New Clues May Change Buddha’s Date of
Birth
By
JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: November 25,
2013
In traditional narratives, Queen
Maya Devi, the mother of Buddha, gave birth to him while holding on
to a branch of a tree in a garden at Lumbini, in what is now
Nepal. Accounts
vary as to when this occurred, leaving uncertain the founding
century of one of the world’s major religions.
Until now,
archaeological evidence favored a date no earlier than the third
century B.C., when the Emperor Asoka promoted the spread of
Buddhism through South Asia, leaving a scattering of shrines and
inscriptions to the man who became “the enlightened one.” A white
temple on a gently sloping plateau at Lumbini, 20 miles from the
border with India, draws hundreds of thousands of pilgrims each
year to read a sandstone pillar documenting Asoka’s homage at the
Buddha’s birthplace.
But new
excavations by archaeologists at Lumbini have uncovered evidence of
a much earlier timber shrine and brick structures above it — all of
which lay beneath the temple that is a Unesco World Heritage site
long identified as the birthplace. Dating fragments of charcoal and
grains of sand, researchers determined that the lower structures
were erected as early as the sixth century B.C.
The
international team of archaeologists said the lower structures were
laid out on the same design as the more recent temple. The timber
shrine even had an open space in the center that suggested a link
to the Buddha’s nativity tradition. Deep tree roots in the center
space may even have been from the tree his mother presumably held
on to.
The
archaeologists, led by Robin A. E. Coningham of Durham University
in England, reported the findings on Monday in an article published
online in the December issue of the international journal Antiquity. This
was, they said, “the first archaeological evidence regarding the
date of the life of Buddha.”
They also
described the new line of research as having “the potential to
provide yet more evidence for the earliest expressions of Buddhist
architecture and ritual practice.”
Concluding
its report, Dr. Coningham’s group wrote that “the sequence at
Lumbini is a microcosm for the development of Buddhism from a
localized cult to a global religion.” The shrine, for example, was
transformed from a localized timber temple into “a monumental
Asokan-period temple and pillar complex inscribing it as a site of
imperial pilgrimage.”
Before the
sixth century B.C., the Lumbini site was apparently cultivated
land. The postholes of the timber building were the first evidence
of a shrine focused around a tree, Dr. Coningham said in a
teleconference for reporters arranged by the National Geographic
Society, which partly supported the research,
along with Durham University and Stirling University in
England.
“These
discoveries are very important to better understand the birthplace
of the Buddha,” Ram Kumar Shrestha, Nepal’s minister of culture,
tourism and civil aviation, said in a statement released by the
archaeology team. “The government of Nepal will spare no effort to
preserve this significant site.”
Although much
is known of the Buddha’s teachings and half a billion people are
Buddhists, there is little to document his life, Dr. Coningham
said, except through textual sources and oral tradition. He said,
“We thought, why not go back to archaeology to try to answer some
of the questions about his birth?”
A version of this article
appears in print on November 26, 2013, on page A6 of the New York
edition with the headline: New Clues May Change Buddha’s Date of
Birth.