Set against the background of the British Raj, this is the true story of the scandal that surrounded the discovery in 1898 of an inscribed casket said to contain the ashes of the Buddha. A British landowner, William Claxton Peppé, had excavated a large brick stupa on his estate close to India’s border with Nepal. Twenty-four feet under the earth he found a stone coffer containing a number of reliquary vases together with jewels and gold ...
