ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 32, 2025
Selling the Buddha’s Relics Today
Conan Cheong and Ashley Thompson
SOAS University of London
On May 7, 2025, Sotheby’s Hong Kong will offer for sale “gem relics” of the Buddha that were dug up by British colonial landowner W. C. Peppé out of the Piprahwa stūpa in Uttar Pradesh, India, in 1898. In Buddhist contexts, they are considered śarīra—corporeal remains imbued with the living presence of the Buddha. Centering Buddhist ontologies of relics evidenced in epigraphic and ritual traces, this article calls attention to the ethical implications of placing such sacred remains on the art market. It situates the continued division of “gems” from “bones and ash” in colonial processes of extraction, classification, and revaluation through archaeological and museographic practice.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 30, 2023
The Missing and Their Families: Buddhism and the Role of Ritual in Processing Grief and Ambiguous Loss
Alex Wakefield
Independent Scholar
This article considers the support that Buddhist ritual practices may offer families and relatives of missing people. Families of missing individuals experience a specifically defined form of grief known as ambiguous loss. Such loss is usually denied the traditional funerary or commemorative practices of other forms of bereavement. Nevertheless, psychologists and humanitarian organizations stress the importance of such practices and their socio-cultural context as a way for families to effectively process ambiguous loss. I highlight the value in these practices coming from Buddhist religious groups within Buddhist communities, while noting that disappearances often present exceptionally difficult circumstances for many religious traditions, including Buddhism. Examples are drawn from the Pāli Nikāyas supporting the argument for a “reconfiguration” of ritual to meet these needs, and case studies are cited to demonstrate religious communities supporting, via ritual practices, families of missing individuals. I therefore propose ritual as an element of Buddhist praxis that may effectively address the psychological and social requirements for families of missing people.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 19, 2012
Tibetan Ritual. Edited by José Ignacio Cabezón. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, 320 pages, ISBN 978-0-19-539282-1 (cloth), $29.95.
Reviewed by Holly Gayley
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 5 1998
Relics, Ritual and Representation in Buddhism: Rematerializing the Sri Lankan Theravada Tradition. By Kevin Trainor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, xiv + 223 pages, ISBN 0-521-5820-6, $60.00.
Reviewed by Tessa Bartholomeusz
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