{"id":47561,"date":"2025-11-09T12:00:17","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T06:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=47561"},"modified":"2025-11-10T18:02:24","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T12:32:24","slug":"piprahwa-gems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/piprahwa-gems\/","title":{"rendered":"Piprahwa Gems"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><b>Piprahwa Relics Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A portion of the holy Piprahwa Relics of Lord Buddha, brought from India, were on Saturday enshrined at Thimpu&#8217;s prominent monastery, Tashichhodzong, considered the seat of Bhutan\u2019s highest spiritual and political institutions.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>About Piprahwa Relics<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Piprahwa Relics are a collection of <\/span><b>sacred artifacts discovered in 1898 at the Piprahwa Stupa in Uttar Pradesh, I<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ndia.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is the <\/span><b>site <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">believed to be <\/span><b>associated with ancient Kapilavastu,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the <\/span><b>homeland of Gautama Buddha.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These <\/span><b>relics <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">are of immense archaeological and religious importance, as they are believed to be <\/span><b>associated with Lord Buddha himself.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These relics, <\/span><b>unearthed by British colonial engineer William Claxton Pepp\u00e9 in 1898, include bone fragments believed to be those of Lord Buddha,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> along with<\/span><b> crystal caskets, gold ornaments, gemstones, <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and a <\/span><b>sandstone coffer.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An <\/span><b>inscription in Brahmi script on one of the caskets links the relics directly to the Sakya clan, to which Buddha belonged, <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">indicating that these remains were enshrined by his followers around the third century BC.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><b>British crown claimed Pepp\u00e9\u2019s find <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">under the 1878 Indian Treasure Trove Act, with the<\/span><b> bones and ash presented to the Buddhist monarch King Chulalongkorn of Siam.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Most of the 1,800 gems went to<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> what is now the <\/span><b>Indian Museum in Kolkata<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, while <\/span><b>Pepp\u00e9 <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">was <\/span><b>permitted to retain approximately a fifth of them.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Piprahwa Relics are<\/span><b> classified as \u2018AA\u2019 antiquities under Indian law, prohibiting their removal or sale.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Further excavations by the Archaeological Survey of India <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">between 1971 and 1977 <\/span><b>uncovered additional steatite caskets<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> containing 22 sacred bone relics, which are now <\/span><b>preserved at the National Museum in New Delhi.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>A part <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">of the Piprahwa <\/span><b>Relics was passed down for generations in the Pepp\u00e9 family.\u00a0<\/b>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"2\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These were <\/span><b>put up for auction<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in Hong Kong in May 2025. <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"2\">However, it was successfully r<b style=\"font-size: inherit;\">epatriated back to India through a public-private collaboration between the Government and the Godrej Industries Group.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Source<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.deccanherald.com\/world\/buddha-relics-enshrined-in-bhutans-prominent-monastery-to-be-kept-for-public-veneration-3791539\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">DH<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Piprahwa Relics are a collection of sacred artifacts discovered in 1898 at the Piprahwa Stupa in Uttar Pradesh, India. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":47567,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[449,246,21,23],"class_list":{"0":"post-47561","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"tag-piprahwa-gems","9":"tag-prelims-current-affairs","10":"tag-prelims-pointers","11":"tag-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","12":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}