As Michael has noted, the place of the Buddha's birth is "resolved" by
an Ashokan inscription as being at the Lumbini site in what is now
modern Nepal.

At the time of the Buddha-to-be's birth, areas of of the Indic
subcontinent were identified as janapada "tribal bases" and there was
nothing like the concept of modern boundary. Even the best of maps of
today have to use a very "fuzzy" circle to designate the local of a
janapada. The Shakya janapada is not one of the sixteen "listed"
Buddhist janapadas But lay on the Nepal Bihar state Border between
Koshala in the West and the Virji (Vrijii Confederacy) on the east,
These "border-less" states housed the clan or tribal military bases
and usually some sort of center (i.e., town or fort) The earliest
visual representations are the town-scapes in the Sanchi Torana and
they depict very substantial structures.

While, Lumbini has never to my knowledge been seriously questioned
(except by N.K. Sahu, in his Buddhism in Orissa [Cuttack, Utkal
University, 1958] whose ideas are still brought up from time to time,
mostly by Orissians), The real question has been where the City of
Kapilavastu was located and to a lesser degree where Mayadevi's home
village of Devadaha is in relation to Kapilavastu and Lumbini. This is
more a battle of Tourism Departments in India and Nepal rather than
archaeologists. For many years, the archaeological site at Tilurakot
in Nepal was hailed and visited as Kapilavastu, My own visit to the
site taught us little except that, as is typical, some Gupta period
bricks were left showing to show that there had been Gupta period
structures and stupas there.

See P.C. Mukherji. Antiquities of Kapilavastu,Terai of Nepal, (Delhi,
1969), and Babu Krishna Rijal, Archaeological Remains of Kapilavastu,
Lumbini and Devadaha, Kathmandu, Educational Enterprises, Ltd. The
Government of Nepal holds to these as the definitive solution to the
location of Kapilavastu.

However in the late 70' and early 80's K. M. Srivastava excavated the
site of Piprawa and then published The Discovery of Kapilavastu (new
Delhi, 1986). For which he cited the evidence he found at Piprawa
including some Gupta period seals,inscribed "Kapilavastu" and a lower
and earlier layer of relic caskets in the stupa which yielded the
Piprawa relics excavated by W. C. Peppe in the 1898 century.

You may see some of the relics and two of the five caskets found by
Peppe at:

http://tiny.cc/3h6OW (tinyurl to the Huntington Archive)

The unfortunate possible involvement of a notorious forger, Alois
Fuhrer, who claimed to have found Buddha relics and was selling them
to Burmese monk U Ma has cast the Peppe relics into question and the
inscription on the casket identifying the relics into doubt (this is
assumed because he was working nearby but there is no proven
connection to Peppe, that I am aware of.). And later discussions, I
am afraid by perpetual "nay sayers" have attempted to cast doubts on
Srivastava's finds. As published, that latter's finds are fairly
substantial but questioned as unscientific, therefore not provable,
and therefore irrelevant. [Maybe not entirely]

A web "debunking" the finds by Pepe and Srivastava by one Terry Phelps

<http://www.piprahwa.org.uk/The%20Piprahwa%20Deceptions.htm>

has mixed up so many stories and unreliable sources all generously peppered with
innuendo as to be virtually useless.

In short, without scientific testing, the bones and ashes in the
reliquaries are in question. I see no obvious reason to question the
validity of either the sealings or the caskets found by Srivastava's
excavations, and a recent (2004) find in England of a part of Peppe's
recovered artifacts in the London Buddhist Society add a air of
validity to much of the story.

In short, the location of Kapilavastu is still an unproven
archaeological question Gupta seals, while useful for understanding
the fifth century CE are not very solid evidence of the 5-4th century
BCE. The Ashokan column at Lumbini is far better evidence of what was
believed shortly after the Buddha's death but is still not attested
evidence.

So where are we? Half fact, half legend and half traditional belief
all scrambled together. Which half is right? Good luck?

The only thing we can be absolutely sure of is that none of this is in
Orissa.

John

On Aug 1, 2009, at 6:54 PM, Michael Witzel wrote:

> Of course, the whole question is ... silly. The historicity of early
> Pali accounts about the Buddha, apart:
>
> Between 1816 and 1864, the Buddha was born, at Lumbini (Rummindei),
> in British India. Before and after that date: in Nepal.
>
> (The Lumbini area and the rest of the lowlands was restored to Nepal
> by the British for help they had received by Nepal in the 1857 Indian
> uprising).
>
> In the Seventies, Indian and Nepalese Buddhists had a long dispute
> about the home of the Buddha. They finally agreed that the Buddha was
> born in Nepal but that he taught in India. Any boundary maps,
> anyone, for then then non yet existing Nepalese and Indian states at
> c. 400 BCE?
>
> The Orissa location is even sillier: we still have, of course, the
> pillar set up at Lumbini by Asoka, c. 250 BCE: it clearly says in
> eastern Prakrit: hide budhe jaate "here the Buddha was born". As do
> all early Buddhist texts: at Lumbini, which was still called Rummin
> Dei (= Lumbini Devi, referring to the sculpture of the Buddha's
> mother there) around 1900, until it was renamed to Lumbini later on.
>
> Why would Asoka have placed a pillar at Lumbini if the tradition in
> his time, some 130 years after the Buddha's death (new chronology,
> see Bechert 1981), would have had it differently? -- Fodder for sub-
> national revisionists. Just imagine. (Well some people in Orissa
> already have had their conspiracy theory...)
>
> A nice weekend!