Lumbini — Birthplace of the Buddha

Lumbini — Where the Buddha Was Born

The Garden of Queen Maya

Lumbini — a garden in the Terai lowlands of southern Nepal — is where Siddhartha Gautama was born. Queen Maya Devi, travelling from Kapilavastu to her parents' home in Devadaha (as was the custom for a woman's first confinement), stopped at the Lumbini Garden. Grasping the branch of a sal tree, she gave birth standing upright. The infant took seven steps — and a lotus bloomed under each foot.

This is the beginning of the Buddhist story, and Lumbini is its most archaeologically verified site. In 249 BCE, Ashoka visited Lumbini and erected a pillar with a Brahmi inscription: "Hida Bhagavam jāte ti" — "Here the Blessed One was born." This is the earliest written proof that the Buddha was a historical person.

The 2013 Excavation

In 2013, an international team led by Robin Coningham (University of Durham) and the Archaeological Survey of India excavated beneath the existing Maya Devi Temple. They found a timber shrine dated by radiocarbon to the 6th century BCE — roughly contemporary with the Buddha's lifetime. If confirmed, this is the earliest Buddhist structure ever discovered, predating Ashoka's pillars by 300 years.

The Master Plan

In 1978, the Japanese architect Kenzo Tange designed a Master Plan for Lumbini — a 5×5 km zone divided into a Sacred Garden (the core), a Monastic Zone (monasteries built by 30+ nations), and a Cultural Zone. The plan has been only partially implemented, but the Monastic Zone — with its Chinese pagoda, Korean stupa, Thai wat, Sri Lankan vihara, and German Dharmic centre — is a remarkable experiment in Buddhist internationalism.