The assertion that the Buddha was born in Nepal is a bluff, a denial of history perpetrated by archeological deception and modern Indian-Nepalese acceptance.
The Nepalese Bluff
Text by Dr. Ranajit Pal
Buddhism literally throbs with the history and geography of India. The relics from Sanchi, Ajanta, Bharhut, Amaravati, Gandhara, Mathura, and Thotlakonda link India with early Buddhism. The Indian tradition of tolerance and moderation goes beyond the 6th century B.C.E. And traces of primitive Buddhism are found in the Harappan era. Buddhist history is an [odd] mix of facts and fiction that baffles the discerning reader.
The Buddha grew up in ancient Kapilavastu, India, near modern Bamiyan, Afghanistan.There were [24] buddhas before Gautama (Pali, Gotama). This implies that Buddhism was as old as Zoroastrianism. A detailed study reveals close links between early Buddhism with Hinduism, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism, which arose in the Bamiyan-Baluchistan-Gandharan area. The crucial fact that the Silk Road passed through the Buddhist heartland seems to have escaped the notice of historians.
Nepal is a beautiful country, but a Gautama from Nepal is a [terrible] fraud. Nothing in the art, archaeology, history, or literature of early Nepal has the faintest hint of Buddhism. R. Thapar affirms that Gautama was from Nepal, but this has no archaeological basis.
Christmas Humphreys laments over the stark ground reality, "The Lumbini gardens, where Gotama was born, lie in the difficult Nepal Terai, and Kusinara, where the Buddha passed away, has little to show."
Until 50 years ago, "India" included Pakistan. In ancient times Afghanistan was Buddhist Gandhara. Iran was Indo-Iran, the frontier.The renowned Belgian scholar Edward Conze also flatly dismisses the fanciful text-based accounts:
"To the modern historian, Buddhism is a phenomenon which must exasperate him at every point and we can only say in extenuation that this religion was not founded for the benefit of the historians. Not only is there an almost complete absence of hard facts about its history in India; not only is the date, authorship and geographical provenance of the overwhelming majority of the documents almost entirely unknown...."
The way out of the chaos is shown by the British scholar T. Phelps, who has exposed the dreadful forgeries of archeologist Führer, who moved pillars and faked inscriptions and relics to falsely locate Lumbini in Nepal.
Gautama was a prince, but after he was abandoned in the wilderness of the Terai by the rogue Führer, his history went to pieces.
A strong rebuttal of the Nepalese [deception] about early Buddhism comes from the discovery of ancient Buddhist sites at Thotlakonda, Bavikonda, and Pavurlakonda near Vishakhapattanam. The name Thotlakonda resembles the name [the Buddha used for himself] Tathagata [the "Wayfarer"] of Gautama, and Pavurlakonda is a clear echo of Baveru or Babil. More>>
From the center expanding out by trade routes, Buddhism traveled throughout north, west, east, and south Asia with its message of the possibility of liberation from suffering. It reached the West watered down via Christianity through the travels of St. Issa from Jerusalem to India and back.
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