"This article is a reminder that the Christian cult of relics must have come from somewhere -- that "somewhere" most likely being Buddhism."

Actually? Not! Lional Casson's book "Travel in the Ancient World" makes pretty explicit that the Relics Racket that Catholicism engaged in was well established in Hellenic and Roman times and is traceable back to Sumer long before Buddhism existed. When you stop and think about it the number of things that people associate with the Medieval period that they in fact merely inherited from Classical times is too often underestimated. @_@

I haven't the time at the moment for a full response, but the early Christian cult of relics *was* a sharp departure from contemporary Roman and Greek practice -- veneration of tombs of certain ancient heros notwithstanding. Pre-Christian cults of the dead were one thing -- promptly dismembering and dispersing the remains of saints and martyrs, quite another.

I confess to not having read Casson's book, but I have spent quite a few years working my way through the very substantial specialist literature regarding the Christian cult of relics and its origins. Even fine historians may slip up when working outside their main areas of expertise. From what I can glean from the pages of Casson's volume visible through Google Books, the book is hardly intended for a scholarly audience, lacking any notes. Nor is it even very up-to-date, having been published in 1974 and only slightly updated 20 years later. That said, I still cannot find any part of it that appears online that describes anything like a pre-Christian Christian-style cult of relics.