The consensus among modern scholars is that Buddha Sakyamuni died within a few years of 480 BCE. Ancient texts record that after the Buddha’s cremation at Kushinagar, his remaining ashes and bone fragments were divided and shared among the rulers of eight kingdoms, including his own clan the Sakyas of Kapilavastu. Following the Buddha’s instructions, ten stupas were constructed: one in each of the eight kingdoms receiving a share of the relics, one over the ashes of the cremation pyre, and a further one over the vessel in which the bones and ashes had been gathered. According to historical accounts Emperor Ashoka, whose empire spread over most of the Indian sub-continent from circa 270 BCE-230 BCE, opened nine of the ten stupas to redistribute their contents throughout his realm. In the process, he created a series of monuments which memorialized the Buddha’s life.

In the 1890s several of these monuments were discovered in Northern India near the Nepalese border. Notably in 1896, an Ashokan stone pillar was discovered at Lumbini, believed to identify the place of the Buddha’s birth.

These findings caught the attention of William Claxton Peppé, a British colonial engineer who managed a series of estates south of the Nepalese border, including the large Birdpur estate. In his report later published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society W. C. Peppé wrote:

‘Since the discovery of the pillar in the Lumbini Garden commemorating the birthplace of Gautama Buddha, considerable curiosity has been aroused concerning the different mounds or kots as they are locally called, which occur dotted over the tract extending from Kapilavastu on the north-west and the Lumbini Garden on the north-east in Nepalese territory to a distance of several miles inside the British territory’.

 In the spring of 1897, W.C Peppé began to excavate one mound that was particularly ‘more prominent than the rest’ near the village of Piprahwa on the Birdpur estate. His decision to undertake this excavation may have also been partly altruistic. Throughout 1896 & 1897 Central and North West India were affected by famine, and mortality rates due to starvation and accompanying epidemics were extremely high. The excavation at Piprahwa would have lifted morale and provided famine relief, a fact of which W.C. Peppé was acutely aware. 

After weeks of clearing soil and dense scrub from the mound, preliminary excavations exposed a solid mass of red-fired brickwork. Further digging revealed a large dome roof roughly 130 feet in diameter. Realising he required expert advice, Peppé sought out Vincent Smith, a renowned authority on ancient Indian history and archaeology, who was serving nearby as a district officer.

Upon inspecting the partially excavated site, Smith immediately announced that it was an unusually early example of an ancient Buddhist stupa, probably dating from the era of Ashoka the Great. In early January 1898, Peppé continued the excavations and, after digging through eighteen feet of solid brickwork, discovered a huge stone slab. This revealed itself to be the cover of an enormous stone coffer, which Peppé later noted had been 'hollowed at the cost of vast labour and expense’. Inside the coffer were five vessels, none more than seven inches in height, containing a vast array of treasure. These precious offerings included quantities of stars in silver and gold, discs of gold leaf embossed with Buddhist symbols, and numerous pearls of many sizes, some of which had been fused in sets of two, three and four. There were also drilled beads, stars and flowers cut from red or white cornelian, amethyst, topaz, garnet, coral and crystal. Also found inside the vessels were small pieces of bone and ash. On the side of one vessel, in an ancient Pali character was an inscription that read:

“This shrine for relics of the Buddha, the August One, is that of the Sakyas, the brethren of the Distinguished One, in association with their sisters, and with their children and their wives”

William Peppé had seemingly unearthed one of the original eight stupas said to contain the ashes and bone fragments of the Buddha, distributed after his cremation. It is believed that the Buddha’s own Sakya clan had built this stupa to honour the relics of their ‘illustrious kinsman’ Gautama Buddha. The Piprahwa stupa was likely constructed in three phases. The first phase, built by the Sakyas around the time of the Buddha's death, consisted of a circular mud-built adobe structure measuring approximately 38.9 meters (127ft) in diameter and 0.9 meters (3ft) in height. The second phase, from the early Mauryan period, is believed to have been constructed by Emperor Ashoka. In the second century BCE, Ashoka disinterred the Buddha’s remains and created his own structure to house the relics and relic offerings atop the original Sakyan site. This phase was characterised by well-fired mud bricks made with rice straw and laid in clay mortar in concentric circles. The base measured 35 meters (116ft ) in diameter and 6.7 meters (22ft) in height. During the third phase of construction, the height of the stupa was raised and the base was squared off. Monastic buildings were also constructed around the stupa. This all happened at an unknown date, although most likely during the Kushan era, approximately two hundred and fifty years after the reign of Ashoka.