Ancient Buddha relics sold to India after $13 million auction postponed
HONG KONG — A collection of ancient gems linked to Buddha’s remains has been repatriated to India after authorities slammed their planned auction by Sotheby’s in Hong Kong.
“A joyous day for our cultural heritage!” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Wednesday in a post on X.
The Piprahwa Gems were sold to the Indian conglomerate Godrej Industries Group, which will put the dazzling collection “on public display for years to come,” Sotheby’s said in a statement Thursday.
The auction house declined to reveal how much Godrej paid for the gems. “Due to the confidential nature of private sales, the final sale price will not be disclosed,” Sotheby’s told NBC News.
The 334 gems had been expected to net upward of 100 million Hong Kong dollars ($12.9 million) at auction.
The gemstones are part of a cache of more than 1,800 artifacts, mostly housed at the Indian Museum in Kolkata. Critics of the planned auction of the gems, which British colonial landowner William Claxton Peppé dug up on his northern Indian estate in 1898, said it was offensive to the world’s 500 million Buddhists and a violation of Indian and international law and United Nations conventions.
Many Buddhists believe the gemstones, named after the town in what is now the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, where they were buried in a stupa, or funerary monument, around 200 to 240 B.C., are imbued with the presence of Buddha, on top of whose cremated remains the gemstones were said to be enshrined.
“It would make every Indian proud that the sacred Piprahwa relics of Bhagwan Buddha have come home after 127 long years,” Modi said, referring to Buddha as a god in Hindi.
“These sacred relics highlight India’s close association with Bhagwan Buddha and his noble teachings,” he added.
Sotetheby’s postponed the planned auction of the gems in May after the Indian government threatened legal action and demanded their repatriation.
The Indian government said at the time that Peppé’s great-grandson, Chris Peppé, a TV director and film editor based in Los Angeles, lacked the authority to sell the gems. New Delhi also accused Sotheby’s of “participating in continued colonial exploitation” by facilitating the sale and said that the gems must be returned to India if Peppé no longer wished to be their custodian.
“I hope they will go to someone who really values them,” Peppé wrote in a February piece for Sotheby’s accompanying the auction catalogue.
They were put on public exhibition in Hong Kong in the days leading up to the auction in three glass cases, containing shimmering penny-sized silver and gold-leaf stars embossed with symbols. They also include pearls, beads and flowers cut from precious stones, including amethyst, topaz, garnet, coral and crystal.
Sotheby’s later announced the auction had been postponed “with the agreement of the consignors,” three descendants of the British colonial landowner who excavated them.
On Thursday, the auction house said it had “facilitated the return” of the gems to India, thanking the Peppé family.
“This completes our active search over the past two months to identify the best possible custodian for the Gems,” Sotheby’s said.