BUDDHA & His Birthplace
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The seal scribed with "OM DEVAPUTRA BIHAR KAPILAVASTU BHIKSHU SANKASA" alleged to have been recovered from that place relates to 5th century. Because the BHIKSHUS kept it concealed in such an inaccessible place after the original birth place was damaged. That could never have been the palace of Sudhodana surrounded by paddy fields.
As the other three visitable and memorable places of Buddha (i.e. his place of enlightenment, place of turning the wheel of law, and place of great demise) were all situated in the northern part of India near the Himalayas, they decided to preserve the memory of Buddha in the dense forest region of the Himalayas. There they constructed a pillar, and installed there a parallel plate depicting the birth of Buddha and put the earthern urn taken from Kapilavastu pillar. But they handed over the original plate to the faithful Upasaka Mallas.
The said original plate contained 90 letters. So following the principle of truth they also kept 90 letters in this latter version of the birth plate. But they dropped the name of the scribe and the date, because they would have been far from the truth, the cardinal principle of Buddhism. The matters brought it back to Kapilavastu and it was discovered from Kapileswar.
In course of time it so happened that Buddhism became completely extinct in the real birthplace of Buddha. Likewise the followers also could not take the image of Konakamana. They took an exact copy of the inscription installed in the Konakamana stupa, and place it building a pillar in the Himalayan Tarai area. As the image and pillar of Konakamana were situated in the seashore, likewise they constructed the pillar on the bank of a great tank. After a long interval they also shifted the image of Mayadevi and placed it in that secret far off place in Tarai region of Nepal. Then after some time they took away the remnant of bones and sacred ashes of Buddha from the ruined stupa at Kapileswara and after constructing a new stupa put those bones and ashes there.
Being desperate of preserving intact the main citadel of Buddhism in the real birthplace of Buddha, the artificial seat of Buddhism was constructed in the Tarai region in the foot of the Himalayas. The sculpture of it was quite different from the Asokan period. But unfortunately this place has wrongly become famous as the birthplace of Buddha. But at length the original birthplace has come to light. Those who believe in the Sankhya school of philosophy (Sankhya) are known as Sakyas. It has been referred to in many puranas that Kapila, the profounder of Sankhya philosophy meditated for many years at Kapilavastu. The place is now known as Kapileswara after him. Although after the extinction of Buddhism, Kapileswara became a full-fledged seat of Saivism, still the people of Kapileswara believed in the Sankhya views of Kapila. Even those Mallas, who were worshipping the relics of Buddha, while pouring water upon the Shiva lingam use to call aloud - ' Oh Sage ! Kapila'. Because they know that Buddha had preached the Sankhya thought of Kapil.
But it is quite evident that the Sankhya philosophy of Kapila was never in vogue in Nepal. If the pillar, which was built by Asoka, after 240 years of Buddha's death in Buddha's original birthplace, would have been present now with the birth plate, then, there would have been no such arguments as raised now. But due to ill-luck, Buddhism was rooted out from Orissa. Otherwise it would have been easier to prove that Buddha was born in Orissa. After Asoka made Buddhism the state religion many fictitious stories were fabricated about Buddhism. Many legendary tales completely distorted the true history. One of the tales say that there were many 'Buddhas'. Out of the six 'Buddhas' the firth Buddha was named 'Konakamana', who was also known as 'Kanakamuni'. But these six 'Buddhas' were no other than the same Gautama Buddha. The two edicts of Asoka i.e. (i) The Kapileswara inscription referring to the birth of Buddha and (ii) the Konakamana inscription prove undoubtedly that Buddha was a historical person, if the above two edicts will be proved to have belonged to Orissa, then all the doubts about the Sakyas, the Mallas, and Buddha created by the Buddhist legends and literatures will be removed. In Nepal, where Buddhism had not entered till 6th or 7th century A.D. and the Tarai region, where there was no trace of the name of 'Kapila', no village or paddy field for 'Seed sowing ceremony', and where the name of the estate area of Suddhodana (i.e. Lumbini) was identified falsely, most probably the pillar was erected with the duplicate birth plate to keep intact the information regarding the birth of Buddha, as the place was a quite lonely inaccessible forest region.
So it indicates that to keep the memorials of Buddha, the religious Buddhists had selected such an artificial place in the foot of the Himalayas, which was an untrodden dense forest area. In the end we must give serious attention to the fact that Lumbini never existed in Kapilavastu, rather according to the old Buddhist literature Kapilavastu, was the capital of Lumbini. But the stone-pillar which Asoka got erected in the birthplace of Buddha, the name of Kapilavastu never occurs. Because Sakyamuni was born in Lumbini (Asoka refers to Buddha as Sakyamuni), Asoka gave up the idea of realizing land revenue from the residents of Lumbini and he offered his worship at the place where Buddha was born.
Further Hiuen Tsiang and Fa Hien never had any definite idea bout the birth place of Buddha; it is already told that they represented Tapasu and Bhallika as residents of Kabul and Quandahar despite the fact that the Tripitaka speaks of them as residents of Utkala. Further the observation of Prof. Thomas is significant when he says that in the account of each of these Chinese travelers, the exact location of Kapilavastu is far from being identical. Besides it is significant to note that inspite of the fact that both the Chinese travelers refer to the birth place of Buddha as Kapilavastu, it is questionable as to why Dr. Fuhrer who is given the credit of discovering the birth place of Buddha designated the place as Rumindei.
