Articles
W. C. Peppé collaborated with the renowned nineteenth-century historian and indologist, Vincent Smith, on every aspect of the stupa’s excavation. Smith offered Peppé advice on the actual excavation, corresponded with him frequently and attempted the first translation of the inscription. The first detailed account of the excavation was co-authored by W.C. Peppé and V.A. Smith and published in The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.
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Vincent Smith served in the Indian Civil Service in a variety of magisterial and executive positions including terms as a district and sessions judge before eventually retiring as Commissioner of Faizabad in July 1900. After his retirement, Smith wrote several books including biographies of the Buddhist Emperor, Ashoka, the Mughal Emperor, Akbar, and a history of fine arts in India and Ceylon. He also published two comprehensive volumes on Indian history, The Early History of India and The Oxford History of India. Smith was honoured with a CIE (Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire) and was also awarded a doctorate by Dublin University in 1919
In both his book 'The Buddha and Dr. Führer' and the National Geographic documentary 'Bones of the Buddha', historian Charles Allen, suggests that the proximity of notorious forger Dr. Antoine Führer has cast doubts on the legitimacy of the discovery at Piprahwa. He then proceeds to demonstrate, in both the book and the documentary, that any such doubts are baseless. In the following essay Charles Alllen pieces together the letters, made available to the public on this website, to recreate the sequence of events initiated by the discovery at Piprahwa. Dr. Führer is shown to have offered advice in his letters but is clear that his commitments make it impossible for him to visit the excavation.
Charles Allen (1940-2020) was a British writer and historian who was born in India to British parents. He published over twenty books that focus largely on India and the Indian subcontinent in general. Allen's 'The Buddha and the Sahibs: the Men who Discovered India's Lost Religion' is the gripping story of a pioneering group of men who in the nineteenth century uncovered much of India's lost and forgotten past while The Buddha and Dr Fuhrer is the definitive description of the Piprahwa excavation itself. His book 'Ashoka: the Search for India's Lost Emperor' was published in 2012. His most recent work ‘The Prisoner of Kathmandu’ is a biography of Brian Hodgson, the ‘father of Himalayan studies’ and was published by Haus Books in 2015
In 1956 Humphrey Peppé - one of W.C. Peppé's three sons - was visited at Birdpur by Paripurnanand Verma. Verma had been visiting Lumbini, the Buddha's birthplace, and was among a group of pilgrims who stopped off at Birdpur to learn more about the discovery at Piprahwa over fifty years earlier. Humphrey taught the visitors about the background to the find and also informed Verma of Fleet's alternative translation of the inscription and his paper from 1906. Verma subsequently published the following article.
Before the opening of The Tree & Serpent exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, curator John Guy wrote an essay for Orientations bi-monthly magazine. John Guy asserts that previous excavations at Piprahwa offer compelling evidence that the site ‘was the location of the ancient capital city of the Shakya clan, Kapilavastu.’ Additionally, John Guy further concludes that ‘the Piprahwa bone relics represent the Shakya clan’s share of the original division by the Brahmin Drona, as implicit in the reliquary inscription.’
Previously senior curator of Indian Art at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, John Guy joined The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2008 and is now Florence & Herbert Irving Curator of South & South East Asian Art. Recent major exhibitions include Interwoven Globe 2013, Lost Kingdoms 2014 & The Tree & Serpent 2023. He is an elected fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and has served as an advisor to UNESCO
From May 31, 2019 - June 8th 2020 The Piprahwa Jewels remained at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York. ‘Charged With Buddha’s Blessings - Relics From An Ancient Stupa,’ tells the story of W.C.Peppé’s remarkable discovery at Piprahwa in 1898.
Kapilavatthu and the Sakyans in the early Buddhist Scriptures
Bhante Dhammika became a monk in 1976 and lived in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore for forty years before returning to his homeland, Australia, in 2017. His numerous books on Buddhism have been translated into over thirty languages. Since his first visit to Piprahwa shortly after its second excavation in 1973, Bhante has taken a deep interest in the site and its archaeology.