India seeks to stop selling jewelry associated with Buddha Remains

The Indian government has threatened to take court action against Sotbis in Hong Kong, unless they have stopped the upcoming auction of jewelry related to the remains of the Buddha and demanded their return to India.

The auction to be held on Wednesday, Includes gems found buried With the bone fragments of the Buddha more than a hundred years ago.

The Indian Ministry of Culture said the sale “violated Indian and International Laws, as well as the UN Conventions” and demanded that jewelry be treated as sacred. The sale has also been convicted by several Buddhists and art scientists worldwide.

Sotheby’s told the BBC that the auction would continue as planned.

The Indian Ministry has published a letter that sent to Sotbis and Chris Pepe, the great -grandson of William Claxton Pepe, who excavated the relics in 1898, of InstagramS

The publication states that Sotheby answered the legal notice and assured that the question receives its “full attention”.

The publication states that Pepppé “lacks authority” to sell the relics and blame the auction house for participation in “continuation of colonial operation” by facilitating sale.

William Claxton Pepppé was an English real estate manager who dug the stupa in a pikov, south of Lumbini, the belief in the Buddha’s birthplace. He revealed relics inscribed and illuminated nearly 2000 years ago.

The findings include nearly 1,800 precious stones, including rubies, topaz, sapphires and gold sheets with colorful stored inside a brick chamber. This site is already in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

William Pepe betrayed the precious stones, relics and relics to the colonial Indian government, from where the bone relics went to the Buddhist King of Siam (Rama V). Five relics, a stone chest and most other relics were sent to the Indian Museum in Kolka – then the Imperial Museum of Calcutta.

Only a small part of the duplicates he was allowed to keep remained in the Peppé family, Chris Pepe said. (Sotheby’s notes say Pepppé is allowed to keep approximately one fifth of the discovery.)

The Indian ministry said the labeling of jewelry as “duplicates” was misleading and that these relics constitute India’s “irrevocable religious and cultural heritage.

The jewelry “cannot be treated as specimens”, but as “the sacred body and initially view the contributions to the sacred body” of the Buddha, the publication said.

The ministry also questions the custody of jewelry.

It states that sellers who call themselves the guardians of the precious stones have no right to “alienate or assign the asset”, which he calls “the extraordinary heritage of humanity.”

The statement also mentions a ten -year report that says the relics were left forgotten in a shoe box, suggesting that custody also includes “safe maintenance”.

The Indian ministry has asked for a public apology from Sotheby’s and Pepppé. In addition, they asked them to fully reveal all the records that track the ownership of the relics that are still in their possession or transfer from them.

The ministry said that failure to comply with their requests would lead to court proceedings in India and Hong Kong for “Violation of the Cultural Heritage Act”.

He also threatened to launch a “public campaign” that emphasizes Sotbis’s role in perpetuating the “colonial injustice”.

Earlier, Chris Pepe told the BBC that the family was striving to donate the relics, but all the options presented problems and the auction seemed “the most just and transparent way to transfer these Buddhists’ relics.”

Chris Pepe wrote that the jewelry had switched from his great -grandson to his cousin, and in 2013 two other cousins ​​came to him.

In the last six years, the gems have participated in major exhibitions, including one in Met in 2023. The Peppé family has also released a website to “share our research.”

But in his statement, the Indian ministry said that the custody of jewelry was “monetized through publicity and exhibition”.

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