Jewels linked to Buddha remains go to auction, sparking ethical debate
6 comments
·May 4, 2025cyberpunk
Appalling. Who has any right to sell such items, if they are indeed genuine.
mv
whoever owns them.
taylorfinley
Are you trying to be cute? These were clearly stolen, a century passing doesn't make it any less a shameful crime.
sparky_z
From the article...
"William Peppé handed the gems, relics and reliquaries to the colonial Indian government: the bone relics went to the Buddhist King of Siam (Rama V). Five relic urns, a stone chest and most other relics were sent to the Indian Museum in Kolkata - then the Imperial Museum of Calcutta.
Only a small "portion of duplicates", which he was allowed to keep, remained in the Peppé family, he notes. (Sotheby's notes say Peppé was allowed to keep approximately one-fifth of the discovery.)
Sources told the BBC the auction house considers the "duplicates" to be original items considered surplus to those donated, which the "Indian government permitted Peppé to retain". "
If this is true, it doesn't sound "clearly stolen" to me. Frankly, if there was serious reason to doubt that story, I would have expected the article to quote somebody willing to say so, rather than just expressing vague unease and general hand-wringing about the optics of the situation.
nprateem
It was probably never much of a discovery anyway. A lot of stupas containing relics are often well-known as doing so (or at least claiming to).
This was little more than robbing a church or museum.
Sick. These are stolen goods.
The Buddha accepted gifts as tokens of faith but only kept three jewels for himself: Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, which increase in total value when shared, unlike hoarding, the zero-sum game we play.