The Piprahwa Discovery

In late summer 2025, the Kolkata museum recovered two hundred and twenty one of the more than 1200 gems it had originally received from W.C.Peppé, following his 1898 excavation at Piprahwa that revealed reliquary urns containing what are understood to be the Buddha’s bone relics. These votive offerings were placed alongside the Buddha’s remains approximately two centuries after his cremation at Kushinagar, during the reconstruction of the stupa under Emperor Asoka. They are now shown together with 349 gems retained by the Peppé family since 1898 and newly repatriated to India, as part of The Light and the Lotus: Relics of the Awakened One at the Rai Pithora Cultural Complex.

In the exhibition catalogue, the Indian Ministry of Culture wrote: In the repatriation of Piprahwa Gems, the role of Chris Peppé is very significant. Chris Peppé, great-grandson of W. C. Peppé, brought the Piprahwa relic gems into the public domain by publicly displaying them and facilitating their return to India. Through his carefully preserved family archives—photographs, excavation notes, correspondence, and records—he enabled rigorous scholarly research, setting a model for responsibly sharing colonial-era heritage and restoring historical transparency.