Lumbini International Research Institute Occasional Papers, 1 Harry Falk The Discovery of Lumbinf Lumbini 1998 Cover picture: Nativity of the Buddha, 9th century, stone sculpture, h. 84 cm. Courtesy of the National Museum, Kathmandu Copyright © by Lumbini International Research Institute, Lumbini Printed at: Mass Printing Press, Kathmandu Contents Preface The Discovery of LumbinI Abbreviations iii 1-22 24 Preface The present article on The Discovery of LumbinI written by the German scholar Harry Falk, Professor of Indology at Berlin, has been chosen by the Lumbini International Research Institute to start the institute's series of Occasional Papers. The Institute thought it an appropriate theme to begin its publications with Lumbini as a subject, because the Institute itself is located in the vicinity of the Sacred Garden in Lumbini. As interest in the birthplace of Gautama Buddha is increasing not only among local and foreign Buddhist communities, but also the general public, one can be grateful to Professor Falk for throwing some light on the historical facts surrounding the discovery of Lumbini. The contribution by Austin Waddell to that discovery is usually forgotten, and in nearly all modem writings the credit for it is assigned to A. A. Flihrer and, rightly, to General Khadga Shamsher, the Governor of Palpa in western Nepal. Up to now research on Lumbini has been mainly in the field of archaeology. When Lumbini was discovered it had to be almost completely excavated. There was an early phase of excavation, the results of which were published by Babu Krishna Rijal. The recent excavation work by the Japanese Buddhist Foundation under the guidance of Professor Uesaka has brought additional interesting facts about the foundation of the Maya Devi temple to light. The archaeologists were followed by philologists who deciphered and translated the inscription of the Ashoka pillar. In this inscription there are one or two words which are not fully clear, and are still being discussed by scholars. Some more research is needed with regard to them. It is hoped that this article will stimulate scholarly discussion on various aspects of Lumbini and that more documents on this sacred site will come to light in the future. Christoph Clippers Lumbini, 1998 1 The Discovery of Lumbini* by Harry Falk We are used to talking of LumbinI as the birthplace of the Buddha, and to visiting it as if it had been known and accessible throughout all time. One thereby easily overlooks all the effort required during the last century to relocate this significant site. The story of the discovery of Lumbini is a story full of blunders of the sort that are part of any long-term scientific endeavour. What is unusual about this story, however, is the host of intentional distortions of truth. In this matter of prestige, personal pride played a role similar to that of national pride nowadays in the argument over the true Kapilavastu not far away.l 1. No other place than Lumbini has ever claimed to be the site of the Buddha's birth. Bareau2 recently drew attention to inconsistencies in the source texts, and on the basis of them cast doubt upon Lumbini's legitimacy. He reasonably mused that a pregnant woman would not wish to leave home to bear her child without some motivation (77). Since there was no particular .treason for Maya to do any travelling, Siddhartha could not have been born in Lumbini but only in Kapilavastu, the royal family'S seat. Since no text mentions the capital city of the Sakyas as the birthplace of the Buddha, the tradition of the texts should be rejected as an artful but ahistorical legend. Had Bareau delved into Indian customs, he would certainly have been more cautious: "In many parts of India a woman prefers to go back to 'The Gennan version of this article was originally published in Acta Orientalia 52 (1991): 70-90. The English translation was done by Philip Pierce. All citations of foreignlanguage works have been rendered into English. lef. Herbert Hiirtel, "Archaeological Research on Ancient Buddhist Sites," in H. Bechert, ed., The Dating of the Historical Buddha-Die Datierung des historischen Buddha, Symposien zur Buddhismusforschung, IV 1 = AAWG no. 189 (Gottingen: 1991),61-89, esp.7Off, .. 