The Piprahwa relics of the Buddha, including an assortment of 1,800 exquisite jewellery and gemstone offerings, have undergone an extraordinary journey. After the Mahaparinirvana of the Buddha in Kushinagar circa 483 BCE, his remains were divided among eight kingdoms, including the Buddha’s Sakya clan of Kapilavastu. Brahmin Dona, who mediated the relic distribution, kept the urn used to collect the relics after his cremation while Moriyas received the ashes from the pyre. The recipients, in turn, built stupas enshrining them. After 250 years, Emperor Ashoka opened nine of the original stupas and redistributed them across his vast kingdom. This led to establishment of countless stupas, monasteries and communities across south Asia. He also sent missionaries to Sri Lanka, Central Asia and Greece, which marked an inflection point for Buddhism.
At the turn of the 20th Century, archaeologists found a stone pillar of Emperor Ashoka in the Terai region of Nepal. This helped them locate Lumbini; the birthplace of the Buddha. That breakthrough sparked a series of related discoveries in adjacent regions along the India-Nepal border. The area between Kapilavastu and Lumbini has many hillock-type mounds (locally known as Kots) incongruous to the geomorphology of the Gangetic plain. The archaeologists inferred that these were human-made structures. Buddhist scriptures mention a mass killing of the Sakya Clan by a rival king and experts surmised the Kots to be stupas or burial mounds associated with this event. Acting on the prevailing excitement, William Claxton Peppé, an engineer and landowner, grew curious about a similar nondescript mound on his estate in Piprahwa in present-day Uttar Pradesh, India.
In 1898, Peppé dug through the knoll in Piprahwa in the Birdpur estate, which locals associated with ancient ruins. He excavated a large sandstone casket containing five reliquary urns. One of the vases stood out for a peculiar inscription in Brahmi Script. Linguists interpreted the writing as, “This shrine for relics of the Buddha, the August One, is that of the Sakya’s, the brethren of the Distinguished One, in association with their sisters, and with their children and their wives.” The discovery helped ascertain the location of Kapilavastu, where the Buddha lived for the first 29 years of his life. This affirmed the historical Buddha, which sent ripples through the academic and spiritual worlds of the time.
These findings were further corroborated when Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) carried out an extensive excavation of the Piprahwa Stupa and adjoining areas between 1971 and 1977. Led by K. M Srivastava, the team found two more caskets with 22 bone fragments. Those were dated to the Fifth-Fourth Century BCE, coinciding with the latter half of the Buddha’s life. Moreover, their placement matched with the ritualistic burial patterns of the Sakya Clan. Crucially, they exhumed a large number of terracotta monastic seals explicitly mentioning ‘Kapilavastu Bikshu Sangha’ of Devaputra Vihara, a monastery named after the Kushana King Kanishka I (c. 78-102 CE). Srivastava’s team also located massive residential structures and a palace complex, about 1 km from Piprahwa. Considered as the administrative and residential heart of the Sakya Kingdom, the ruins revealed a sophisticated urban settlement with noteworthy advanced drainage system and water wells.
ASI concluded that the Piprahwa Stupa was built in three phases. The Sakya of Kapilavastu built the original structure c. 480 BCE, adhering to the Buddha’s instructions as ‘heaped up as rice is heaped in an alms bowl.’ Thus, the core of the stupa was no more than an earthen heap, enshrining the Buddha’s relics at its base. The part that W. C Peppé excavated was the second phase of its development. The structure was reinforced with baked red-bricks made with rice and straw that were prevalent in the Ashokan period. The third phase is dated during the Kushana era, 250 years after Ashoka’s reign. In this phase, the height of the stupa was raised and the base was squared-off.
The collection found in 1898 was promptly handed over to the Government of British India under the Indian Treasure Trove Act, 1878. The bones and ashes were gifted to King Rama V of Thailand. The famed urn with the inscription, along with other vases and the sandstone casket, and a majority of the precious jewels were placed in the Indian Museum, Kolkata. As the finder’s reward, Peppé was allowed to keep a fifth of the treasure. In 2025, his descendants decided to auction their share of the Piprahwa relics at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong. Speaking to the BBC, Chris Peppé, great-grandson of W.C Peppé, felt it was the “fairest and most transparent way” to return the relics to Buddhists. The assortment of precious stones was valued at over HK$ 100 million (£9.7m).
The private auction of the collection immediately sparked an international outcry. After intense negotiations, India successfully brought them back, thus setting a precedent for the return of antiquities taken during colonialism. It sparked a global repatriation debate and brought the Piprahwa relics into limelight, igniting public imagination about them once again. The whole of the Piprahwa relics and artefacts were placed under a single roof at an exposition called ‘The Light & Lotus: Relics of the Awakened One’ at Rai Pithora Cultural Complex in New Delhi in 2026.
The Piprahwa relics are among the most significant archaeological and spiritual discoveries in Buddhist history. Considered to be one-eighth share of Buddha’s remains that was entrusted to his clan, the relics provide direct physical and epigraphical evidence of the historical Buddha Sakyamuni. These relics are also referred to as the Holy Relics of Tathāgata, which is a Pali and Sanskrit term meaning ‘one who has thus gone’. It signifies an enlightened one who has attained perfection, understands reality as-it-is, and transcends the cycle of rebirth.
On 29 April, 2026, Ladakh witnessed a once-in-a-lifetime spiritual event when the remains of the historical Buddha blessed the land. The auspicious Piprahwa relics of the Awakened One descended at Kushok Bakula Rinpoche Airport with people lining up along the road to pay their respect and express spiritual devotion. From the Himalayas, the remains of the Buddha will bless the world with its message of reason, compassion and universal brotherhood. The Piprahwa relics will remain in Ladakh from 1 to 14 May, 2026 allowing people to experience their blessed presence.
Text by Lhundup Gyalpo
Photograph by Jigmet Takpa
Lhundup Gyalpo is the author of Betty’s Butter Tea – Stories from Ladakh.
Jigmet Takpa, IFS is former Principal Chief Conservator of Forest, Ladakh and currently serving as Nodal Officer for Sacred Exposition of Holy relics of Tathāgata Buddha, Administration of Union Territory of Ladakh.