Buddha and the Jewel-filled Casket: The Piprahwa Reliquaries and the Cult of Relics in Early Indian Buddhism

I n the search for an understanding of the Buddhist landscape of early India, a central objective of investigators in the later 19th century was to identify the sites marked by the Buddha’s presence. These came to define the sacred geography of Buddhist India. In this quest they relied heavily on the travel accounts of the Chinese pilgrim-monks of the mid-1st millennium, whose often detailed itineraries served to guide their investigations. In December 1896 an inscribed Ashokan pillar was fully excavated at Lumbini in the Nepal Terai (fig. 1). The reading of the so-called Paderiya inscription by the Indologist Georg Bühler (1837–98) secured the most important location in the topography of ancient Buddhist India, that of the historical Buddha’s birthplace, Lumbini (Epigraphica Indica, vol. v, 1899). The newly revealed inscription compellingly stated that ‘here Buddha Shakyamuni was born’ and refers to the Lumbini garden with its grove of Sala trees, the place where, we are told in the canonical texts, his mother Queen Māyā gave birth clutching the branches of a Sala tree. This and the other sites that marked seminal moments in the historical Buddha’s lifetime were similarly celebrated, honoured with earthen mounds to enshrine relics, and in the mid-3rd century BCE, by polished stone commemorative pillars bearing inscriptions recording the benefaction and piety of the Mauryan King Ashoka (r. c. 268–32 BCE). Such was the pillar at Lumbini, excavated by Nepalese authorities at the instigation of Governor Commander-General Khadga Shumsher Rana (1861–1921). In the vicinity were large man-made earthen mounds that upon investigation proved to be stupas of great antiquity, some, it was surmised, dating back to the era of the Buddha’s demise, his mahāparinirvana. Fifty years of stupa archaeology, begun by Alexander Cunningham (1814–93) and Frederick Maisey (1825–92) at Sanchi in 1851, had revealed the potential of investigating these mounds. On occasion, the reliquaries recovered had dedicatory inscriptions, as at Sanchi where several famous lineage teachers are named (Cunningham, 1854). In 1892, Alexander Rea (1858–1924) excavated at a number of monumental stupa sites in the lower Krishna River region of southeastern India, most notably at Bhattiprolu and Ghantasala (Rea, 1894). The nearby famed stupa site of Amaravati had a long history of disturbance and little remained of its original deposits, though as recently as the 1970s a chance find in the stupa platform (āyaka) revealed multiple rock crystal reliquaries, now housed in the site museum of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). However, by the end of the 19th century no reliquaries had been identified that unambiguously claimed to contain the corporeal remains of the Buddha Shakyamuni. That was to change in January 1898.

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Inspired by the discoveries at Lumbini and the expanding horizon of major stupa sites in southern India, all of which received wide publicity in both the popular press of the day as well as learned journals, an English estate manager in India, William Claxton Peppé (1852–1936) (fig. 2), decided to investigate the largest of several ancient mounds on his property, Birdpur Estate. Located in the Basti division of northern Uttar Pradesh bordering on western Nepal, his estate was a mere 19 kilometres south of Lumbini. Peppé, a qualified engineer and surveyor, judged that he was living in the midst of an early Buddhist landscape, and in 1897 he cautiously sunk a trial trench into the summit of the largest mound on his property near the village of Piprahwa, only to discover a fired brick core. He ceased operations and summoned his friend, historian and magistrate Vincent Smith (1848–1920), to inspect the mound in October 1897. Smith confirmed that this was indeed an ancient stupa and advised Peppé to proceed with a full excavation. Peppé began the excavation the following January, revealing a monumental stupa of great antiquity (fig. 3). He recorded its diameter as just over 35 metres, comparable to Amaravati (42 metres) and Bhattiprolu (45 metres), two of the largest and earliest mahācetiyas of the Deccan. The latter had recently been excavated by Alexander Rea, whose report of 1894, accessible to Peppé, revealed striking similarities to Piprahwa, especially in the classes of relics and reliquaries recovered (Rea, 1894). Digging a vertical shaft from the existing summit into the heart of the stupa, as was the archaeological practice of the day, his workers revealed first a single steatite (soapstone) reliquary and, at a depth of about 5.5 metres into the solid brick core, a brick, vaulted relic chamber. Peppé ascertained that this level corresponded to ground level, seemingly having been positioned to align with the circumambulation pathway (pradakṣiṇapatha) (fig. 4).

