A row over Buddhist relics: Who owns them, where they should belong?

HKFP

10-05-2025

With all due respect for what seems to be an unusually charming and harmless religion, it is surprising, for me at least, to see a public row over Buddhist relics. I thought that was a Christian thing.
I recall when I was still a student, enjoying Albert Finney playing Martin Luther in the play of the same name, lamenting that 'Jesus Christ had 12 disciples and 15 of them are buried in Germany.'
John Calvin, the most austere of Protestant reformers, was similarly baffled by the numbers, writing that if all the relics were catalogued, it would be found that 'every apostle has four or more bodies and every saint two or three.'
Erasmus was also suspicious. 'What would Jerome say,' he wrote, 'could he see the Virgin's milk exhibited for money; the miraculous oils; the portions of the true cross, enough, if collected, to freight a large ship?'
And indeed, the field does seem to attract the unscrupulous, like the man who claimed to have found the coffin of Jesus' brother (he allegedly had four brothers and a sister). This manifest forgery was at least surfaced plausibly in the Holy Land. What can we say for the enterprising individual who claimed he had found part of Noah's diary … in Michigan?
Anyway, the story that sent me scurrying down all these historical byways concerned a stash unearthed in India by a colonial official called William Claxton Peppé in 1898.
This included a pot inscribed with the claim that it contained some of the bones of the Buddha, which, according to the usual unreliable sources, were distributed to various pious monarchs after his cremation. There were also other boxes and a variety of small jewels.
The finder was not the keeper. Colonial attitudes to such matters had improved by this time, and the finder passed the lot to the Imperial Museum in what was then called Calcutta. The bones were then passed to the nearest Buddhist monarch, the King of Siam.
Some of them have since been exported to various Buddhist centres, where they are venerated. The finder, though, was allowed to keep some of the jewels on the grounds that they were straight duplicates of other items in the collection.
These were then passed down his family until last week, when it was announced that they would be auctioned in Hong Kong. Cue bitter complaints from India's (aggressively Hindu) government, after which the auction was postponed for negotiations.
The jewels are, according to the Indian government's complaint, 'inalienable religious and cultural heritage of India and the global Buddhist community.'
Well, I am not sure about the cultural heritage. Most of the pieces appear to be very small and not much worked. It may be, of course, that like the profusion of gold bees found in the tomb of the early Frankish King Childeric I, the jewels were attached to a garment that has since rotted away.
The religious claim rests on two questionable pedestals: that the interred bones were in fact those of the Buddha, who had died at least 200 years before the burial (estimates of the date vary) and that the jewels are 'relics' because of their entirely posthumous physical proximity to the remains.
Inevitably, these two questions have been rather overshadowed by two other issues. Should items that found their way out of colonies while they were colonies be the property of the liberated former colonies? Is it appropriate that items of sacred significance to some people should be offered in the marketplace as cultural commodities for purchase by non-believers?
The would-be vendor, Chris Peppé – a descendant of William Claxton Peppé, says he has done some research and in Buddhist circles these items are not regarded as sacred relics. It appears that Buddhists are not as keen on the whole relics idea as Catholics used to be.
This may be so. But I fear few readers will have been impressed by Mr P's claim that the family looked into donating the jewels to a temple or museum but decided that an auction was 'the fairest and most transparent way to transfer these artefacts to Buddhists.' Too convenient.
Also, I must say that historically, the idea of 'relics' was by no means confined to remains of the body of the holy individual concerned.
Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, for example, had a famous collection of more than 5,000 relics. This included a piece of the Saviour's beard, the inevitable particle of the Virgin Mary's milk, St Anne's thumb, and 76 pieces of 'bones from holy places which, on account of faded writing, can no longer be read and identified.'
But there was also a twig from the burning bush, 'one piece of the diaper in which He was wrapped, one piece of the straw on which the Lord lay when he was born,' one sample each of the gold and myrrh presented by the three kings, and no less than 32 fragments of the Holy Cross.
The collection was shown to the public for the last time in 1522, but the souvenir catalogue, with illustrations by German painter Lucas Cranach the Elder, can be seen in museums. Which is perhaps where this whole story belongs.
HKFP is an impartial platform & does not necessarily share the views of opinion writers or advertisers. HKFP presents a diversity of views & regularly invites figures across the political spectrum to write for us. Press freedom is guaranteed under the Basic Law, security law, Bill of Rights and Chinese constitution. Opinion pieces aim to point out errors or defects in the government, law or policies, or aim to suggest ideas or alterations via legal means without an intention of hatred, discontent or hostility against the authorities or other communities.