WASHINGTON, U.S., November 27, 2013 (The Straits Times, pay site for full article): The discovery of a previously unknown wooden structure at the Buddha’s birthplace suggests he might have lived in the sixth century BCE, 200 years earlier than thought, according to archaeologists. Until now, archaeological evidence favored a date no earlier than the third century BCE, when 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 in Nepal, 32 km from the border with India, draws hundreds of thousands of pilgrims each year to read a sandstone pillar documenting Emperor 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 Buddha’s birthplace.
In traditional narratives, the Buddha was born beneath a hardwood sal tree at Lumbini as his mother, Queen Maya Devi, the wife of a clan chief, was travelling to her father’s kingdom to give birth.
The archaeologists, led by Durham University professor Robin Coningham, reported the findings on Monday in an online article 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.”