2Andre Bareau, "Lumbint et la naissance du futur Buddha," BEFEO 76 (1987): 69-81. Harry Falk 2 her old home for the birth of her first child," wrote Stevenson from Gujarat at the beginning of the century. "3 The arguments Bareau advances to explain why tradition has linked Lumbinlof all places to this far-reaching event are most speculative. From the Asokan inscription he reads, following Bloch, 4 that the king once had a stone wall (silavigat;iabhlca) constructed. This wall, Bareau assumes, who supposedly marked the site of a fonner temple dedicated to a ｹ｡ｾｩｉＩｬ＠ is said to have was able to assure births free of complications. This ｹ｡ｾｩｉＩｬ＠ had a statue representing her in the salabhafijika pose (78). There was, of course, no child at the side of this female being. But since the Buddha was never portrayed at the time in human fonn, such an absence proved no obstacle for believers of later periods to transfer thither the birth of Siddhartha (79). The first premise of this hypothesis is already unacceptable. Up to now we still have not the least idea whether sila-vigat;ia-bhlca or silavigat;iabhl ca (= ca) is the proper reading, and what the expression vigat;iabhl(?cajca) in the inscription at hand means. It is in any case certain that in purely linguistic tenns it has nothing to do with bhitti 'wall,.5 The stilpas and other buildings in LumbinI, ｾｳ＠ is the custom in this part of the country, are all constructed of brick. To be sure, a so-called "cyclopean" stone wall has been preserved around the old town of Rajagrha, but only for an edifice serving a technical military function-on top of a rocky summit. A change of construction material would make no sense in the Tarai. Thus the most one may infer from Asoka's inscription is that, alongside the massive (i.e. not rubble) stone columns (silathabhe), he had a massive (sila) vigat;iabhl(Ca) erected. No matter how one analyzes silavigat;iabht(ca) linguistically, there is nothing to support the notion of a massive wall. But 3[Margaret] Sinclair Stevenson, The Rites of the Twice-Born (London: 1920; Delhi: 1971), 1. 4Jules Bloch, Les inscriptions dAsoka (Paris: 1950), 157. Bloch refers in note 3, however, to phonetic difficulties. sp. Thieme, "Lexikalische und grammatische Bemerkungen zu den Asoka-Inschriften," in Kl. Bruhn and A. Wezler, eds., Studien zum Jainismus und Buddhismus: Gedenkschrift fur L. Alsdorf, Alt- und Neu-Indische Studien no. 23 (Wiesbaden: 1981), 297. The Discovery of LumbinI 3 temple falls by the without a wall the already flimsy reason for a ｹ｡ｾｩｬＬＱ＠ wayside, and without a ｹ｡ｾｩｬＬＱ＠ there is no cause to replace one female being by another. 3. Bareau has gone to great lengths to show that authoritative Buddhist texts, in expatiating upon the birthplace of the Buddha, are highly contradictory in the details, as if the authors had never personally been to the scene of the event. The place is called a "village" (gama) by Asoka; according to the Suttanipata 683, the birth village (gama) of the Buddha is located in the country (janapada) belonging to Lumbini; in the Nidanakatha, Lumbini is only a forest (vana, Ja I 52: 15). Chinese translations speak in terms of a "garden" or a "park" (71). The tree under which the Buddha was born is called in the sources either lumba (Mvu I 99:6) or pippala (Lalitavistara, ed. Lefman, p. 79), Siila (la I 52: 16; Mvu 11 18:9), plak$a (Mvu 11 19: 17) or else, in travel guides, asoka (78). There is therefore every justification for Bareau's warning not to exaggerate the authority of the written sources in their details. If we seek statements that offer a balanced account of the site as it actually was, we are forced to resort to the travel reports of foreigners, namely those written by Chinese and Tibetans. The Tarai is an unhealthy region; one can travel in it with some degree of safety only from November on. The Chinese had as much trouble