The Piprahwa relics and gems are the contents of a brick stupa opened in 1898 at Piprahwa, a village in the Basti (now Siddharthnagar) district of Uttar Pradesh, close to the Nepalese border and to the region long identified with Kapilavastu, the homeland of the Buddha's Sakya clan. Deep in the mound the excavators found a heavy sandstone coffer cut from a single block; inside it were five small reliquary vessels of crystal, steatite and soapstone, along with charred bone and ash and roughly 1,800 items of jewellery and votive offering, garnets, amethysts, carnelians, rock crystal, coral, pearls, gold foil flowers and stamped ornaments.
The find's fame rests above all on one reliquary vase, whose early Brahmi inscription has been read as recording the enshrinement of relics of the Buddha by his own kinsmen, the Sakyas. If that reading is correct, the deposit is among the oldest surviving physical testimonies to the historical Buddha and his relic cult. The relics were dispersed under colonial administration, while the gems stayed with the excavator's family for more than a century before their contested sale and eventual return to India.