Ask Maya: Was the Buddha born in India?

Maya, Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; Dwaipayan; Orissa.gov.in/e-magazine

The caves of Orissa (Odisha), India - Udayagiri and Khandagiri (Aisamit/flickr.com)

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Ask Maya is a regular service to WQ readers

Wisdom Quarterly reader Dwaipayan writes in questioning the Buddha's birthplace.
 
It is customary nowadays to say that Siddhartha was born in Nepal bordering India, near Gorakhpur. However, historian Dr. Ranajit Pal (ranajitpal.com), as well as reading a wide variety of Buddhist texts, makes it clear that Afghanistan (Gandhara, Mes Aynak, Bamiyan, Kabul) is a much more likely candidate for the real Kapilavastu.

We are convinced. But like no other issue, questioning Nepal inflames proud Nepalis, who remain anonymous and full of animosity. We are accused of being too "pro-India" -- with no mention made of the fact that Wisdom Quarterly is actually pro-truth (whatever that may be). And we are very pro-ancient Afghanistan.

Maya knows all and answers some.

But as a tribute to our friends in beautiful Buddhist Nepal, particularly "Buddha Boy" -- Ram Bahadur Bomjon (aka  Tapaswi Palden Dorje, Ven. Sanghamitta), here is our question of the day. It comes from an Indian reader on the possibility that the Siddhartha, who became the Buddha, was actually born in East India, rather than ancient India's northwestern frontier (now Afghanistan) very close to where he taught in Magadha.

 

QUESTION: Is it possible the Buddha was not born in faraway northwest frontier of India (modern Afghanistan beyond ancient Gandhara, India)? Might Siddhartha Gautama been born in Orissa? Please have an open mind and look at the evidence [which is conveniently put forward by the Government of Orissa].

• India is the Buddha’s Land: birthplace Orissa
• VIDEO: Talking the Buddha birthplace: Misinforming people to glorify a nation [like Nepal or India] is wrong The birthplace controversy was brought out of Orissa in 1928. Prof. Kailash Chandra Dash, who himself comes from Orissa, says those were forged (his)stories to glorify Orissan as well as Indian peoples. And he added that the Indian scholars and historians should have interpreted historical information or data more scientifically [just as Dr. Ranajit Pal discredits the Nepal theory] rather than out of any "nationalistic zeal."
• Where on Earth is Orissa? East coast of India

ANSWER: Our reply comes courtesy of Ajit Kumar Tripathy (OHRJ, Vol. XLVII, No. 1) via the Indian government, which at the very least shows the fraud and falsification of German and British archeologists Dr. Pal rails against who gave us our current Nepalese misinformation:

The Real Birth Place of Buddha: Yesterday's Kapilavastu, Today's Kapileswar[?]

Old Orissa is now Odisha, India

It has long been taken for granted that Kapilavastu, the capital city of the Sakyas [the Shakya clan], and Lumbini, the actual birth place of Goutam Buddha, were situated in the Nepalese Tarai. 

The main basis of this belief is the inscribed pillar of Rummindei, recording the visit of the Mayuran emperor Asoka, the great to the place where Buddha was born. It is little known that the same fact in similar words and script existed in Orissa. So much has been taken for granted on this issue that few scholars are now prepared to go deep into the matter. That Buddha was born in India and not in Nepal, needs to be accepted on the basis of a number of proofs, which are discussed in this article.

 

Dr. Cunningham in his Ancient Geography of India points out the place where from the Tarai inscription had been discovered is not at all related to the name Kapilavastu or even the name Kapila. 

And the noted historian Dr. Smith asserts that the place of the discovery of the Tarai inscription was never called Rummindei; it was a forged name given to it by archaeologist Dr. Fuhrer. Besides it has been proved that Buddhism had not been adopted in Nepal till the 6th century A.D. In face of all these clear-cut statements of noted scholars, it is quite sane to focus our attention on the village Kapileswara in Bhubaneswar in Orissa.