finding their way forward in the first millennium as archaeologists have had at the end of the second. It is thus understandable why foreigners, unaware of the conditions there, should have succumbed to the temptation to visit Lumbini, whereas Indians, even the Buddhist authors of the early part of the first millennium, 'Preferred to pass up the trip to the Tarai. It is not likely that the Moslems had to come in order for Lumbini to disappear from the map of frequently visited pilgrimage sites. By the middle of the last century, in any case, the place could no longer be located by British interested in it. The search for Lumbini necessarily began where foreigners had described their route. Harry Falk 4 4. The oldest completely preserved report is that of Fa-hsien. 6 Shortly after 400 A.D. he had gone to Kapilavastu, at the time a rather deserted place, having first passed through SravastI and the birthplaces of the Buddhas Krakucchanda and KOQagamana. Fifty li (some 15 km) east of the city he reached the garden called LumbinI. About the latter he writes: Here the queen having entered the pool to bathe, came out on the north side, and after walking twenty paces, raised her hands and grasped the branch of a tree. Then, facing the east, she brought forth the Heir Apparent. On reaching the ground, the Heir Apparent walked seven steps, and two dragop.-kings washed his body. At the place of the washing, a well was afterwards made; and also from the above-mentioned bathingpool, the priests of to-day are accustomed to get their drinking water. Fa-hsien then describes the infertile and abandoned countryside in a few brief words and warns travellers about wild animals. Perhaps Fa-hsien had no problem finding the important place. From his words, though, it is clear that in 400 A.D. there were no vast hordes of pilgrims to be seen in either Kapilavastu or in the park of LumbinI. He does, it is true, provide a description of the birth scene, but he wastes no words on sights of interest in LumbinI apart from the pool. Some 230 years later Hsiian Tsang7 made a trip to India. He, too, noted that the Tarai region was "very sparsely inhabited" (11,1). Starting a bit south of Kapilavastu, he headed 80 or 90 li north-east and came to the grove of LumbinI. Like his predecessor, he was first of all struck by the pool: In this grove was the beautiful bathing tank of the Sakyas, and about twenty-four paces from it was the old asoka tree at i 6The Travels of Fa-hsien (399-414 A. D.), or Record of the Buddhistic Kingdoms, retranslated by H. A. Giles (Cambridge: 1923; Varanasi: 1972), 36-38. 7Thomas Watters. On Yuan Chwang's Travels in 1ndia (A.D. 629-645),2 vols. (London: 1904/05; Delhi: 1961). The Discovery of Lumbini 5 which the Buddha had been born into the world. On the east of this was an Asoka tope, at the place where two dragons washed the newly born prince with hot and cold water. To the east of this were two clear springs with topes where two dragons emerged on the birth of the P'usa and produced two springs. South of these was a tope where Indra received the newborn infant P'usa. Next to it were four topes to the four Devarajas who had taken charge of the baby Buddha after his birth. Near these topes was a stone pillar set up by Asoka with the figure of a horse on the top. Afterwards the pillar had been broken in the middle, and laid on the ground (that is, half of it), by a thunderbolt from a malicious dragon. Near this pillar was a small stream flowing south-east, and called by the people the Oil River. (14f.) The relevant portions of a travel guide, "probably ... not more than a few centuries old" (276), written in Tibetan and in part compiled from reports of the above Chinese travellers, was published by Wadde1l8 in 1896. This guidebook, which mentions several of the old sites under relatively modem names, shows that even after the Islamic conquests pilgrims from the north continued to' seek the way to Lumbini. 