The New York Times reported on this yesterday.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/arts/buddha-jewels-piprahwa-india-return.html
“ an Indian conglomerate, Godrej Industries Group, bought the gems, according to a statement from Sotheby’s”
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Sotheby’s postponed its May auction after India’s culture ministry issued a legal order saying that the Peppé family did not have the authority to sell the objects and that the relics should be returned to India for “preservation and religious veneration.”
The relics were “part of India’s and the global Buddhist community’s spiritual and cultural heritage,” the Indian culture ministry said at the time. “Their sale violates Indian laws, international norms, and U.N. conventions.”
But in the end, they were in fact sold. And it doesn’t sound like they were donated to the Indian government. Just that they will be on permanent display.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India wrote on social media that it was “a joyous day” for his country. “These sacred relics highlight India’s close association with Bhagwan Buddha and his noble teachings,” he wrote, using a Hindi word for god.
Can anyone clarify if it really dose mean that in this context?
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Bhagwān is the Hindi pronunciation of Pali Bhagavā, Sanskrit Bhagavān. It idiomatically means something like “His Highness”, and is typically used for a person that a lot of people would consider worthy of homage. It is used for Deities and Gods in Hinduism, but also for people who are considered very highly respectable like the Buddha, the founder of Jainism Mahāvīra, the Upanishadic teacher Yājñavalkya, the grammarian Pāṇini, some epic characters like Rāma, Kṛṣṇa, Paraśurāma, the Advaita philosopher Śaṅkara and many other people.
Bhagwān in Hindi is not exclusively used for gods, and not all gods are called Bhagwān either.
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You forgot to add that this epithet is the most common used in the Pali Canon. Most used than Buddha!
Hopefully, the journalists are there to tell people what is the truth, and how interpret such truth. Otherwise, the common people like us would be lost in a sea of information and misinformation.
Yes it is the most commonly used epithet for the Buddha in the early Buddhist texts (in the Indic languages Pali and Sanskrit), and it is probably one of the top 10 words in the Pali canon by frequency.
Thank you. I thought you would know. And I imagined that was the case with the usage.
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Thank you all for contributing sincerely to this thread that I started with an unspoken wish, that may be our communal attention and intention will help the return of the sacred relics of the Buddha to the rightful place and owner, people of India! Happy to find the news that the relics were returned to India.
Repatriation Ceremony of the Piprahwa Relic Jewels after 127 years
Wed, Jul 30, 2025, International Buddhist Confederation, India
More on the event and history of the relics here.
I am curious to know and see if anyone knows of any modern non-invasive scientific and interdisciplinary study (like aDNA or ancient DNA was done on Buddha relics?
Wikipedia links have some interesting stories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relics_associated_with_Buddha
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Buddhist_relics
A more in depth article: