The relics, which depict Siddhārtha Gautama, a spiritual teacher in the northern region of the Indian subcontinent who founded Buddhism and is generally seen by Buddhists as the Supreme Buddha (Sammāsambuddha) of our age, will be on display to the public in the Pagode in the Bois de Vincennes (Paris 12).Their arrival in France is just the latest event in the long history of these precious artefacts. At the end of the nineteenth century, the collapse in India of a stupa that belonged to the clan of the Shakyas resulted in the discovery of authentic relics of the historical Buddha that had been preserved for more than two millennia.
Because India and most of Asia were colonized at the time, and Thailand was the only Buddhist country not to be so, G. N. Curzon, then Governor General of India and former Ambassador to the Kingdom of Siam, entrusted Thailand with the precious relics. They were displayed in the Golden Mount, one of the major temples in the capital city of Bangkok.
Over a century later and faced with constant political upheaval in Asia and the spread of Buddhism in the West, especially across Europe, the Thai Patriarchs decided to present the relics to the Western World, entrusting them to a European nation, their new land of asylum.
The Patriarchs selected France; the land that gave the world the Rights of Man and more specifically Paris, a city that according to them embodied the dynamic nature of European Buddhism.
France is one of the most prominent arenas of Buddhism in Europe and according to the country’s Minister for the Interior there are currently five million followers of the religion within its borders of which one million are active participants.
Speaking to the Figaro newspaper today, Olivier Reigen Wang-Genh, the president of the Buddhist Union of France who accepted these gifts, said “France is today the European country where Buddhists are most numerous, notably because of the waves of Asian immigration in the 1950s and the installation of the grand masters.
“This moment is historic,” he continued, “because it is the first time that authentic relics of Siddhārtha Gautama have been confided to a Western country.”
The Union have been entrusted with the responsibility to receive and keep the relics and to make plans to celebrate this historically significant event. Over the course of last weekend numerous celebrations and ceremonies took place in Vincennes that also featured exhibits of Buddhist art and objects from private collections and museums, including the excellent Guimet Museum of Asian Arts.
It is a very significant gesture and as one Buddhist commented to the Figaro “symbolically, it also proves that the teachings of Buddha is very much alive today and that it continues to spread from the Orient to the West.”