5. By the beginning of the 19th century, at a time when ever more was being learned in Europe about the teaching of the Buddha, the place in the Tarai had fallen into oblivion. On the basis of non-Indian sources, Schmidt9 had settled upon the notion in 1824 that the Buddha was brought forth in "Magada," in the city of "Radschagricha." 8L. A. Waddell, "A Tibetan Guide-book to the Lost Sites of the Buddha's Birth and Death," JASB 65 (1896): 275-279. 9Isaac Jacob Schmidt, Forschungen im Gebiete der (. .. ) Bildungsgeschichte der Vi5lker Mittel-Asiens, vorzuglich der Mongolen und Tibeter (St. Petersburg: 1824), 171. Harry Fa1k 6 In 1830 Hodgson lO found in Nepalese texts a birthplace "Kapalvastll, which is near Gangasagar" (240). Concerning it he remarked (253): "The Bauddha scriptures differ as to the city in which Sakya was born; but all the places named are Indian." The first serious attempt to locate Kapilavastu was made in 1831 by Klaproth. I1 From chiefly Chinese sources he had the impression that Kapilavastu ought to be sought further to the north, in the territory of "Oudh, ... which is the ancient Ayodhya." In 1832 Wilson l2 recurred to Tibetan texts according to which Kapilavastu was situated in Kosal, "bordering on the Kailas mountains, near the Himalaya, on the banks of the Bhagirathf" (5). From this Wilson drew the conclusion that Kosala must have been part of the kingdom of Magadha. He was not sure of the location of Kapilavastu. Starting from Kailasa and the Bhagirathi, "or as elsewhere stated," the RohiDI, he expected to find the capital of the Sakyas "in Rohilkhund, or in Kamaon, or perhaps even rather more to the eastward, for the river now known as the Rohini is one of the feeders of the Gandak-at any rate it must have been on the borders of Nepal" (7). The source to which he owed the reference to the Rohil)l remained, unfortunately,. unnamed. In 1836 Klaproth l3 collated his Chinese sources with Wilson's Tibetan ones. He cautioned against confusing the RohiDi of the Tibetan texts with the tributary of the Gandaki (201). Since according to the Chinese maps Kapilavastu was supposed to lie north of Benares, he found the capital "on the banks of the Rohini ou Roh ei"n , which comes from the mountains of Nepal, joins the Mahanada and issues into the Rapty, from the left, above ｬｾｲｩ｡ｮ＠ Houghton Hodgson, "Sketch of Buddhism, Derived from the Bauddha Scriptures of NipaJ.," Transactions of the RAS 2 (1830): 222-257. llNote 1, pages 103f., signed "Kl." in the article by H. Wilson, "Notice sur trois ouvrages bouddhiques rer;us du Nepal," lA 7 (1831): 97-138. 12H. H. Wilson, "Abstract of the Contents of the Dul-va, or first Portion of the Kithgyur, from the Analysis of Mr. Alexander Csoma de Koros, lASB 1 (1832): 1-8. 131. H. Klaproth, Foe Koue Ki ou Relation des royaumes bouddhiques: Voyage dans la Tartarie, dans l'Afghanistan et dans ['Inde, execute a la fin du IVe siecIe par Chy Fa Hian, ... (paris: 1836). The Discovery of LurnbinI 7 the present-day town of Gorak'hpour." Klaproth had thus determined the correct location of Kapilavastu to within very narrow limits. Three years later 14 Wilson gave his own approval to this localization and placed the capital of the Sakyas east of Magadha, "somewhere near the hills separating Nepal from Gorakhpur, it being described as situatt,i on the Rohini, a mountain-stream which is one of the feeders of the Rapti. (...) north of Gorakhpur, near where the branches of the Rapti issue from the hills." Because the Divyavadana supposedly locates Kapilavastu on the banks of the Bhagirathi, and because he could connect the latter in his mind only with the Gailga, Burnouf1s insisted upon "seeking Kapilavastu much farther to the west or farther to the south than where the guides of the Chinese travellers place it." Unconvinced by this, Lassen 16 from 1847 onwards adopted Klaproth's conception of things. He localized the old capital "on the RohilJi, an eastern tributary of the upper Rapti, some distance from the more southern Gorakhpur." He and is predecessors were off regarding Kapilavastu and Lumbinl by forty and twenty kilometres too far east respectively. Julien,17 in 1858, also based himself upon Klaproth. He recalculated the distances. the two Chinese pilgrims travelled and placed the capital "twenty leagues [= approx. 