Sotheby’s calls last-minute halt to Hong Kong sale of Buddha relics after India intervenes

Auctioneers Sotheby’s announced on Wednesday morning that it was postponing the sale in Hong Kong later that day of sacred Buddhist relics in response to a demand from the Indian government.

New Delhi also demanded the immediate repatriation of the relics.

The “Piprahwa Gems of the Historical Buddha” were to have been one of the highlights of a fortnight of auctions ongoing in Hong Kong that are focused on Asian works of art.

According to a member of the family which consigned them for auction, the relics in question are “duplicates” of precious stones, pearls and pieces of gold believed to have been buried around 2,000 years ago with the corporeal remains of the Buddha.

Carved into floral and other motifs, they were unearthed in 1898 in what today is Uttar Pradesh state in India by a British engineer, William Claxton Peppé, in a stupa near the Buddha’s birthplace.

They were found with ash and bones which an inscription in the ancient Pali script described as the “relics of the Buddha, the August One”.