Sariputra

Sariputra

Śāriputra or Sāriputta was one of two chief male disciples of the Buddha along with Maudgalyayana , counterparts to the nuns Khema and Uppalavanna, named the two chief female disciples...

and Mahamoggallana were the two chief disciples of Gautama Buddha

Gautama Buddha

Siddhārtha Gautama was a spiritual teacher from the Indian subcontinent, on whose teachings Buddhism was founded. In most Buddhist traditions, he is regarded as the Supreme Buddha Siddhārtha Gautama (Sanskrit: सिद्धार्थ गौतम; Pali: Siddhattha Gotama) was a spiritual teacher from the Indian...

, and died within two weeks of one another, after which they were cremated

Cremation

Cremation is the process of reducing bodies to basic chemical compounds such as gasses and bone fragments. This is accomplished through high-temperature burning, vaporization and oxidation....

 and their relic

Relic

In religion, a relic is a part of the body of a saint or a venerated person, or else another type of ancient religious object, carefully preserved for purposes of veneration or as a tangible memorial...

s kept. After a period, the relics were lost to civilisation.

Excavation

In 1851, the British

British people

The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...

 archaeologist Sir Alexander Cunningham

Alexander Cunningham

Sir Alexander Cunningham KCIE CSI was a British archaeologist and army engineer, known as the father of the Archaeological Survey of India...

 was excavating at the Asokan Buddhist complex in Sanchi

Sanchi

Sanchi is a small village in Raisen District of the state of Madhya Pradesh, India, it is located 46 km north east of Bhopal, and 10 km from Besnagar and Vidisha in the central part of the state of Madhya Pradesh. It is the location of several Buddhist monuments dating from the 3rd...

, near Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh

Madhya Pradesh

Madhya Pradesh , often called the Heart of India, is a state in central India. Its capital is Bhopal and Indore is the largest city....

 in India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, which dated to the 3rd century BCE. In the famous Third Stupa, he uncovered the bodily relics of Sariputra and Mahammoggallana. At approximately the same time, more relics of the two arahants were found in a stupa

Stupa

A stupa is a mound-like structure containing Buddhist relics, typically the remains of Buddha, used by Buddhists as a place of worship....

 at Satadhara, about ten kilometres from Sanchi.

After sinking a shaft in the centre of the stupa on Sanchi Hill, Cunningham unearthed a large stone slab, more than five feet in length, lying in a north-south axis. Beneath the slab were two boxes of gray sandstone

Sandstone

Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...

, each with a brief inscription in Brāhmī

Brāhmī script

Brāhmī is the modern name given to the oldest members of the Brahmic family of scripts. The best-known Brāhmī inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dated to the 3rd century BCE. These are traditionally considered to be early known examples of Brāhmī writing...

 characters on the lid. The box at the southern end was inscribed "Sariputtasa" meaning "(Relics) of Sariputra," while that to the north bore the inscription "Maha-Mogalanasa." "(Relics) of Maha Moggallana."

Contents of the relics

Sariputra's box contained a large flat casket of white steatite, more than six inches wide and three inches in height. The surface was polished and hard, and the box, which is believed to have been turned on a lathe

Lathe

A lathe is a machine tool which rotates the workpiece on its axis to perform various operations such as cutting, sanding, knurling, drilling, or deformation with tools that are applied to the workpiece to create an object which has symmetry about an axis of rotation.Lathes are used in woodturning,...

, was an elaborate piece of workmanship. Surrounding the casket were some fragments of sandalwood

Sandalwood

Sandalwood is the name of a class of fragrant woods from trees in the genus Santalum. The woods are heavy, yellow, and fine-grained, and unlike many other aromatic woods they retain their fragrance for decades. As well as using the harvested and cut wood in-situ, essential oils are also extracted...

 believed to have been from the funeral pyre

Funeral Pyre

"Funeral Pyre" is The Jam's thirteenth single released on 6 June 1981. Backed by the B-side "Disguises", a cover of a Who track, it reached #4 in the UK Singles chart....

, while inside it, in addition to the relics, were various precious stones. The casket also contained a single bone relic of Sariputra, shorter than one inch in length.

Mahamoggallana's stone box enclosed another steatite casket, similar to that of Sariputra but slightly smaller and with a softer surface. Inside it were two bone relics of Mahamoggallana, smaller than those of Sariputra, the larger of them being less than half an inch long.

Each of the caskets had a single ink letter inscribed on the inner surface of the lid: "Sa" for Sariputra on the southern and "Ma" for Mahamoggallana on that to the north. Cunningham analysed the situation thus: "Sariputra and Mahamoggallana were the principal followers of the Buddha, and were usually styled his right and left hand disciples. Their ashes thus preserved after death the same positions to the right and left of Buddha which they had themselves occupied in life." This is explained by the fact that Gautama Buddha customarily sat facing east, and thus Sariputta and Mahamoggallana were aligned south and north respectively.