80 km] from Gorakhpur, probably to the northwest." On his map,18 therefore, Kapilavastu lies precisely where it should. But since a search by Francis Buchanan along the RohilJi's course sometime around 1809 had brought no ruins of any large settlement to light, he felt a "new exploration" (357, n. 1) to be a pressing need. 14H. H. Wilson, "Account of the Foe Kue Ki; or Travels of Fa Hian in India," JRAS 5 (1839): 123. IsE. Bumouf, Introduction ill'histoire du Buddhisme Indien (Paris: 1844), 143, n. 2. 16Christian Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, vol. 1 (Bonn: 1847), 138, n. 1; vol. 2 (Bonn: 1852), 904, n. 1; vol. 3 (Berlin/London: 1858), 20lf. 17Stanislas Julien, Memoires sur les contrees occidentales, traduits du Sanscrit en Chinois, en l'an 648 par Hiouen-Thsang, vol. 2 (Paris: 1858), 356. 18Volume 1 (paris: 1857), fold-out. Harry Falk 8 Alexander Cunningham set about this task in 1871. 19 As the two Chinese pilgrims had both started out from SravastI and travelled the equivalent of 83 and 91 English miles respectively to the south-east, the rediscoverer of Sravasti retraced their steps on a map and ended up seven of Basti, near a place called Nagar, which he suggested miles ｳｯｾＭｷ･ｴ＠ equating with Kapilanagara (349), a form that does not actually occur. Cunningham was well aware of the uncertainty of his localization, particularly in view of the fact that he had never seen the area with his own eyes (354). And in fact, his guess was off by eighty kilometres. In 1875 Carlleyle20 began documenting Cunningham's sites in Basti District in his role as the latter's assistant. At the end of the cold season he faced the choice of either going back over Nagar for Cunningham as a possible candidate for Kapilavastu, or otherwise paying a visit to Bhuila Lake in order to assess the extensive ruins there (82). He ended up, in a manner of speaking, doing both simultaneously. He rode to the Bhuila Valley, fifteen miles north-west of Basti, and found Kapilavastu. He was able to verify as parts of the landscape every detail reported in Chinese and other sources concerning the old Sakya capital. Soon after this "discovery" Cunningham himself journeyed to the Bhuila Valley. He convinced himself of the authenticity of the water source that began to bubble up after an arrow was shot into it, as well as of the existence of the hole in the ground that was made when Prince Siddhartha threw a dead elephant across a trench. Cunning ham departed with the "most perfect conviction of the accuracy of Mr. Carlleyle's identification."21 Even without having read Carlleyle's report, one need only to glance into Flihrer's description of the region 22 to understand why shortly thereafter 19Alexander Cunningham, The Ancient Geography of India, vol. 1, The Buddhist Period (London: 1871), cited according to the 1963 Varanasi reprint. 2°A. C. L. Carlleyle, Tours in the Central Doab and Gorakhpur, Archreological Survey of India, Report 12 (Calcutta: 1879; reprint Varanasi: 1970). 21Preface to Carlleyle's Report, iv. 22 A. Fiihrer, The Monumental Antiquities and Inscriptions, in the North- Western Provinces and Oudh, Archreological Survey of India (Allahabad: 1981; reprint Varanasi: 1969). The Discovery of LumbinI 9 Waddell (1878, 275) termed Carlleyle "one of his [=Cunningham's] most incompetent assistants." Fiihrer made inquiries at Bhuila Lake about the water source that was still said to bear witness to the hurling of the elephant, and which had been shown to Hsiian Tsang in the true Kapilavastu. According to Carlleyle's statement (159), the pond he had tracked down was still "generally" called "Hathi Gadhe" or "Hathi Kund." In FLihrer (222), though, one can read that "the chaukidar and the inhabitants of the neighbouring village Nyagrodha, however, state that the name of Hathikul)Q was given to the tank by Mr. Carlleyle himself, and that this name was utterly unknown in the part of