Overview

The Kapilavastu Relics are bone relics of the Buddha held at the National Museum in New Delhi, recovered in the 1970s from the same Piprahwa stupa that had yielded the celebrated 1898 finds. Where the earlier excavation stopped, the Archaeological Survey of India dug deeper and reached two inscribed steatite caskets, one containing twelve bone relics, the other ten, sealed in the Mauryan period.

Because Piprahwa sits in the region identified with Kapilavastu, the Sakya capital in which Siddhartha Gautama was raised, the relics carry that place-name. They are among the most venerated objects in India's national collection and are periodically flown to Buddhist countries for public exposition, where they are received with the ceremonial honours reserved for a visiting head of state and are treated, in the language of the Indian government, as a State Guest. Unlike the dispersed 1898 relics and the privately held Piprahwa gems, the Kapilavastu Relics have remained together in a single public institution since their discovery.