{"id":71576,"date":"2025-05-07T14:12:53","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T05:12:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/may\/07\/piprahwa-gems-buddha-auction-sothebys-india"},"modified":"2025-05-07T23:07:24","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T14:07:24","slug":"piprahwa-gems-auction-on-hold-at-sothebys-after-india-legal-threat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=71576","title":{"rendered":"Auction of gems linked to Buddha postponed after India legal threat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ministry of culture tells Sotheby\u2019s it would be \u2018participating in continued colonial exploitation\u2019 if sale of gems goes ahead<\/p>\n<p>The Indian government is seeking to repatriate ancient gem relics linked to the Buddha\u2019s remains after halting their sale at an auction in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n<p>Sotheby\u2019s postponed the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sothebys.com\/en\/buy\/auction\/2025\/the-piprahwa-gems-of-the-historical-buddha\/the-piprahwa-gems-of-the-historical-buddha-mauryan\">sale of the Piprahwa gems<\/a>, due on Wednesday, after the ministry of culture threatened to take legal action against the auction house in Indian and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/hong-kong\">Hong Kong<\/a> courts and through international bodies \u201cfor violations of cultural heritage laws\u201d.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/may\/07\/piprahwa-gems-buddha-auction-sothebys-india\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ministry of culture tells Sotheby\u2019s it would be \u2018participating in continued colonial exploitation\u2019 if sale of gems goes aheadThe Indian government is seeking to repatriate ancient gem relics linked to the Buddha\u2019s remains after halting their sale at an&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":260,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[211,749,62,371,61,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buddhism","category-colonialism","category-india","category-religion","category-south-and-central-asia","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/260"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71576"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71607,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71576\/revisions\/71607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}