I’m trying to modulate the moral, ethical, and spiritual effrontery associated with the upcoming auction at Sotheby’s Hong Kong of a collection of around 300 sacred Buddhist relics which were extracted from the bones and ashes of a person believed to be Siddhartha Gautama. They are being sold by the descendants of the British colonist who excavated the Piprahwa Stupa in Uttar Pradesh in 1898, an Ashokan-era gravesite that some scholars argue was created to hold the eighth portion of the Buddha’s remains given to his Shakya clan after his cremation.
The Buddhist practice of relic, or śarīra, worship holds that visiting relics of the Buddha gives merit, but also that offerings of carved and natural gems, beads, gold, and other precious objects become “contact relics” by being mixed in with the Buddha’s remains. The Sotheby’s lot essay reads like a legal brief arguing for these objects’ unparalleled religious and historic significance, while also laying out the case against the extractive colonialism that stripped them from their religious context:
The first contact relic to be revered was the clay pot retained by Brahmin Drona after the subdivisions. Gem relics donated as relic offerings by Buddhists seeking merit, became contact relics after being mixed in with the bone relics of Shakyamuni Buddha. For Buddhist pilgrims, to visit the sacred landscape of places where the Historical Buddha had passed through and lived was also as much a part of this cult of relic worship as the veneration of relics themselves.
80% of the 1800 or so contact relics sifted out of the reliquary were taken by the Indian Museum in Kolkata. The rest, a collection of “duplicates,” stayed, largely unknown, in the colonizer’s family, until a trio of cousins inherited them in 2013. They’ve been making the museum rounds since, exhibited at the Rubin Museum, the Met, and the National Museum of Korea.
But while the provenance and historical significance of the Piprahwa Stupa relics is exceptional, the market for Buddha relics, or contact relics, for that matter, could be a bit saturated and diffuse.
As the inscription on the reliquary indicated, the Piprahwa Stupa held only the fraction of the Buddha’s remains which were allotted to his clan. The other 7/8ths, on the order of Emperor Ashoka, were to be installed in 84,000 stupas around the growing Buddhist world. The wikipedia page for Relics of The Buddha lists known relic holdings in 23 countries—plus some that have been taken up to heaven. [The absolute bare minimum credit where it’s due: soon after its discovery, Britain’s Indian government transferred the human remains from Piprahwa to “the sole remaining Buddhist sovereign in the world,” King Rama V of Siam, who then divided them up among Buddhist pilgrimage sites in Thailand and Sri Lanka.] And of course, relics of the Buddha generate new contact relics just by being in proximity to something, so sanctification is never more than a pilgrimage away.
And unlike the Benin Bronzes, where there are extant kingdoms, nation-states, and museums who could properly receive them, there is not an obvious entity to whom the Piprahwa Stupa relics could be restituted. And just as the heirs seem to have found some scholars of Buddhism to rationalize their plan, there could just as easily be plenty of opportunistic advocates saying, give them to me. Maybe the best thing is to watch the sale and let karma to sort it all out.
[SPEAKING OF KARMA UPDATE]: The Guardian reports that Indian government intervened to stop the sale, claiming ownership of all relics by the state, including the expatriated 334 pieces up for auction.