In the Satadhara stupa, one of a group which Cunningham noted was locally referred to as "Buddha Bhita" or "Buddha Monuments," he discovered two caskets of pale mottled steatite. These were inscribed, like those at Sanchi, "Sariputtasa" and "Maha Mogallanasa". This stupa showed signs of tampering by burglars, but the bone relics appeared to have been undisturbed. Cunningham, left a detailed account of everything his excavations brought to light in these and other stupas, and the authenticity of the relics was established among scholarly ranks.

Display

The relics from both locations were taken to England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 and placed in the Victoria and Albert Museum

Victoria and Albert Museum

The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...

, but some discrepancies between Cunningham's description of the caskets and the actual boxes in which the relics were deposited led to speculation that someone transferred the relics from Sanchi to the caskets discovered at Satadhara, and thus what became of the Sanchi steatite caskets is not concretely known.

The Sacred Relics were preserved there until 1939, when the Maha Bodhi Society

Maha Bodhi Society

The Maha Bodhi Society is a South Asian Buddhist society founded by the Sri Lankan Buddhist leader Anagarika Dharmapala. The organization's self-stated initial efforts were for the resuscitation of Buddhism in India, and restoring the ancient Buddhist shrines at Bodh Gaya, Sarnath and...

 approached the British government to request their return to India. The request was granted, but the implementation was delayed due to the Second World War

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. As a result, the actual transfer did not occur until 24 February 1947, to ensure safe passage.

Subcontinent tour

Before returning to India, the relics were taken to Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...

, where they were received with fanfare. For two and a half months in 1947, they were displayed for public viewing at the Colombo Museum, where it was estimated that more than two million people of all faiths paid homage to them. The relics were then taken to Calcutta

Kolkata

Kolkata , formerly known as Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located on the east bank of the Hooghly River, it was the commercial capital of East India...

, where they were displayed for public viewing at the Dharmarajika Vihara, headquarters of the Maha Bodhi Society of India. Long queues existed for the two weeks of display, and although most of the pilgrims were Hindus

Hinduism

Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...

, but there was also a large number of Muslims

Islam

Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

 among them.

This was followed by a tour of Burma

Myanmar

Burma , officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar , is a country in Southeast Asia. Burma is bordered by China on the northeast, Laos on the east, Thailand on the southeast, Bangladesh on the west, India on the northwest, the Bay of Bengal to the southwest, and the Andaman Sea on the south....

. In order that a wide cross section of Burmese society had an opportunity to view the relics, a marine tour along the Irrawaddy

Ayeyarwady River

The Irrawaddy River or Ayeyarwady River is a river that flows from north to south through Burma . It is the country's largest river and most important commercial waterway. Originating from the confluence of the N'mai and Mali rivers, it flows relatively straight North-South before emptying through...

 from Mandalay

Mandalay

Mandalay is the second-largest city and the last royal capital of Burma. Located north of Yangon on the east bank of the Irrawaddy River, the city has a population of one million, and is the capital of Mandalay Region ....

 to Rangoon was commissioned, drawing vast crowds of people from the adjacent villages to hear sermons and the recitation of sutra

Sutra

Sūtra is an aphorism or a collection of such aphorisms in the form of a manual. Literally it means a thread or line that holds things together and is derived from the verbal root siv-, meaning to sew , as does the medical term...

s which accompanied the tour. This was followed be tours of Nepal

Nepal

Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...

 and Ladakh

Ladakh

Ladakh is a region of Jammu and Kashmir, the northernmost state of the Republic of India. It lies between the Kunlun mountain range in the north and the main Great Himalayas to the south, inhabited by people of Indo-Aryan and Tibetan descent...

.

Internment

After the end of the international tour, the relics were returned to India. However the Burmese government requested a portion of the relics should be given to Burma. The Maha Bodhi Society of India agreed to this, and the then Prime Minister of Burma went in person to Calcutta to receive them. The Burmese portion was ceremonially transferred to him in October 1950, and was later enshrined in the Kaba Aye Zedi (World Peace Pagoda), built on the site of the Sixth Buddhist Council, close to Rangoon. Extensive ceremonies connected with the crowning of the pagoda and the installation of the relics lasted from the 5th to 11th of March 1952.

Another portion was given to Sri Lanka to be enshrined in a new stupa built by the Maha Bodhi Society of Sri Lanka to receive them. They are currently housed in the temple of the Maha Bodhi Society, Colombo

Colombo

Colombo is the largest city of Sri Lanka. It is located on the west coast of the island and adjacent to Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte, the capital of Sri Lanka. Colombo is often referred to as the capital of the country, since Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte is a satellite city of Colombo...

, awaiting the completion of the building.

On 30 November 1952, the remaining relics were enshrined at Sanchi on completion of the new Chetiyagiri Vihara built to store them.