The large, slim bricktypes (c. 40.5 x 26.5 x 7.6 cm) indicated Mauryan construction of around the 3rd century BCE, while the chamber was found to contain the most spectacular relic container ever recovered in Buddhist India: a sandstone coffer with a fitted lid of unprecedented size and finish, measuring 132 by 82 x 66.5 centimetres. It was found largely intact, each section meticulously carved from a monolithic block of sandstone. Inside the coffer were five reliquaries, four of lathe-turned steatite and one a unique masterpiece of rock crystal carving, with a handle in the form of a fish, a sign of auspiciousness (maṅgala), ingeniously hollowed and filled with gold-flower particles (fig. 5, right). One of the steatite reliquaries was inscribed on the upper section in Brahmi script (fig. 6). Wood containers were also noted by Peppé but these had largely disintegrated. These reliquaries together held the largest group of precious offerings ever recorded in a single deposit: around 1,800 gemstones and semi-precious stones (many shaped and drilled), rock crystal, pearls, shell, coral, embossed sheet gold and silver, granulated gold, as well as bone and ash assumed to be of great sanctity (figs 7a–b and 8) (Peppé and Smith, 1898).

Especially noteworthy were two miniature female figures in sheet gold of a style familiar from Mauryan ring stones, and an image of a bird (haṃsa) cut from red carnelian. The reliquary forms are directly comparable to those reported from Bhattiprolu in the lower Krishna River delta (fig. 9) and Sonari in the greater Sanchi region of Vidisha (fig. 10), both securely assigned to the early centuries BCE (Cunningham, 1854; Rea, 1894).

Both Peppé and Smith were astonished by the discovery. The monolithic stone coffer that housed the assorted reliquaries was carved from an imported stone, undoubtedly at great expense, and this, along with the lavish precious material offerings, has led to speculation that this must have been a royal commission, perhaps a legacy of emperor Ashoka's pilgrimage to the region in the 240s BCE. Indologist Harry Falk has suggested that given the coffer’s likely royal associations, it may have been produced at Ashoka’s instruction to hold the reliquaries at Lumbini, and subsequently was moved to Piprahwa for safety where it was interned when the stupa there was substantially rebuilt in the mid-3rd century BCE (Falk, 2013). Whether originating at Piprahwa or Lumbini, the coffer is unique in the archaeology of early Buddhist India, pointing to its deposition at Piprahwa being part of a highly significant relic enshrinement.

The magnificence of this discovery was surpassed in importance by the presence of a short inscription, lightly incised on the upper cover of one of the steatite reliquaries (fig. 5, second right). It is written in late Mauryan Brahmi script in the local Prakrit, Māgadhi, likely the language spoken by the Buddha, and states that this reliquary contained the corporeal remains of the Buddha. The readings of the most eminent Indologists of the day, Georg Bühler and Auguste Barth (1834–1916), closely align: ‘The receptacle of the relics of the blessed Buddha of the Shakyas [is the pious gift] of the brothers of Sukriti, jointly with their sisters, with their sons and their wives’ (Barth, 1907). At the time of its discovery, this was the first inscriptionally verified record of the Buddha remains. Its interpretation has nonetheless engendered much debate (see Srivastava, 1996, pp. 47–52). It has most recently been revisited by Falk as follows: ‘This enshrinement of the corporeal remnants of the Buddha [of the Shakyas], the Lord (is to the credit) of the [Shakya] brothers of the highly famous, together with their sisters, with their sons and wives’ (Falk, 2013, pp. 59–60). Falk’s interpretation differs from past readings in that he understands the word for ‘receptacle’ (conventionally translated as ‘reliquary’) to mean ‘enshrinement’, that is, the entire stupa and not just the reliquary within. In this reading he thus ascribes credit to the Shakya clan donors not only for the reliquary (and its contents), but for funding the construction of the stupa itself. As the recipients of a one-eighth portion of the original cremation pyre relics from the Brahmin Droṇa, the Shakya clan were responsible for housing it in a stupa ‘fit for a king’, as the Buddha instructed. One of the earliest extant Pali sources, the Mahāparinibbāna-sutta, appears to support this reading, telling that upon learning of the Buddha’s passing at Kuśīnagara (modern Kushinagar), the Shakyas sent a message to the Mallas, rulers of that region: ‘The Blessed One was the greatest of our clan. We are worthy to receive a portion of the relics [and] will erect a stupa over the relics and hold a festival in their honour’. It is therefore highly plausible that the first stupa at Piprahwa—probably an earthen mound—was founded immediately following the Buddha’s death around 400 BCE, and was substantially rebuilt—with fired bricks—at the time of King Ashoka, perhaps soon after 240 BCE, the probable date of his installation of the Paderiya commemorative pillar at nearby Lumbini. On this reasoning, the reliquaries and presumably much of their contents would date to around 250–200 BCE, with the notable exception of the bone relics. They are arguably best understood, as the inscription tells us, as the corporeal remains of the Buddha of the Shakya clan, the Buddha Shakyamuni, deposited in the original stupa foundation around 400 BCE.

