[Go directly to the portion about
Champaran]
p. 439
The kindness of Dr. Fuhrer enables me to give
some account of his discoveries in the Nepalese
Terai, north of the district of Gorakhpur, which were
briefly noticed in all Indian telegram of the Times
of December 28, 1896. He has sent me two excellent
impressions of the new Ashoka edict on the Pillar of
Paderia, together with a memorandum regarding his
tour and the situation of the ruins in its
neighbourhood.
The edict leaves no doubt that Dr. Fuhrer has
accomplished all the telegram claimed for him. He has
found the Lumbini garden, the spot where the founder
of Buddhism was born, according to the tradition of
the canonical works of the South and of the North.
The decisive passages of the Paderia Edict are as
follows:-- "King Piyadasi [or Ashoka], beloved of the
gods, having been anointed twenty years, himself came
and worshipped, saying, `Here Buddha Shakyamini was
born'.... and he caused a stone pillar to be erected,
which declares, 'Here the worshipful one was born.'"
Immediately afterwards the edict mentions the village
of Lummini (Lumminigama), and adds, according to my
interrpretation of the rather difficult new words,
that Ashoka appointed there two new officials.
However that may be, Lummini is certainly
equivalent to Lumbini, and the pillar marks the site
which was pointed out to Ashoka as the royal garden
to which Mayadevi
p. 430
retired immediately before her confinement. The
evidence of the edict could only be set aside if it
were shown that the pillar has been carried from some
other place to its present site. But there is
collateral evidence to prove that it is in its
original position. The Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsiang,
who visited the sacred places of the Buddhists all
over India and reached the Lumbini garden ill A.D.
636, mentions the pillar erected by Ashoka. He says
that it stood close to four Stupas, and Dr. Fuhrer
says that the;r ruins are still extant. Hiuen Tsiang
further alleges that the pillar had been broken into
two pieces through the contrivance of a wicked
dragon, and Dr. Fuhrer remarks that it has lost its
top part, which appears to have been shattered by
lightning. The Buddhists consider destructive storms
to be due to the anger of the snake-deities or Nagas,
whom the Chinese call dragons. If Hiuen Tsiang does
not mention the inscription, the reason is no doubt
that it was not visible in his time. When Dr. Fuhrer
first saw the pillar on December 1, only a piece,
nine feet high, was above the ground, and it was
covered with pilgrims' records, one of which beers
the date A.D. 800. This piece must, therefore, have
been accessible, and the surface of the ground must
have been at the present level for nearly 1,100
years. When the excavation of the pillar was
afterwards undertaken, the Ashoka inscription was
found 10 feet below the surface and 6 feet above the
base. It seems impossible to believe that 10 feet of
debris could have accumulated in the sixty-four
years between the date of Hiuen Tsiang's visit and
the incision of the oldest pilgrim's record at the
top. Finally, it may be mentioned that the site is
still called Rumindei, and the first part of this
name evidently represents Ashoka's Lummini and the
The identification of the Lumbini garden fixed
also the site of Kapilavastu, the capital of the
Shakyas, and that of Napeikia or Nabhika, the
supposed birthplace of Shakyamuni's mythical
predecessor Krakuchanda. According to the Chinese
Buddhist Fahien, Hiuen Tsiang's predecessor,
p. 431
Kapilavastu lay 50 ii (about 8 miles) west of the
garden. Following this indication, Dr. Fuhrer
discovered extensive ruins 8 miles north-west of
Paderia, stretehing in the middle of the forest from
the villages of Amauli and Bikuli (north-west) to
Ramghat on the Banganga (south-east), over nearly 7
miles. Again, Fahien gives the distance of Napeikia
from Kapilavastu as one yojana. Dr. Fuhrer found its
ruins with the Stupa, which is still 80 feet high, 7
miles south-west. As the Stupa of Konagamana, another
mythical Buddha, had already been found by Dr.
