If truth be told, archaelogical finds do not conclusively establish Tilaurakot, Lumbini, as the birthplace of the Buddha ("Buddha was born here", #43). The archaeological argument, on the basis of which Sher Bahadur Deuba announced Lumbini as the Buddha's birth place in 1996 amid much fanfare, runs as follows: the inscription on the Ashok pillar in the Mayadevi Temple complex says that emperor Ashok placed a stone slab as a marking on the place where the Buddha was born. An archaelogical team comprising Nepali and Japanese experts unearthed the stone slab in the process of excavating the Mayadevi Temple in Lumbini. Therefore, the Buddha was born in Lumbini.

This argument has a few holes. Could emperor Ashok, who lived some centuries after the Buddha, have made a mistake? Could he have actually strayed four miles north to Tilaurakot during his pilgrimage to the Buddha's birth place? And what if the Ashok pillar itself, along with the stone slab, was a hoax planted by a prescient tarai chieftain to claim the Buddha for the future Nepal?
I am not discrediting the archaeological argument for the Buddha's birth place but putting things in the right perspective. All that the archaelogical finds accomplish is provide an inductive certainty about Lumbini as the Buddha's birthplace. And, as everyone knows, an inductive conclusion is only probabilistic, it is never conclusive. We get hysterical every time some Indian source suggests Pipprahawa in India as the Buddha's birthplace. Deep down, we don't seem so certain. Hence the hysteria.

Kanden Thebe
Taplejung

Does it really matter whether the Buddha was born in Nepal or India since neither nation state actually existed when he was born? The Buddha must be having a good laugh at how our nationalistic hackles rise.

T Shakya
by email