Latest news with #NamanAhuja
Express Tribune
07-05-2025
- Business
- Express Tribune
Buddha's jewels dubbed sacred, swerve auction
Auction house Sotheby's said on Wednesday that it had postponed the auction of a collection of hundreds of jewels linked to Buddha's corporeal relics after India's government threatened legal action and demanded the jewels be returned, reported Reuters. The sale of the collection, known as the Piprahwa Gems of the Historical Buddha Mauryan Empire, Ashokan Era, circa 240-200 BCE, has drawn criticism from Buddhist academics and monastic leaders. India's government said in a May 5 letter to the auction house that the relics constituted "inalienable religious and cultural heritage of India and the global Buddhist community. Their sale violates Indian and international laws, as well as United Nations conventions." The auction was due to take place on Wednesday morning at Sotheby's headquarters in the Asian financial hub. Sotheby's said in an emailed statement that in light of the matters raised by India's government "and with the agreement of the consignors, the auction ... has been postponed. This will allow for discussions between the parties, and we look forward to sharing any updates as appropriate." Notice of the gems sale had been removed from its auction house on Wednesday and the website page promoting the auction was no longer available. Sotheby's had said in February that the 1898 discovery of the relics at Piprahwa in northern India ranked "among the most extraordinary archaeological discoveries of all time". India said that the proposed auction "offends the sentiments of over 500 million Buddhists worldwide," adding that the sale violated core Buddhist ethics and disrupted "sacred tradition." Earlier, as reported by the BBC, historians, Buddhist leaders, and scholars, all of whom questioned the ethics of commodifying sacred relics. "Are the relics of the Buddha a commodity that can be treated like art?" asked Naman Ahuja, an art historian based in Delhi. "If the seller is a custodian, then custodianship implies responsibility, not ownership." Critics also argued that had the sale gone through, it would have been part of a larger colonial legacy. "This auction continues the violence of extraction," said Ashley Thompson of SOAS and curator Conan Cheong. "It reduces consecrated relics to collectibles, ignoring their sacred meaning to millions of Buddhists." Questions remain over who gets to define what constitutes human remains. Many Buddhist practitioners believe the jewels, found with ashes and bone, are themselves part of the sanctified relics. As Ahuja noted, "These jewels are not just artifacts. They carry the weight of spiritual heritage and colonial history. Governments must act."
CBC
06-05-2025
- Business
- CBC
Sotheby's accused of 'colonial exploitation' as it auctions gems found with Buddha's remains
Art historian Naman Ahuja says the Piprahwa gems are "the cultural property of the world." But soon they'll be the legal property of the highest bidder. On Wednesday morning, the prestigious broker Sotheby's will auction off the gems, which were once mixed with the cremated remains of the Buddha, on behalf of the heir of a British landowner who unearthed them 127 years ago. The sale has drawn the ire of art experts, Buddhist leaders, and the government of India, which has demanded the "immediate cessation" of the sale and accused the auction house of "participating in continued colonial exploitation." "It's quite galling to hear that sacred relics can be commodified," Ahuja, a professor of Buddhist art at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, told As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal. "One didn't know that objects that were interred with the original ashes of the Buddha — you know, the offerings that pilgrims and people who actually belonged to the family of the Buddha had made — could be treated in this manner." Neither Sotheby's nor its client, Chris Peppé, have responded to CBC's request for comment. 'Extraordinary things' The collection includes amethysts, corals, pearls, garnets and gold and more, some worked into pedants and beads. Sotheby's calls them "a kaleidoscopic range of precious materials" that are of "unparalleled religious, archaeological and historical importance." On that point, Ahuja and Sotheby's are in agreement. "They're extraordinary things," Ahuja said with a gleeful giggle as he described seeing them in person at the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. "They are quite beautiful to behold." But long before they were displayed in museums, or prepared for auction, they were mixed in with ashes and bone fragments of Siddhartha Gautama, who is commonly referred to as the Buddha, and buried for thousands of years in a funerary monument, known as a stupa, in present-day Uttar Pradesh, India. There they remained until 1898, when William Claxton Peppé, an English estate manager, had them excavated. According to the Guardian newspaper, the British crown claimed Peppé's find under the 1878 Indian Treasure Trove Act. The bones and ash were given to the Buddhist monarch King Chulalongkorn of Siam, while most of the 1,800 gems went to what is now the Indian Museum in Kolkata. But about one-fifth of the remaining gems, which Sotheby's describes as "duplicates," remained with Peppé and were passed down through his heirs — most recently L.A.-based film director and producer Chris Peppé. In an article on the Sotheby's website, Chris Peppé describes his family's relationship with the relics as one of "custodianship." "From the time we received the Piprahwa gem relics, my cousins and I have sought to make them available for viewing by the public (ideally a Buddhist public) to see at no cost to the institution borrowing them," he wrote. Over the last six years, he says, the gems have been displayed at museums around the world. Going forward, he said, he wants "the power of these gems to reach everyone, Buddhist or not." "So as our custodianship of the Piprahwa gem relics ends, I hope they will go to someone who really values them. And I hope that many people will be able to see the gems and connect with the Buddhists who gave them over 2,000 years ago, with our shared human experience of wonder and awe and with the Buddha and his teachings." India issues legal notice Peppé told BBC News that he and his family looked into donating the relics to temples and museums, but that they "all presented different problems on closer scrutiny." "An auction seems the fairest and most transparent way to transfer these relics to Buddhists and we are confident that Sotheby's will achieve that," he said. The Indian government, however, believes the best thing to do with the gems is give them back. The country's ministry of culture has issued a legal notice to Peppé and Sotheby's Hong Kong demanding they halt the auction, repatriate the relics and issue a public apology. The notice, posted in full on Instagram, accuses Peppé and Sotheby's of contravening both Indian and international law protecting items of cultural heritage, and threatens to issue legal proceedings against them "before competent international bodies and Indian and Hong Kong courts." Asked whether this threat will be enough to halt the auction, Ahuja said: "It must." "The ethical and the correct thing would be to have Sotheby's and the Peppé family and others recognise that these are the inalienable heritage of the world, and to co-operate in their dissemination and their safe custody, the transfer of their safe custody to India for the benefit of all Buddhists."
