Filed 9 February 2012, 18:10 IST. Every price, volume and forecast below is reproduced as published on that date and is not a current quotation. For how the benchmarks themselves are set, see how gold is priced.
Nine months after a treasure estimated to be the largest of its kind in the world was found in the vaults of the Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple in Kerala, the official evaluation of the holding was to begin on the 20th of the month. The head of the expert committee overseeing the work said the valuation would use technology supplied by Keltron, a Kerala state electronics company, and that a report would go to the Supreme Court of India. He declined to say how long the process would take.
Devotee organisations objected to the committee's decision to photograph every item in the vaults, describing it as a violation of long-standing temple practice. That objection is not incidental to the story: it is the reason a holding of this size had never been inventoried in the first place.
What was actually found
The temple in Thiruvananthapuram holds a series of sealed chambers accumulated over centuries of royal endowment. When several were opened under court direction in 2011, they were found to contain gold ornaments, ceremonial objects, coin hoards and precious stones in quantities that had never been recorded. The figures that circulated internationally in the following weeks were estimates produced by observers rather than by any completed count, and they varied by an order of magnitude.
That gap between an estimate and a count is the whole substance of this dispatch. The evaluation described here was the beginning of an attempt to replace the estimate with an inventory, which is why the committee's method, and the objection to photographing the contents, mattered more than any headline valuation.
Why a valuation was so difficult
Three problems compound. The first is metal content: an ornament of unknown alloy cannot be valued by weight until its fineness is established, and establishing fineness normally means assay, which means damage. The second is antiquity: many items have a historical and religious value entirely unrelated to bullion content, and no market exists in which that value could be tested without a sale nobody intended to make. The third is legal: ownership of the contents was itself before the courts, contested between the deity as a juristic person under Indian law, the former royal family as trustee, and the state.
The result is that a figure quoted for this holding is almost always answering a different question from the one the reader assumes. A bullion-content estimate, an insurance valuation and a heritage assessment produce three unrelated numbers, and the international coverage of 2011 and 2012 rarely said which it was using.
What this record is good for
The value of the entry is not the tonnage, which was never settled, but the fact that it fixes a date and an instruction: the moment an evaluation was ordered, and who was to carry it out. That is a narrower and far more durable claim than any figure attached to the treasure, and it is the part that later accounts routinely get wrong.
For the wider context of Indian official gold holdings during this period, including central-bank purchases and the temple-gold monetisation proposals that followed, see the gold section. For why a stated quantity of gold does not translate directly into a stated value, see how gold is priced.
Questions about this dispatch
What is the Padmanabhaswamy temple treasure?
A set of holdings accumulated over centuries in sealed chambers beneath the Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, consisting of gold ornaments, ceremonial objects, coins and precious stones. Several chambers were opened under Supreme Court direction in 2011, revealing contents that had never been catalogued. The formal evaluation described in this dispatch was the start of the attempt to count them.
How much is it worth?
No single answer is honest, and the estimates that circulated varied by an order of magnitude. A bullion-content figure, an insurance valuation and a heritage assessment measure three different things, and none of the three could be established without assay, appraisal and a market that was never going to be tested. This dispatch reports the ordering of an evaluation, not a result.
Why did devotees object to the vaults being photographed?
Because the chambers had been kept sealed as a matter of religious practice, and photographing every item was regarded as a breach of it. The objection is reported here as it was made. It also explains the underlying situation: the reason a holding of this size had no inventory was that opening and recording it had always been treated as impermissible rather than merely difficult.
This page restores an item first published on 9 February 2012, 18:10 IST at the address below. Cite the publication date rather than the date you read it: the material is a 2011 to 2016 document, and the date is what makes it meaningful.
https://www.bullionstreet.com/news/india-to-evaluate-worlds-largest-gold-treasure-soon/1044