Rare Pyu Silver Buddhist Reliquary Casket

This is a piece with tremendous presence – it is an exceptionally rare casket that would have held Buddhist-related relics, and is from the Pyu culture of Central and Upper Burma which lasted from the 2nc century BC to around the 11th century AD. The Pyu arranged themselves in a series of walled city states and were among the first in Burma known to fabricate items from silver, something that was noted in Chinese histories of the Tang Dynasty (Fraser-Lu (1989, p. 23). They traded with India and it is from India that Buddhism was introduced.

The casket is of cylindrical form, is decorated with Buddha images which show Dvaravati influence, each within a cusped arch. The lid, which fits well over the base, is pierced and decorated in relief with petal motifs.

A similar though less visually appealing and cuboid example is illustrated in Fraser-Lu & Stadtner (2015, pp. 92-93). That example, now in the National Museum in Rangoon (Yangon) was among hundreds of items discovered in 1926 in the relic chamber within the Khin Ba stupa at Sri Ksetra in Upper Burma. It and other pieces in the trove were repoussed with Buddha images seated in bhumisparsa mudra. Another, more similar example from the same trove is illustrated in Fraser-Lu (1989, p. 24) and in Murphy(2016, p. 94). That example also of silver, cylindrical and decorated with Buddhas seated in bhumisparsa mudra has a stem-like finial that rises from the lid. The hole in the lid in ours suggests that ours once had something similar.

See Sotheby’s New York ‘Indian and Southeast Asian Art’, June 2, 1992, for a fragment of silver that shows a similar seated Buddha in relief, ascribed to circa 8th century Thailand but which might have been part of a similar reliquary.

The reliquary box here is large and impressive. It is relatively intact and stable. The casket has come from the estate of Tom White, formerly a British diplomat who served in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and 1970s. It is not known how or when he acquired this casket.