The power of relics lay in their concealment as well as their display. Most were embedded deep within the core of a stupa, their unseen presence understood by devotees as not only a metaphor for the Buddha himself, but evoking his living presence. According to the Sri Lankan Buddhist chronicle the Mahāvaṃsa (17.3–4), the Indian missionary Mahinda of the mid-3rd century BCE described the efficacy of relics thus: ‘When the relics are seen, the Conqueror [the Buddha] is seen.’ 3rd century inscriptions associated with the Andhra Ikshvaku princess Cantisiri at Vijayapurī (Nagarjunakonda) open with the formulaic expression ‘The Perfect Buddha who is ensconced in the excellent relic’, whilst the Kopsakasa reliquary dated 26 CE describes the relics therein as ‘saturated, invigorated, enlivened by morality, concentration, and wisdom’. Relics were understood to not only have the highest sanctity, but to embody the very qualities of Buddhahood, even to invoke the Buddha’s presence itself. The display of relics was already a recurrent feature in the earliest Buddhist sculptural programme, that preserved on the enclosure railing (vedika) at Bharhut (c. 150–100 BCE), and seen widely, from Gandhara to Andhra, in the following centuries.

Indian Buddhism assigned great importance to sites sanctified by the Buddha’s presence. Whilst most are well defined archaeologically, some can be collaborated from textual sources. Kapilavastu, the location of the capital of the Shakya clan into which the historical Buddha was born as the prince Siddhartha, has been long contested. The confirmation in December 1896 of Lumbini as his birthplace supported a claim for it to be nearby in the Nepal Terai. Curiously, the capital of his clan was not originally celebrated as one of the four holy locations blessed by the Buddha’s presence. As recounted in the Pali Mahāparinibbāna-sutta, Lumbini (birth), Bodhgaya (Awakening), Sarnath (First Sermon), and Kushinagar (mahāparinirvana, death) are singled out as contact relics of place, worthy of the highest veneration through pilgrimage. This canonical source is regarded to be amongst the oldest and most reliable hagiographies of the Buddha’s later life and death.

The identification of Kapilavastu as being in the vicinity of Lumbini, suggested by the discovery of the inscribed Ashokan pillar, was challenged by further excavations undertaken at the Piprahwa stupa and monastic complex in 1971–75 by the Archaeological Survey of India (Srivastava, 1996). These campaigns included the first comprehensive excavation of the greater monastic complex at Piprahwa, which Peppé first surveyed in 1898. His unpublished plan of the site identified a number of substantial brick structures in the immediate vicinity of the Great Stupa, including a large vihara with multiple cells immediately to the east, and smaller monastic buildings located north and south (fig. 11). It was the large vihara with monastic cells that attracted the attention of the ASI campaign in the early 1970s (fig. 12). Clay sealings recovered there bore moulded inscriptions in Gupta-style script proclaiming: Om devaputra-vihāre kapilavastu-bhikhu-saṃghe (‘in the monastery of the devaputra, in the order of monks at Kalipavastu’) and Mahā-kapilavastu (‘Great Kapilavastu’). These offered compelling evidence that Piprahwa was the location of the ancient capital city of the Shakya clan, Kapilavastu, and continued to be known by that name for much of the first millennium. That Piprahwa was the site of a Great Stupa (mahācetiya), with a foundation credibly dating to the death of the Buddha and secure evidence of later Mauryan and Kushan renovations, further supports this identification, as does the internment of the richest assemblage of relic deposits recorded in Buddhist India.

The ASI’s excavation at the Piprahwa stupa revealed two additional reliquaries below the level of the coffer. Each was inside a brick enclosure and consisted of a steatite reliquary and a ceramic dish serving as a protective cover. Only bone deposits were recovered. The presence of bricks associates these reliquaries with the Ashokan-era renovation, undoubtedly carried out by the Shakya clan in honour of ‘their Buddha’, even if at Ashoka's instruction. The two reliquaries were of a standard lathe-turned type, not dissimilar to those from the coffer, and closely comparable to those recovered from some of the oldest reliquary deposits recorded in the Deccan (see figs 9 and 10). Of these, Bhattiprolu contained three rock crystal reliquaries, two of which are of the globular type with projecting flange, as replicated at Piprahwa in the steatite examples, suggesting a pan-Indian Buddhist reliquary style was prevalent in the late Mauryan period.