The centuries old Kapileswara village has got some similarity with the Kapilavastu in name and a region nearby called Lembai is similar to Lumbini. According to [the] Tri-pitaka ["Triple Basket," not a citation because this is merely a very general name for canonical Buddhist texts taken as a whole], Lumbini was a small estate with its capital at Kapilvastu.

Till recently, as can be seen from maps of 1817 AD there was a Lembai Pragana; and Kapileswara was a part of it. Besides, the inscription of Kapileswara village corroborates the statement of [the] Tripitaka and the Kalinga war of Asoka. The mention of the era of [the] Buddha and the name of the scribe in the said inscription help us to take this as genuine.

 

Out of four places hallowed in memory of [the] Buddha, one is his birthplace Kapilavastu. When the birthplace sculptures were destroyed, the Buddhist monks searched for a new place in the dense forests of Tarai region in Nepal and put another stupa [burial mound, reliquary] there. As other places associated with the life of Buddha such as his enlightenment, turning the Wheel of Dharma, and his [final nirvana], all happened to be in the North, it was quite natural to locate it again in the same North.

In no Buddhist literature there is any description relating to history or geography of the so-called Kapilavastu or Lumbini of Nepal. Only because the Tarai inscription was discovered there, the place attained celebrity status throughout the world.

 

Dr. Fuhrer discovered the Asokan stone inscription in the Nepal Tarai in 1896. The Kapileswara birth-plate, also evidently an Asokan stone inscription, was discovered 32 years later. A great deal of discussion on the Kapileswara plate appeared in the Indian Historical Quarterly (Vol. V) in 1929, but no research was conducted on it. Research scholars both inside and outside Orissa and India did not examine the evidence with any seriousness and it was left at that, till Chakradhar Mahapatra conducted extensive research on the subject and brought out a book named The Real Birth Place of Buddha published in 1977.

 

Mr. Chakradhar Mahapatra argues that an Asoka-pillar existed at the then Kapilavastu and the present Kapileswar, which recorded the birth. It was destroyed in religious disturbances in Orissa. The Buddhists erected a second pillar in the then inaccessible Nepal Tarai, and engraved on it a duplicate of the original inscription. This is why, we are told, the date of the epigraph in “the Buddha era” and the name of engraver, Chundray, are not mentioned on Rumindei pillar. The duplicate plate makers were at least honest enough to remain silent on the date of the inscription and did not repeat the name, “Chundray.” It is also a fact that this pillar is devoid of the characteristic Asokan capital. It looks very much different from the standard Ashoka pillars.

The noted historian V.A. Smith challenges this statement of Dr. Fuhrer and comments -- “This gives no further evidence for Fuhrer’s assertion and it appears that neither the Nepalese officials nor the hill-men called it Rumindei.” This... More

Archeology: New finds may push Buddha's birth

Subodh Varma (TNN, Nov. 26, 2013); Dhr. Seven (ed.), Mara Schaeffer, Wisdom Quarterly

Maya's auspicious dream: Queen Maya, the Buddha's mother, dreamed of conception.

Team of archeologists excavate at site of modern Maya Devi Temple, Nepal (Antiquity)

 

Salabhanjika (Hoysala sculpture, Belur)

NEW DELHI, India - Remains of a tree shrine found buried below the Maya Devi Temple in modern Lumbini, Nepal, may push back the date of the Buddha's birth to the sixth century BCE.

 

The temple is located on what traditionally was thought to be the birth place of the Buddha. His mother, Queen Maya, gave birth to Siddhartha while holding on to a tree branch. [This accords with the legendary Indian motif of a Sal tree dryad or salabhanjika.]

Excavations within the Maya Devi Temple, a UNESCO World Heritage site, uncovered the remains of a previously unknown sixth century BCE timber structure under a series of brick temples.

 

Laid out on the same design as those above it, the timber structure contains an open space in the center that links to the story of the Buddha's birth.
 

Queen Maha Maya, Siddhartha's mother

This is the first archeological material linking the life of the Buddha -- and thus the first flowering of Buddhism -- to a specific century.

 

Until now, the earliest archeological evidence of Buddhist structures at Nepal's Lumbini dated no earlier than the third century BCE, the time of the patronage of the Indian Emperor Asoka, who promoted the spread of Buddhism west from present-day Afghanistan east to Bangladesh [likely the extent of India in his day, centuries after the life of the historical Buddha, the "Shakyan Sage" or Shakyamuni].

 

"Very little is known about the life of the Buddha, except through textual sources and oral tradition," said archaeologist Professor Robin Coningham of Durham University, UK, who co-led the investigation.

 

"Now, for the first time, we have an archaeological sequence at Lumbini that shows a building there as early as the sixth century BC."

The exact date of the Buddha's birth is yet to be established. In Nepal, the year 623 BCE is favored, while in other traditions more recent dates, around 400 BCE, are accepted.

The first clear date linking Lumbini with the Buddha is 249 BCE, when Emperor Ashoka installed a pillar marking it as a sacred place. Lost and overgrown in the jungles of lower Nepal [Terai] in the medieval period, ancient Lumbini was [allegedly] rediscovered in 1896 and identified as the birthplace of the Buddha on account of the presence of a third century BCE sandstone pillar.

• Dr. Pal: Nepal "discoveries" are archeological frauds
• China and Nepal develop the Buddha's "birthplace"
• The historical Buddha -- an earth moving discovery?

The pillar, which still stands, bears an inscription documenting a visit by Emperor Asoka to the site of the Buddha's birth as well as the site's name (as determined by Asoka's men), Lumbini.

The international team of archeologists, led by R.A.E. Coningham and Kosh Prasad Acharya of the Pashupati Area Development Trust in Nepal, say the discovery contributes to a greater understanding of the early development of Buddhism as well as the spiritual importance of Lumbini in Nepal [rather than its more likely location in the area of Seistan Baluchistan near modern Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran.

Their peer-reviewed findings are reported in the December 2013 issue of the international journal Antiquity. The research is partly supported by the National Geographic Society. More

The earliest Buddhist shrine: excavating the birthplace of the Buddha, Lumbini (Nepal)

Journal.Antiquity.ac.uk

Birth of Siddhartha, future Buddha

Key locations identified with the lives of important religious founders have often been extensively remodelled in later periods, entraining the destruction of many of the earlier remains. Recent UNESCO-sponsored work at the major Buddhist centre of Lumbini in Nepal has sought to overcome these limitations, providing direct archaeological evidence of the nature of an early Buddhist shrine and a secure chronology. The excavations revealed a sequence of early structures preceding the major rebuilding by Asoka during the third century BC. The sequence of durable brick architecture supplanting non-durable timber was foreseen by British prehistorian Stuart Piggott when he was stationed in India over 70 years ago. Lumbini provides a rare and valuable insight into the structure and character of the earliest Buddhist shrines.

 

AUTHORS: R.A.E. Coningham [1], K.P. Acharya [2], K.M. Strickland [3], C.E. Davis1, M.J. Manuel [1], I.A. Simpson [4], K. Gilliland [4], J. Tremblay [1], T.C. Kinnaird [5], and D.C.W. Sanderson [5].

1. Department of Archaeology, Durham University, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK

2. Pashupati Area Development Trust, Kathmandu, Nepal

3. Orkney College, Univ. of the Highlands and Islands, E. Road, Kirkwall, Orkney KW15 1LX, UK

4. School of Biological and Environmental Sciences, Univ. of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, UK

5. Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre, East Kilbride G75 OQF, UKPRESS 

NOTE: This article is EMBARGOED until 17:00 GMT (12:00 EST) on Monday 25 November 2013. To participate in the National Geographic telephone press briefing at 15:00 GMT (10:00 EST) on 25 November, please contact Barbara Moffet at bmoffet@ngs.org