Buddha Skull Relic in Nanjing: What Was Found and Is It Real?

The Nanjing Buddhist Shrine and a Relic Attribution

Beneath the site of the Grand Bao'en Temple in Nanjing, China, archaeologists recovered a richly decorated model stupa about a thousand years old. Sealed inside, in a small gold casket, was a fragment of human skull that an 11th-century inscription identifies as a parietal bone of the Buddha himself. The find drew worldwide headlines in 2016, when an English translation of the excavation report appeared, under titles suggesting that the Buddha's skull had been found.

The careful answer is this: the object is a genuine and spectacular Song dynasty reliquary, and the people who buried it in 1011 believed the bone was the Buddha's. Whether it actually is cannot be proven. Here is what was found, what the inscriptions say, why relics like this exist across Asia, and how to read the claim.

What the archaeologists found

The Nanjing Municipal Institute of Archaeology excavated the crypt between 2007 and 2010, with the main discovery reported in Chinese media in 2008. The nesting of containers shows how much the burial mattered to those who made it:

A large stone chest held an iron box.
Inside the iron box stood a model stupa roughly 117 cm tall and 45 cm wide, built of sandalwood sheathed in silver and gold and set with crystal, glass, agate and lapis lazuli.
Within the stupa was an outer silver casket, decorated with apsaras, the celestial musicians and dancers of Buddhist art.
Inside that lay an inner gold casket with lotus, phoenix and guardian-deity motifs, holding the skull fragment along with three crystal bottles and a silver box containing remains attributed to other Buddhist saints.

The outside of the stupa model is engraved with scenes from the Buddha's life, from his birth to his parinirvana, the final passing that in Buddhist teaching ends the cycle of rebirth. A stupa is a dome-shaped monument built to hold relics; a portable model like this one recreated that sacred architecture at the scale of a cabinet.

What the inscriptions say

Inscriptions buried with the reliquary were written by a monk named Deming, who gave his titles as Master of Perfect Enlightenment and abbot of the Chengtian Monastery. He recorded that the model and its contents were made during the reign of the Song emperor Zhenzong (997–1022), and that the relics were placed in the crypt of the rebuilt temple on 21 July 1011.

Deming also repeated a famous tradition. According to Buddhist legend, the Indian emperor Ashoka (3rd century BCE) gathered the Buddha's relics and divided them into 84,000 portions to be enshrined across his realm and beyond; Deming wrote that 19 of these reached China. He praised the emperor for restoring the temple and closed with conventional wishes for a long reign, loyal ministers, a peaceful army and many descendants for the imperial house.

In other words, the inscription is excellent evidence of what Song-era monks believed and how they honoured the relic. It is not, by itself, evidence of where the bone came from fifteen centuries earlier.

Could it really be the Buddha's bone?

Nobody can say, and the archaeologists who published the find did not claim to know. Live Science, reporting on the English translation, stressed that the bone's true origin is unknown.

There are good reasons for caution. The historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, lived in northern India around the 5th century BCE (scholars still debate the exact dates). The Nanjing bone was sealed some 1,400 to 1,500 years later, and its earlier history depends entirely on tradition. Science also has no reference point: even if the fragment were dated or its DNA studied, there is no known sample of the Buddha to compare it with. Radiocarbon dating could at most show whether the bone is ancient enough to be possible, and no such test has been published.

That does not make the find less important. Relics derive their meaning from faith and lineage, and for many Buddhists the question of physical proof is secondary to the devotion they inspire. For historians, the reliquary is a rare, intact record of Song dynasty craftsmanship and religious practice.

Why Buddha relics exist all over Asia

Buddhist texts relate that after the Buddha's cremation his remains were divided among eight kingdoms, each of which built a stupa over its share. The later Ashoka legend multiplied these into tens of thousands of shrines, and over the centuries relics travelled with monks, pilgrims and diplomats along the routes that carried Buddhism into Central Asia, China, Korea and Japan.

Many relics claimed today are teeth, bone fragments or small crystalline beads called sarira. Some of the best known include the tooth relic at the Temple of the Sacred Tooth in Kandy, Sri Lanka, and a finger bone recovered in 1987 from the crypt of Famen Temple near Xi'an, China. The Nanjing parietal bone belongs to this long tradition. Like the others, its importance rests on lineage and belief rather than laboratory proof.

The temple and its famous Porcelain Tower

The site has a remarkable history of its own. Buddhist temples stood here for centuries before the Ming dynasty. In the early 15th century the Yongle Emperor ordered a grand new complex, the Great Bao'en (Repaying Gratitude) Temple, completed in 1431. Its centrepiece was a nine-storey octagonal pagoda about 79 metres high, faced with white glazed porcelain bricks, which European travellers counted among the wonders of the world.

Lightning damaged the tower in 1801, and during the Taiping Rebellion it was razed to the ground in 1856. The crypt under the older temple survived, which is why the reliquary was still there to be found. After the excavation, Nanjing built a modern replica of the tower and a heritage park, which opened to the public in December 2015.

Where the relic is now, and the treasures in pictures

After study, the bone and the other saints' remains were entrusted to Buddhist monks and enshrined at Qixia Temple, an active monastery on Qixia Mountain outside Nanjing. The reliquary itself was reportedly shown in Hong Kong in 2012. The full excavation report was first published in Chinese in the journal Wenwu in 2015 and later translated in Chinese Cultural Relics, which prompted the 2016 wave of international coverage.

The images below come from that report.

An engraved inscription panel recovered with the reliquary. Photo: Chinese Cultural Relics.

Detail of a casket side with figures in relief, in silver and gilt. Photo: Chinese Cultural Relics.

The small gold casket bound with wire, the innermost container that held the skull fragment. Photo: Chinese Cultural Relics.

The gilded model stupa, about 117 cm tall, decorated with gems and scenes from the Buddha's life. Photo: Chinese Cultural Relics.

The silver casket on its openwork base, which held the gold casket inside the stupa. Photo: Chinese Cultural Relics.

The stone chest in which the iron box and stupa were sealed in 1011. Photo: Chinese Cultural Relics.

Whether or not the fragment belonged to Siddhartha Gautama, the Nanjing reliquary is one of the most complete examples ever found of how medieval China honoured the Buddha. For another archaeological find whose story depends on careful interpretation, see The Lovers of Valdaro: An Archaeological Embrace.

Sources: Owen Jarus, Live Science; Nanjing Municipal Institute of Archaeology report, Wenwu (2015), translated in Chinese Cultural Relics; Wikipedia, Porcelain Tower of Nanjing; earlier coverage via ScienceAlert.

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