The sanctity of the bone relics at Piprahwa would have guaranteed that they were redeposited in the finest reliquaries of the day during the upgrading of the stupa from mud mound to brick dome. On such occasions, additional precious objects were routinely (fig. 14) added by new generations of donors seeking religious merit. Thus, it is reasonable to surmise that the Piprahwa bone relics represent the Shakya clan’s share of the original division by the Brahmin Droṇa, as implicit in the reliquary inscription, and that the seven surviving reliquary containers and their precious-material contents represent deposits at the time of the stupa’s rebuilding in brick during or shortly after the reign of Ashoka.

News of Peppé’s discovery at Piprahwa spread quickly and a Thai monk, the Ven. P. C. Jinavaravansa (1851–1935), visiting the holy sites of northern India at the time, heard of it (fig. 13). No ordinary monk, he was Prince Prisdang Chumsai, second cousin of the Siamese monarch King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) (r. 1873–1910). Prince Chumsai was educated at King’s College, London, and was amongst the most distinguished Thai ambassadors of his generation, having served at many of the courts of Europe (fig. 14). He was also one of the architects of the first Siamese constitution of 1885, although his progressive views on constitutional reform were not well received by Rama V, who recalled him to Siam in 1896. Out of favour at court, he departed for Sri Lanka, where he was ordained as a monk of the Waskaduwa Vihara, Colombo. He subsequently embarked on a pilgrimage to the holy sites of Buddhism in north India. There he heard of the Piprahwa discovery, widely reported in the popular press of the day. He travelled in haste to Birdpur Estate in April 1898 and was received by Peppé as a house guest. During his stay he drafted a petition, no doubt with Peppé’s knowledge and support, to persuade the Government of India to surrender the corporeal relics (śarīradhātu)—bones and ash—to him for presentation to the King of Siam, arguing that as ‘the sole and remaining Buddhist sovereign in the world, to whom Buddhists must look for patronage and protection’ the Siamese king had sole right to possess and distribute the relics to those with legitimate claim (Memorandum on Buddha’s Relics, 9 April 1898, written at Birdpur Estate; Peppé Archive, Royal Asiatic Society). Remarkably, his petition, supported by Vincent Smith and William Hoey (1849–1919), both senior officers in the Indian Civil Service, was granted and the sacred bone relics were sent to King Chulalongkorn through diplomatic channels less than a year later, in February 1899. In the spirit of Ashoka, the king of Siam had the relics subdivided. One portion was enshrined at the royal temple of Wat Saket in Bangkok, where they remain today. The remaining portions were distributed in gold caskets to representatives of the sangha from Myanmar and Sri Lanka. The relic coffer, reliquaries, and the bulk of the relics—gemstones, pearls, gold and silver flowers, and rock crystal—were inventoried by Peppé and promptly reported to the authorities. Within the year, they were sent to the Indian Museum in Kolkata. The coffer can today be seen in the museum’s courtyard, whilst the reliquaries and contents reside in a museum safe. William Peppé was permitted by the colonial government to retain 331‘duplicate items’, which remain with the Peppé family and are presented in the exhibition ‘Tree & Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India, 200 BCE–400 BCE’*.

*The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 21 July–13 November 2023, and the National Museum of Korea, Seoul, 22 December–14 April 2024. Accompanied by a 340-page publication by John Guy with additional contributors, distributed by Yale University Press.

Selected bibliography (chronological)

• Alexander Cunningham, The Bhilsa Topes: Buddhist Monuments of Central India, London, 1854.
• Georg Bühler, ‘Preliminary Notes on a Recently Discovered Sakya Inscription’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (April 1898): 387–89.
• W. C. Peppé and Vincent Smith, ‘Piprahwa Stupa, Containing Relics of Buddha’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 30, no. 3 (1898): 573–88.
• Auguste Barth, ‘The Inscription on the Piprahwa Vase’, Indian Antiquary 36 (1907): 117–24.
• K. M. Srivastava, Excavations at Piprahwa and Gandawaria, no. 94 of Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India, New Delhi, 1996.
• H. Falk, ‘Ashes of the Buddha’, Bulletin of the Asia Institute 27, 2013 (2017): 43–75.

This article first appeared in the July/August 2023 issue of Orientations.