The Vietnamese Ministry of Culture, in collaboration with the Delhi chapter of the International Buddhist Confederation (IBC), will host the Sarnath Buddha relic exhibition in Vietnam for the first time during the United Nations Vesak Day celebrations in 2025, an official statement said.
The relic will be officially transported to Delhi on April 30, 2025, amidst prayers from the Mulagandha Kuti Vihara (monastery) in Sarnath to the Varanasi airport.
The monastery, which houses the relic of Gautama Buddha, was built by Anagalika Dharmapala, the founder of the Maha Bodhi Society, and is still maintained and managed by the Maha Bodhi Society.
Upon arrival in Delhi, the relic will be placed in a specially protected space at the National Museum at 5.30 pm on April 30, 2025, for prayers, chanting and meditation by Dharma devotees, including prominent community members and diplomatic representatives of Buddhist countries.
The next day, May 1, 2025, the relic will be transported from the National Museum to Ho Chi Minh City with utmost reverence by a special Indian Air Force aircraft and escorted by senior monks with full religious dignity and protocol, the statement said.
A high-level delegation of the International Buddhist Confederation (IBC), led by Secretary General Sarji Khensur Rinpoche Jamchub Choden, and members of the Governing Council will attend the holy exhibition ceremony and Vesak celebrations in Vietnam, the statement said.
The delegation will be led by Parliamentary Affairs and Minority Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju.
The relic of the Buddha enshrined in Mulagandha Kuti Vihara was unearthed from the famous site of Nagarjuna Konda in Andhra Pradesh. The site is of great historical significance as an important center of Mahayana Buddhism and is closely associated with the monk and philosopher Nagarjuna in the second century AD. These holy relics have been worshipped and venerated since the Buddha’s Nirvana.
A comprehensive excavation was carried out between 1927 and 1931 by A.H. Longhurst, then head of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI); most of the monuments at the site were built in the third and fourth centuries AD; in addition, the remains of more than thirty Buddhist buildings were discovered. The oldest large stupa is dated to around 246 AD according to inscriptions, but archaeologists believe that it may be older.
After the excavation, the Buddha statues were presented to the Maha Bodhi Society of India on December 27, 1932 by Rai Bahadur Dayaram Sahni, the Director General of the Buddhist Society of India, on behalf of the Viceroy of India in the presence of many Buddhists.
Every November, when the Mulagandha Kuti Vihara is established, thousands of people from all over the world come to Sarnath.
The sacred relic will be solemnly enshrined, venerated and worshipped at the following key locations: at the Tha Phut Temple in Ho Chi Minh City from 2 to 8 May (coinciding with the United Nations Day of Vesak 2025); at Ba Dhon Temple in Tay Ninh Province from 9 to 13 May 2025 (a national spiritual pilgrimage site in southern Vietnam); from 14 to 18 May 2025, the sacred relic will be exhibited at the Quan Su Pagoda in Hanoi (the headquarters of the Vietnamese Buddhist Sangha), and finally at the Tri Thuy Pagoda in Ha Nam Province from 18 to 21 May 2025 (the largest Buddhist centre in Southeast Asia).
