A quarrel over relics
The Mahāparinibbāna Sutta tells that after the cremation, the Mallas of Kusinārā kept the relics in their council hall, surrounded by a lattice of spears and bows. Word spread. King Ajātasattu of Magadha, the Licchavis of Vesālī, the Buddha's own Sakya clan, the Bulis, the Koliyans, a brahmin of Veṭhadīpa and the Mallas of Pāvā each sent envoys, all making the same claim: we too deserve a share, and we will build a monument.
The Mallas refused them all. The Buddha passed away in our land, they said, and we will give no share away.
Doṇa's solution
A brahmin named Doṇa stood up and spoke to them in verse. The Buddha's teaching was patience, he reminded them, and it would not be good to fight over the remains of the best of men. Let the relics be divided into eight equal shares, so that monuments could stand far and wide and many people could gain faith.
They agreed and asked him to do it. Doṇa divided the relics and asked only for the urn. A clan who arrived late, the Moriyas of Pipphalivana, were given the embers. So there were ten monuments: eight for the relics, one for the urn and one for the embers.
What came after
The stupa, a domed mound built over relics, became the most important monument in Buddhism. The closing verses of the discourse already say that one of the eight shares was kept at Rāmagāma, guarded by a nāga king.
Later legend, in the Aśokāvadāna and the Sri Lankan chronicles, tells that the emperor Ashoka opened seven of the eight stupas and divided their relics among a great number of new stupas across his empire. He could not take the Rāmagāma share. The Mahāvaṃsa says it was later brought to Sri Lanka and enshrined in the Great Stupa at Anuradhapura.
In 1898, the estate manager W. C. Peppé excavated a stupa at Piprahwa, near the Nepal border, and found a stone vase with an inscription in early Brāhmī script. It is widely read as saying the relics are those of the Buddha, enshrined by his Sakya kinsmen, though scholars still debate the reading and date.
Why it matters
The stupa, a mound over relics, becomes the central monument of Buddhism. Later tradition says Ashoka reopened these stupas and shared the relics across his empire, and an inscribed relic vase found at Piprahwa in 1898 is widely read as naming the Buddha's Sakya kinsmen, though the reading is debated.
History and tradition
What historians can say
Historians cannot confirm the division itself, but the practice it describes is well documented: relics of the Buddha were being enshrined in stupas across India by the last centuries BCE, and inscribed reliquaries such as those from Piprahwa and Gandhāra survive. The story also explains why so many places could claim a share.
What Buddhist tradition remembers
Relics, the tradition holds, carry the presence of the Buddha. Sri Lanka's Temple of the Tooth in Kandy keeps a tooth relic believed to have reached the island in the 4th century CE, and it is honoured every year in the Esala Perahera procession.