November 21, 1016
Occasionally, an Indian assertion arises that Lord Buddha’s birthplace was India, not Nepal. Nepalis take it as a slap in their faces. It underlines Nepalis’ perception that India is guilty of a pervasive disregard (and ignorance) of Nepal’s proud heritage, often overlooking cold hard facts. When determining where Lord Buddha spent the first 29 years of his life, ancient chronicles and contemporary science are thoroughly on Nepal’s side.
Case in point: in 2009, Bollywood produced a comedy/martial-arts movie called “Chandni Chowk to China” in which the voice-over narrator says that Lord Buddha was born in India. After Nepal’s censor board banned the showing of the film in Nepal because of the misstatement, the Indian film producer publicly apologized for the gaffe. But there was no indication that he would edit out the offending sequence in international distribution.
WHAT ARE THE FACTS BEHIND LOCATING BUDDHA’S BIRTHPLACE IN LUMBINI?
According to Buddhist tradition, based on ancient chronicles, Lord Buddha, (also known as Shakyamuni, Gautama Buddha and, as a youth, Siddhartha Gautama) was born sometime between 623 BC and 563 BC, depending on one's sources.
Ancient Buddhist literature, including the famous travel documents of a 4th century Chinese monk named Fa-hsien, indicate the Lord Buddha’s birthplace was located in present-day Lumbini. A seventh century Chinese monk travelled to Nepal and identified the location of the Buddha’s birthplace by citing the famous capital city of the ancient kingdom of Kapilavatsu as being approximately 30 kilometers from Lumbini. In modern reckoning, that capital is 28 kilometers from Lumbini.
In the interim, sequential digs and analyses of artifacts unearthed in Lumbini, support the traditional belief that Lord Buddha was born in Lumbini.
But it was not until 2013 that an excavation team, sponsored by UNESCO, using modern technology, produced positive evidence that Lumbini dated back to at least the sixth century BC, thus matching the site to the time of the historical Buddha’s life. It made international headlines because, in the third century BC, Ashoka, the Indian emperor remodeled the site, inadvertently destroying earlier remains. Durable brick architecture supplanted non-durable timber.
The UNESCO team (funded by the Government of Japan) sought to overcome these limitations by providing direct archaeological evidence of the nature of a pre-Ashoka Buddhist shrine and thus securing a viable chronology. Indeed, the excavations revealed a sequence of earlier structures preceding the major rebuilding by Asoka during the third century BC.
"This is one of those rare occasions when belief, tradition, archaeology and science actually come together," Professor Robin Coningham of Durham University in UK and co-director of the archeological team working in Lumbini, said at the time. "We know the entirety of the shrine sequence started in the sixth century B.C., and this sheds light on a very long debate."
WHAT TECHNOLOGY WAS USED TO SECURE THE DATING?
Kosh Prasad Acharya (former Director General of Nepal’s Department of Archaeology, and currently Executive Director of the Pashupati Area Development Trust) told me in an INTERVIEW that the team had tested fragments of charcoal and grains of sand from the site, using a combination of radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) techniques.
Some of this analyzed sediment confirmed the presence of ancient tree roots within the main temple shrine in Lumbini. From a Buddhist point of view, evidence of a shrine revering a tree is extremely significant: According to Buddhist tradition, Queen Maya Devi, mother of Lord Buddha, gave birth to him while holding on to the branch of a Bodhi or fig tree (Ficus religiosa) at the Lumbini gardens, midway between the kingdoms of her husband (Kapilvastu) and her parents' kingdom (Nawalparasi). See map below.
“With the help of these findings, many other historical facts can come out,” said Acharya. “And I do want to clear the misconception of a few who think Buddha was born in India, as such discoveries at Lumbini will make it easier for them to accept the reality.”
Coningham also said that even older remains of a village dating back to as early as 1300 BC were found a few hundred meters south of Lord Buddha’s birthplace, pushing back the date of the settlement of the region a thousand years. Thus, Lumbini’s history extends far before the visit of Emperor Ashoka.
HOW DID THE NEPAL VS. INDIA CONTROVERSY BEGIN?
In 1898, a buried stupa was discovered in India by William Claxton Peppe, a British colonial engineer and landowner, who owned an estate where the discovery was made. The name of the place was Piprahawa, south of the Nepal border.
Peppe led a team in excavating a large earthen mound on his land. Having cleared away scrub and jungle, they set to work building a deep trench through the mound.
Eventually they came to a large stone coffer which contained five small vases containing bone fragments, ashes and jewels. On one of the vases was a Brahmi inscription which was translated to mean "This relic-shrine of divine Buddha (is the donation) of the Shakya-Sukiti brothers, associated with their sisters, sons, and wives", implying that the bone fragments were part of the remains of Gautama Buddha.
This led some scholars to suggest that modern-day Piprahawa was the site of the ancient city of Kapilvastu, the capital of the Shakya kingdom, where Siddhartha Gautama – later referred to as Shakyamuni – spent the first 29 years of his life. The king of Kapilvastu was Lord Buddha’s father, Śuddhodana. Other scholars, however, challenged the opinion and proposed that it referred to the Buddha’s kinsman rather than the Buddha himself.
Almost a century later, from 1971-1973, a team of the Archaeological Survey of India led by K.M. Srivastava resumed excavations at the Piprahawa stupa site. The Indian team discovered a casket containing fragments of charred bone at a location several feet deeper than the coffer that W.C. Peppe had previously excavated. As the relic containers were found in the deposits from the period of Northern Black Polished Ware, Srivastava dated the find to the fifth-fourth centuries BCE, which would be, more or less, consistent with the period in which the Buddha is believed to have lived.