Fuhrer, together with its Ashoka edict, in l895, at
Nigliva, 13 miles from Paderia, all the sacred sites
in the western part of the Nepalese Terai mentioned
by the Chinese pilgrims have been satisfactorily
idevtified. Some others, particularly Ramagrama and
Kusinara, the place where Buddha died, will probably
be found in the eastern portion of the Nepalese
lowlands. For, if the direction of the route from
Kapila- vastu to these places has been correctly
given by the Chinese, Kusinara cannot be identical
with Kasia in the Gorakhpur district, where Sir A.
Cunningham and Mr. Carlleyle believed they had found
it.
Dr. Fuhrer's discoveries are the most important
which have been made for many years. They will be
hailed with enthusiasm by the Buddhists of India,
Ceylon, and the liar East. For the student of Indian
history they yield already some valuable results, and
they are rich in promise.
It is now evident that the kingdom of the
Shakyas lay, as their legend asserts, on the slopes
of the Himalaya, and that they were, as they too
admit, jungle and hill Rajputs exiled from the more
civilized districts. Their settlement ill the
hill-forest must have separated them for a prolonged
period from their brethren further south and west.
Their isolation no doubt forced them to develop the
entirely un-Aryan and un-Indian custom of endogamy,
as well as other bahits not in accordance with those
of their kindred. This also explains why
intermarriages between them and the other noble
families of Northern India did not take
p. 432
place. It was not, as their tradition says, their
pride of blood which prevented such alliances, but
the stigma attaching to exiles wile had departed from
the customs of their race, and were perhaps not even
free from a strong admixture of un-Aryan blood.
For the history of Ahoka, the Paderia Edict and
the Nigliva. inscription, the mutilated lines of
which may now be restored with perfect certainty,
teach us that the king visited in his twenty-first
year the sacred places of the Buddhists in Northern
India. His journey extended probably also in the
east to Kusinara, and further west to Shravasti,
where Hiuen Tsiang saw his inscribed pillars And his
route from his capital at Patna to the Terai is
probably marked by the row of columns found from
Bakhra, near Vaishali or Besarh, as far as Rampurva,
in the Champaran district. The journey may indicate
that Ashoka was at the time already a convert to
Buddhism, or it may have been, as I think more
probable, one of the "religious tours" which,
according to the eighth Rock Edict, he regularly
undertook from his eleventh year "in order to obtain
enlightenment.'
The fact that he planted a number of pillars all
over the Terai indicates that also this district
belonged then to his extensive empire. If I am rightt
in my interpretation of the concluding sentence of
the Paderia Edict, according to which Ashoka,
appointed there two afficials, this inference becomes
indisputable.
The promise which Dr. Fuhrer's discoveries hold
out is that excavations of the newly-found ruins will
make us acquainted with monuments and documents not
only of' the third century B.C., but of a. much
earlier period, extending to the fifth and sixth
centuries, which latter will be partly Buddhistic and
partly pre-Buddhistic, like the ancient Shiva temple
seen by Hiuen Tsiang ("Siyuki," vol. ii, p. 23, Beal)
outside the eastern gate of Kapilavastu, where the
Shakyas used to present their children. Kapilavastu
and its neighbourhood are particularly favourable for
the discovery. of really ancient monuments; for in
Fahien's time, about
p. 433
A.D. 400, the country was already a wilderness, with
very few inhabitants, and full of ancient mounds and
ruins. Hiuen Tsiang's description is very similar. It
is therefore to be expected that the old buildings
have not been dis- figured by late restorations. I am
glad to learn from Dr. Fuhrer's memorandum that the
Nepalese Governor of the district, General Khadga
Shamsher Jang Rana Bahadur, who had the pillar of
Paderia excavated, but did not think any other
operations feasible on account of the severe famine
has generously promised to lend nest year a number of
his sappers for more extensive excavations. I trust
that the Indian Government will now consent to
prolong the existence of the Archacological
Department, which, if the rumours in the papers are
true, was recently threatened. The services of the
few officers still employed are sorely needed for
conducting the researches in a really systematic and
scientific manner.