Buddhist Gems Repatriated to India Following Legal Claim
The Piprahwa Gems, courtesy Kalagon via Wikimedia Commons, reproduced under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
On 7 May 2025, Sotheby’s in Hong Kong was set to auction off the so-called Piprahwa Gems – a collection of nearly 1,800 pearls, rubies, sapphires, and gold which were excavated in the late 1890s from the Piprahwa Stupa, an Indian funerary monument. The gems were unearthed by William Caxton Peppé on the estate where he resided during the British colonial reign in India, located near Buddha’s birthplace. Based upon archeologists’ assessments of an inscription found in Brahmi script on an urn in the collection, the various gemstone offerings are believed to have been housed in the stupa alongside cremated remains and bone fragments of the Buddha.
While Peppé turned over approximately 80% of the “find” to the Indian authorities for distribution to national museums, he retained the remainder of the items, which he classified as “duplicates”. The gems were passed down through the generations to his heirs, who consigned the items to Sotheby’s for auction. Sotheby's’ promotional material described the collection as “among the most extraordinary archaeological discoveries of all time.”
The Legal Challenge
On the eve of auction, 5 May 2025, the Indian government lodged a formal claim to the gems, noting their spiritual, religious and cultural significance, and alleging violations of Indian and international laws. The claim disputed the heirs’ “ownership”, alleging that the heirs were at most “custodians” of this cultural heritage and were obligated to return the sacred objects to India if they no longer wanted possession. The Indian government objected to the sale’s exploitation of sacred cultural and religious objects for commercial purposes, and framed it as a perpetuation of colonial injustice and oppression. The Indian government’s protest caused Sotheby’s to withdraw the gems from auction and postpone the sale.
This matter offers yet another example of how works and objects can hold tremendously powerful historical, spiritual, and cultural value and meaning, while also promising vast financial and monetary potential – a recipe for conflict and dispute. On the one hand, Peppé was known to have retained these gems without prior objection, and his heirs acquired them legally by descent, posing serious questions as to the likelihood of success had there been a litigation over India’s legal challenge to their ownership. Yet the matter did not end up in the courts, as the Indian government’s protest was publicized and garnered wide international attention, motivating the parties to seek a solution.
The solution ultimately achieved, announced on 30 July 2025, is a public/private sale-repatriation. Godrej Industries Group, a Mumbai-based conglomerate, in cooperation with the Government of India, purchased the gems from Sotheby's and repatriated them to India where they will be put on public exhibition.
Benefactor-Purchasers
Resolutions like this are not new. In the early 2000s, the business magnate Stanley Ho purchased two of the looted Summer Palace Zodiac fountain figures and repatriated them to the PRC. The figures had been looted by British and French soldiers in 1860 and passed down the generations in private hands. One of the two repatriated figures had been consigned to Sotheby’s for a public auction in 2007, but was withdrawn in order that a private deal could be brokered with Stanley Ho. Such benefactor-purchasers can be hard to find, meaning it may not always be possible to put together a deal like this. Consignors can also find it hard to accept a sale price that is less than they dreamed of. However, finding a benefactor-purchaser to repatriate a disputed item can be a win-win for all parties involved, even if it involves compromise. Achieving such a solution requires established and effective channels of communication, relationships with relevant governments and cultural authorities, and the market and legal knowledge to persuade parties with conflicting interests to cooperate and be open to exploring the benefits involved.
Further, it is important to keep in mind that the auctioneer’s house – or dealers and galleries acting on behalf of sellers – does not take title to works accepted on consignment. Therefore, they do not have independent authority to negotiate a repatriation, withdraw the object from auction, or take any other action with respect to the work – instead, all of this and more will depend on the terms of the consignment agreement. It is therefore of paramount importance to carefully negotiate the terms of the consignment agreement with an auction house or dealer in regards to any work – but especially in regards to works with ancient heritage and cultural significance.
Are there other ways Sotheby’s and the consignor could have resolved this dispute? The consignors could have demanded that Sotheby’s return the gems to them, but this would leave open the possibility of legal challenges and would not solve the long-term issues. On the other hand, going forward with the auction in the face of such a claim is also fraught with possible legal consequences, and even if there is a victory in the end, lawsuits are expensive and there can be irreparable reputational damage arising out of the ethical and moral issues, even if in the end a “win” is achieved. Many therefore take the route of repatriation without a sale or compensation for the consignor, but this option can be hard to swallow when works have high market value and consignors have been counting on the sale proceeds, and auctioneers and dealers have been expecting commissions. Thus, the solution of finding a purchaser-benefactor can be attractive for all parties.
In the Museum Context
In the museum context, another solution is to agree to repatriate and transfer title to the country of origin, in return for a loan exchange agreement or other collaboration. This transforms the deaccession of a work into a gain of stronger relationships, and opens up new loans and cultural exchange possibilities. One such example was the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s repatriation, in 2008, of a 2,500-year-old vase by Euphronios that had been looted by tomb robbers in 1971 from a small town in Italy. In exchange for repatriating the vase to Italy, the Metropolitan Museum of Arts was loaned three ancient vases to be put on display for a period of four years by Italy’s Ministry of Culture.
More recently, the Altes Museum in Berlin, Germany repatriated 25 ancient works, including 21 Apulian vases believed to have been illicitly excavated from Italy, and in exchange for the voluntary restitution, Italy has agreed to four-year loans of significant panels and bronzes from the Italian national archeological museums in Paestrum and Naples. Solutions that involve cultural exchange, reconciliation of competing interests between current possessors and countries of origin, and harm caused by illegal and unscientific looting, are difficult to structure but worth the effort, and chart a more productive possible path forward than protracted and bitter contests.
About Jane Levine
Partner and co-founder JANE LEVINE has extensive experience at the intersection of the international art market, art crime, and regulatory compliance. Jane is a former federal prosecutor who spent ten years as an Assistant US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, followed by a thirteen-year stint at Sotheby’s as Chief Global Compliance Counsel and Head of Government Affairs. Jane was appointed by President Obama to serve on the Cultural Property Advisory Committee, and currently serves as a member of the Board for US Committee for the Blue Shield working to safeguard cultural heritage around the globe. In addition, Jane has been teaching Art and Cultural Heritage Law at Columbia Law School for the past twenty years. Read more about Jane’s career here.