Relics of the Buddha

A fascinating feature article in today's Sunday Times Magazine about the recent rediscovery of a hoard of relics of the Buddha originally uncovered in 1898:

As [Paul] Seto [general secretary of the Buddhist Society] and Philip Trent, an antiques dealer, pored over the contents of a display cabinet, Seto, seated on the floor, noticed a shabby cardboard box hiding between the bottom shelf of the cabinet and its base. It would have been invisible to anyone standing. Inside the box were various paraphernalia, such as conference badges and medals, that had belonged to Christmas Humphreys, the British judge who founded the society in 1924. And among these items was a smaller cardboard box, about 3in square. Written on its lid, in a neat Victorian hand, were two sentences that sent Seto reeling: "Relics of Buddha. From the Piprawah Stupa, Birdpore Estate, Gourkhpur NWP, India. 1898."

Carefully, he opened the box. Inside he found 12 compartments, each holding a tiny, exquisite object: eight-pointed flowers and beads made of sapphire,cornelian, amethyst, ruby and rock crystal, a tiny, pearl-like object, and a larger object that appeared to be three pearls fused into one.

The article is long, so this excerpt is only by way of introduction; alas, I find no other references online as yet for those without access to The Times. The topic touches on a question that has fascinated me for years, ever since graduate school, where my advisor was busy rethinking the connections between early Christian iconography and its antecedents, pagan and Buddhist alike: How important was the Buddhist cult of relics to the formation of that of the early Christians? It's often forgotten that the center of gravity of the Christian world prior to the Muslim conquests lay quite far to the east, with much overlap and intermingling with Buddhists, Zoroastrians, and others. Greeks, Romans, and Jews saw only impurity in the dead; only the Buddhists, as far as I can tell, offer a fully developed precedent for such Christian practices as parting out the bodies of holy men, housing the bits and pieces in reliquaries and special shrines, and the making of contact relics (brandea: ordinary objects made holy by touching the holy) for visiting pilgrims.

Posted by David on March 21, 2004 9:05 PM