'The auction has been postponed.'
Shortly afterwards, the associated webpages went blank. The only evidence remaining on Sotheby's Hong Kong website was an entry on the Piprahwa gems' history and a short YouTube promotional clip for the sale (below).
Sotheby's had first announced its intention to auction the relics on February 6, 2025. Discovered in northern India in 1898 and thought to date to the third century BC, it was estimated they would fetch up to HK$100 million (US$12.8 million).
The collection was consigned by Chris Peppé on behalf of his family, who had inherited the relics from his great grandfather, William Caxton Peppé – a 19th-century British colonial landowner who owned an estate in India.
Reaction was muted at first, but as a scholar who researches the early history and archaeology of Buddhism and issues surrounding loot and restitution, I was gravely concerned by this proposed sale.
Fortunately, I was not alone, and thanks to detailed research of SOAS colleagues such as Conan Cheong, Ashley Thompson and Thai academic Pipad Krajaejun, as well as protests from Buddhist devotees worldwide, a groundswell of disapproval began to grow.
A letter sent to Sotheby's by the British Maha Bodhi Society, and shared with me, states:
Millions around the world, whether Buddhist or not, have religious and ethical concerns and believe that the sale of sacred items is morally wrong and offensive … Members of the Buddhist sangha [monkhood], as well as lay followers from all traditions, are appalled that the gems offered in devotional acts by the Buddha's own clan, have been separated from his corporeal remains and are now being sold to the highest bidder.
This disapproval turned into a tidal wave on May 5, two days before the planned auction, with the intervention of the Indian government – which is now threatening legal action against both Sotheby's and the Peppé family, demanding that the relics be repatriated to India.
In terms of his rights and those of his relatives to sell the relics, Chris Peppé previously had told the Guardian newspaper: 'Legally, the ownership is unchallenged.'
Sotheby's confirmed to me that it and the Indian government are 'currently in discussions regarding the Piprahwa Gems of the Historical Buddha, and are pleased to be working together to find the best possible outcome for all parties.'
To understand how we reached this impasse, we must cast our eyes back to 19th-century British colonial India, then forward again to 2018-2023 and a number of high-profile exhibitions at some of the world's most prestigious museums.
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. He uncovered what is now considered by scholars to be the most significant cache of Buddhist relics found in India.
The discovery included five reliquary urns containing gems, ash and bone fragments. An inscription on one suggested the remains could be those of the historical Buddha, who is thought to have been cremated around 200 years prior to their burial.
The Indian Treasure Trove Act of 1878 allowed Peppé to keep a portion referred to as 'duplicates' (an art-history term used to justify the dividing up of similar material from a hoard or archaeological site that is very much frowned upon today).
The British authorities gifted the bones and ash to King Chulalongkorn of Siam, who enshrined them in Bangkok and distributed portions to other Buddhist nations.
The majority of the 1,800 gems, meanwhile, had been deposited in the Indian Museum in Kolkata. It is a longstanding issue, however, that the bulk of this collection remains locked away in the museum safe, off-limits to Buddhists, the wider public, and scholars alike.
Perhaps the publicity surrounding the Peppé portion of the reliquary contents might prompt that museum to review this policy after 120 years.
About ten years ago, armed with his inherited share of the relics, Chris Peppé began reaching out to museums worldwide, proposing to loan them. This, he recently stated, was to make them accessible to Buddhist devotees and the general public alike. Five museums took him up on the offer and, starting in 2018, duly curated high-profile exhibitions around them or incorporated them into larger shows.
Chief among these was the 2023 blockbuster Tree And Serpent: Early Buddhist Art of India at the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, where Peppé took part in the exhibition symposium, delivering a lecture on the relics.
Objects with a history of celebrated exhibitions tend to reach higher prices at auction. Whether the Peppé family intentionally built up the Piprahwa exhibition history with the aim of eventually auctioning the relics is unclear. I contacted Chris Peppé directly and posed this question to him, but he declined to comment.
Tellingly, the Sotheby's website included a scholarly article from 2023 in Orientations Magazine by John Guy, curator of the Tree and Serpent exhibition. But it was dated to February 2025, which perhaps inadvertently made it appear to have been written as an endorsement of the sale.
In fact, the paper had been published to coincide with the exhibition. I contacted Guy about this, and he responded by saying:
I regard the linking of my publication to the Sotheby's sale as highly inappropriate and this was done without my knowledge or consent. The Met's lawyers demanded that it be removed immediately, which was done, along with a written apology from Sotheby's.
When I spoke to Nancy Wong at Sotheby's, she confirmed this, saying: 'We apologized and immediately removed the relevant reference from our website.'
Given the events of the past few weeks, the Peppé family now finds themselves in a bind. With the Indian government engaged, it may not be long before Sotheby's drops them and the relics altogether.
Despite their cultured facades and high-society veneers, auction houses are businesses, designed to make a profit, and any potential buyers may have been thoroughly scared off by recent events.
It is hard, however, for me to have much sympathy for the family who could have prevented this whole affair by donating the relics to a Buddhist community or museum in the first place.
Stephen A Murphy is Pratapaditya Pal Senior Lecturer in Curating and Museology of Asian Art, SOAS, University of London
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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