The news was a sensation in India. More than ten million people reportedly paid homage to the relics when they were first exhibited in Sri Lanka in 1978.
But the vast majority of scholars found Srivastava’s claim dubious, noting the challenges that isolated finds present to paleographical study. One of the foremost epigraphists and authorities on Central Asian and South Asian archaeology, Ahmad Hasan Dani, observed in 1997 that "The Piprahawa vase… has an inscription scratched on the steatite stone in a careless manner. The style of writing is very poor, and there is nothing in it that speaks of the hand of the Asokan scribes". He concluded that "the inscription may be confidently dated to the earlier half of the second century B.C."
SO WHERE DID PRINCE SIDDHARTHA SPEND THE FIRST 29 YEARS OF HIS LIFE?
Most scholars now agree that the future Lord Buddha spent his childhood, youth and early adulthood in Tilaurakot, Nepal, 28 kilometers west of Lumbini.
The evidence that Tilaurakot was the capital of Kapilvastu is overwhelming.
First, one must take into account the sheer size of the ancient Shakya kingdom of Kapilvastu, ruled by Prince Siddhartha’s father, King Śuddhodana.
The ancient chronicles describe the Kingdom of Kapilvastu as extending, from east to west, between two famous rivers, Rohini and Rapti. From north to south, it touched the Himalayas and approached Kushinagar and Pava in present-day India. In other words, the Kingdom of Kapilavatsu extended down into the Indian plains, including the hamlet of Piprahawa.
Piprahawa was not the capital of Kapilvastu. The ruins there are of an ancient monastery, a vihara complex of considerable significance amidst the Indian jungle, in all probability under the purveyance of the King of Kapilvastu.
EVIDENCE SUPORTING KAPILVASTU AS APPOSED TO PIPRAHAWA PROVIDED BY ANCIENT LITERARY SOURCES
The Jataka Stories mention numerous associations of laborers employed by the Shakya kings in their palace and in their country, including coin smiths, weaponry smiths, stoneworkers, ivory workers and jewelers. Why is this relevant? During Nepalese and Japanese joint archaeological excavation at Tilaurakot (1967-77) a large hoard of coins, weapons, ivory objects and jewelry were uncovered from the Kapilvastu site.
The previously mentioned Chinese monk Fa-hsien visited Kapilvastu in the fourth century AD and provided a detailed account of how to get there, which matches modern-day locations.
EVIDENCE PROVIDED BY ANCIENT ROADS
In the vicinity of the Tilaurakot’s fortified area, Mishra unearthed ancient roads dating as far back as 7th – 6th century BC. The roads were very wide and paved with bricks and brickbats. Some roads have stone edging on both sides. Very interestingly, some roads have eight inches soling – under layers – made from iron slag. Such an improved road transport in the vicinity indicates that Tilaurakot was a very important hub indeed.
EVIDENCE PROVIDED BY LOCATION OF RIVER
Based on the early Buddhist sources, the capital of Kapilvastu was near the Banganga River. From Tilaurakot, one can see the Banganga River in the distance. It supplied the water for Tilaurakot’s moats. There are no rivers in the vicinity of Piprahawa.
EVIDENCE PROVIDED BY ARCHEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS
Well over a century of archeological digs conducted in Tilaurakot fulfill all the conditions described by ancient texts. Renowned archeologists include Dr. A. Fuhrer (1897), P. C. Mukherji (1899), Debala Mitra (1962), Tarananda Mishra (1967-72), Babu Krishna Rijal (1972-73) and a joint team from Rissho University of Japan DoA, Nepal (1967-77). More current digs also have been conducted wherein the vestiges of the fortification walls, moats, palaces, stupas, temples, viharas, (monasteries), ponds and guardrooms have been revealed further solidifying Tilaurakot as the home of a great king.
In the spring of 2016, Robin Coningham, the chief archaeologist, announced the findings of his three-year excavation project in Tilaurakot. He said the ancient infrastructure he unearthed could be at least 2,800 years old.
Coningham’s team was comprised of 10 professors from Stirling University and Durham University of the United Kingdom, two UNESCO consultants, five experts from Nepal’s Department of Archeology, four people from the Lumbini Development Trust, and a handful of students.
What they found was astounding: the remnants of houses, roads, walls surrounding the palace grounds, extended palace infrastructure, guardhouses, and the east and west entry gates into the widespread grounds.
More digging will resume in January 2017.
For Buddhists, the Eastern Gate of Tilaurakot is of particular significance. This is the gate from where Prince Siddhartha, at the age of twenty-nine, rode away in a chariot pulled by his favorite horse, Kanthaka. By his side was Chhanna, his charioteer.
After crossing the Anoma River, Siddhartha shaved his head and formally entered the world of monkshood, leaving the world of luxury forever. From here on out, he would walk. He sent Chhanna and Kanthaka back home.
According to Buddhist tradition, Kanthaka had a sole purpose to accomplish: to usher the future Buddha into the real world of human suffering. Just before Kanthaka and Chhanna arrived back at the eastern gate of Tilaurakot, the horse died of exhaustion. A stupa was built in his honor and you can still make out the mound from the eastern gate.
There is a great deal more evidence to be found at the Lumbini Development Trust’s website: