Kapilavastu
This article has been extracted from THE IMPERIAL GAZETTEER OF INDIA , 1908. OXFORD, AT THE CLARENDON PRESS. |
Note: National, provincial and district boundaries have changed considerably since 1908. Typically, old states, ‘divisions’ and districts have been broken into smaller units, and many tahsils upgraded to districts. Some units have since been renamed. Therefore, this article is being posted mainly for its historical value.
Kapilavastu
The city where Buddha was born, and the ancient capital of the Sakyas, from whose royal house he was descended. For many years it was believed that Kapilavastu was on the site now occu- pied by Bhuila Dlh in the Basti District of the United Provinces. A re-examination of the narratives of the Chinese pilgrims, and the identification of other sites, had already caused doubts as to the cor- rectness of this view, when, in 1895, an inscription was found on a pillar at Nigllva, in the Nepal tarai, 31 miles north-west of the Uska Bazar railway station. This inscription recorded a visit by Asoka and repairs to the stupa of Konagamana. The latter building is described in Buddhist literature as close to Kapilavastu, and it was therefore thought that the site had been definitely fixed. Further investigation showed, however, that no remains of the stupa existed in the neigh- bourhood, and that the pillar itself was not in its original position. In 1896 another pillar was found a mile north of the village of Paderia in Nepal, and two miles north of the Nepalese tahsil station at Bhagwan- pur. An inscription showed that it had been raised by Asoka at the Lumbini garden to mark the birthplace of Buddha. The sacred books of the Buddhists state that Buddha was born at the Lumbini garden close to Kapilavastu, and the place is still called Rummin-dei, while a Hindu temple hard by contains a representation of the miraculous birth of Buddha. The pillar itself is split down the middle, thus agreeing with the statement of Hiuen Tsiang, who described it in the seventh century a. d., as having been struck by lightning. The neigh- bourhood, in which there are many mounds and remains of buildings, has not been fully explored, so that the exact site of Kapilavastu is not known, but it must be within a few miles of Paderia. The accounts of the Chinese pilgrims disagree ; and it has been suggested that the sites shown to them were not the same, and that Fa Hian believed Kapila- vastu to be represented by Piprahwa in Basti District, 9 miles south- west of Rummin-dei, while Hiuen Tsiang was taken to a different place, Tilaura Kot, 14 miles north-west of the garden. The locality was almost deserted when they visited it.
[See Report on the Antiquities in the Tarai by the late P. C. Mukherji, with prefatory note by V. A. Smith (Calcutta, 1901).]