the country before the arrival of Mr. Carlleyle."23 Fiihrer himself suspected Kapilavastu's location, quite correctly, to be between Gorakhpur and SravastI (223), but he sought the route of the Chinese between the Ghaghra and Rapti, and in doing so struck at least forty kilometres too far south, as Cunningham and Carlleyle had before him. 6. In 1893 a Nepalese officer on a hunting expedition found an Asokan pillar near Nigliva, at Nigali Sagar. Even before the inscription could be read and published, the military doctor Waddell,24 who was serving in Calcutta and who had long been making efforts to find the Buddha's birthplace, suspected that some reference to the Buddhist holy site might be expected in it. He wrote to the person in charge, Dr. Fiihrer, but received no reply. Soon afterwards Biihler, in Vienna, acquired a report and a rubbing from Fiihrer. From 1895 on, Biihler made the text and circumstances of the find known to others in his field. 25 From the beginning Biihler accurately called Fiihrer not the discoverer of the pillar but merely someone who had 23This already occurs, though without "and the inhabitants," in A. Fiihrer, The Sharqi Architecture of Jaunpur, ASI N.S. 1 (Calcutta: 1889),69. 24 A number of important features of this discovery are related in L. A. Waddell, "The Discovery of the Birthplace of the Buddha," JRAS 1897: 644-65l. 25G. Biihler, "The Asoka Pillar in the Terai," The Academy 47 (1895): 360; WZKM 9 (1895): 175-177; "The Asoka Edicts of Paderia and Nigliva," EI5 (1898/99): 1-6. Harry Falk 10 managed "to look up the Asoka pillar." Fiihrer's report to Biihler told of stilpa fragments near the pillar; it also mentioned, however, the missing characters in the last line of the inscription. Biihler repeated Fiihrer's statements that these characters were hidden under ground level and that the Nepalese had kept him from excavating. 26 Now, there is not the slightest trace of a stilpa at Nigrui Sagar, nor were the final characters hidden underground, having long before been broken off with a piece of the pillar. All told, this can only mean that Fiihrer himself never saw the pillar there before his reports on Nigliva to Biihler. Somebody else must have obtained the rubbing at his bidding. Waddell, for his part, only learned from the press what is in fact written on the pillar, namely that King Asoka visited the stUpa of the Buddha KOI)agamana in the twentieth year of his reign. The doctor immediately made a connection between the pillar and the reports of the Chinese pilgrims, who were shown the birthplace of this same Buddha some seven kilometres south-east of Kapilavastu. 27 From Hsiian Tsang one knew that an Asokan pillar 8 could be expected to be found there. Waddell equated the site of the newly found pillar with the birthplace of KOI)agamana and wrote of this to Fiihrer. But again he received no reply. Fiihrer had published his report 29 in 1895, and in it, as in his letters to Biihler, had listed an entire complex of ruins at ｎｩｧｾｬ＠ Sagar. He repeated 26The missing characters would have occupied a space of approximately 5 by 15 cm. The Nepalese would not have been likely to prevent an "excavation" to the depth of 5 cm. 27The reports appear to contradict one another. Fa-hsien travelled in each case less than a yojana from Krakucchanda's site north to Ko I,lagamana, and from there west to Kapilavastil. As he never mentions intermediate directions, however, one may place both sites south-east of Kapilavastu. Hsiian Tsang travelled 12 km south from Kapilavastu, and from there another 7 km north-east to KOl,lagamana. If this "south" is turned into "southeast," then the sites of both reports lie not far apart. 