Where was The Buddha born?
MOST of us are brought up in the belief that Gautam the Buddha was born in Lumbini in Nepal terai. The basis of the belief was the discovery of an Ashokan pillar dug out in Lumbini in 1896 recording the august birth of the Master. Thirtytwo years later another pillar was found in Kapileshwar village near Bhubaneswar stating that the Buddha was born there. So was the Buddha born in Nepal or inOrissa? Dr Chakra Mahapatra in his book The Real Birth-Place of Buddha (Granth Prakasan) stoutly maintains that the Orissan pillar is genuine and the one found earlier in Lumbini, merely a replica planted there for the sake of recording the event because there was wide-spread anti-Buddhist violence in Orissa. Unfortunately, the discovery came too late as the Buddhist world accepted the evidence of the Lumbini pillar as authentic. Pilgrims from across the globe visit Lumbini for worship and hardly anyone bothers to pay homage at Kapileshwar. Pilgrim traffic to Lumbini cannot be now diverted towards
According@to one tradition, the Buddha was born in India in 463B.C.and died at the age of eighty. Whatever the details, it can be said that the Buddha was active some 2,400years ago, approximatery 400 years before Christ. In the region where present-day Tarai in Nepal borders on India, there was at that time a state ruled by the Sakya Tribe. The Buddha was the son of the tribal chief and was therefore a prince. The Chinese called this tribe Shaka in Chinese characters, and that custom has been followed by the Japanese people. He was the only son of Kings Suddhodana and Queen Maya. Since he was named Siddhartha and his father’s surname was Gautama, he was called Gautama Siddharha.
