History

Siddhartha Gautama was born approximately 623 BC in Lumbini Grove to Maya Devi, queen of the Shakya clan, who was travelling from Kapilavastu to her parents’ home in Devadaha when she went into labour. According to Buddhist tradition, she grasped a tree branch in the garden and gave birth standing; the child took seven steps and announced his destiny. Siddhartha later renounced his royal life, achieved enlightenment under the Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya, and spent his life teaching what became Buddhism.

The site was visited and confirmed by the Emperor Ashoka of the Maurya dynasty in approximately 249 BC, twenty years after his coronation. He erected a stone pillar inscribed in Brahmi script recording his visit, exempted the village of Lumbini from most taxes, and commissioned a stone railing around the sacred spot. This pillar inscription — discovered in 1896 by the archaeologist Anton Fuhrer and a local archaeologist, Khadga Shumsher — is the earliest securely dated document in South Asian history and provided the definitive archaeological confirmation of the site’s identity.

Archaeological excavations beneath the Maya Devi Temple in 2013 by the Lumbini Development Trust discovered a series of earlier brick structures going back to the 3rd century BC, and beneath them a layer of earlier brickwork and a sandstone marker stone. Tree-ring analysis of a timber post hole dated this layer to approximately 550–600 BC — confirming occupation of the sacred grove at a period consistent with the Buddha’s lifetime.