28The Asokan pillar in Gotihawa, some 8 km south-west of Tilaurakot/Kapilavastu, is situated precisely where the birthplace of KOl,lagamana ought to be located. ef. Babu Krishna Rijal, Archaeolgical Remains of Kapilavastu, Lumbini and Devadaha (Kathmandu: 1979), second-last map. 29 Progress Report of the Archaeological Survey of India, North- West Provinces Circle, for the year ending June 30, 1895 (Rookee: 1895); unavailable to me. The Discovery of Lumbint 11 his descriptions at greater length in 1897.30 He, too, on the basis of the records of the Chinese, associated the inscription on the pillar with the stUpa of the Buddha KOl).agamana. He claimed to have found this stUpa right next to the pillar and described it in great detail. In 1901 Vincent Smith learned why no one besides Fiihrer had been able to find the least bit of evidence for the stUpa: Fiihrer had simply borrowed the description of his fictive stUpa, in some parts word for word, from Cunningham's work dealing with the Bhilsa Topes. 31 Nevertheless, the pillar that sparked Fiihrer's report did exist. From this report Waddell surmised that the archaeologist had at no time realized the value of the pillar for localizing Kapilavastu. In the spring of 1896 Waddell attempted by means of an article in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal to interest others in the field to keep on looking. This article was at first, however, not even accepted for print. Therefore he rewrote it for a newspaper readership and saw it appear in June in The Englishman in Calcutta. 32 The Asiatic Society thereupon backed down and printed his original memorandum in the fall of the same year. 33 Waddell now took up the search for the birthplace of the Buddha on his own. He requested the government in Calcutta to approach the Nepalese for permission to enter their country. All sides were forthcoming. In August of 1896 the state government of Bengal promised him to bear the costs of an expedition, and the Nepalese were willing to let him in the country. Still. the state government had to give their final consent and find a replacement 30A. Fiihrer, Monograph on Buddha Sakyamuni's Birth-Place in the Nepalese Tarai (Allahabad: 1897; reprint Varanasi: 1972 as Antiquities of Buddha . .. ), 22 and 24. 31Vincent A. Smith, "Prefatory Note," in Puma Chandra Mukherji, A Report on a Tour of Exploration of the Antiquities of Kapilavastu, Tarai of Nepal (Calcutta: 1901), 3f. and notes 1 and 2. Concerning other fabrications by Fiihrer that appeared in print as early as 1891, see H. Liiders, "On Some Brahmi Inscriptions in the Lucknow Provincial Museum," JRAS 1912: 161-179; on Fiihrer's preface to Edmund W. Smith, The Moghul Architecture of Fathpur-Sikri (Allahabad: 1898), see Stanley Lane-Poole, "A Missing Signature," The Athenreum 3544 (28 Sept. 1895),423: "All Dr. Fiihrer has done is to interpolate a couple of paragraphs, add a word here and omit one there." 32"Where is the Birthplace of Buddha?" The Englishman of 1 June 1896. 33"A Tibetan Guide-book" (see n. 8). Harry FaIk 12 for the doctor for the planned six weeks. The consent was secured, but not the replacement. And thus, on 5 February 1897, Waddell was informed that Archaeological Surveyor Dr. Fiihrer would be leading the expedition in place of him. Later (650) Waddell noted somewhat bitterly: ''using the machinery which I had set in motion, he proceeded to the spots which I had indicated, and there found the ruined monuments of Kapilavastu city and the Lumbini grove." And that was not all. In all his reports and letters, Fiihrer forgot to mention to whom and to what circumstances he owed his charge. He also managed, after the fact, to link his name with drawing the connection between Nigllva, the Chinese travellers and Lumbini.34 7. Even though Waddell cannot be deprived of his share of the credit for having spurred on the search for Kapilavastu and Lumbini, he nevertheless erred in two decisive respects: having identified the birthplace of the Buddha KOI)agamana south of Kapilavastu with the site of the Asokan pillar's discovery, he thought the old capital could be found in relation to Nigall Sagar, "about 6 or 8 miles to the northwest of this pillar"; and: "The Lumbini garden should lie a little to the north."35 In The Englishman he wrote: "The Lumbini or Lumbuna grove will be found three or four miles to the north of the village of Nigliva."36 Now, both Chinese pilgrims agree that LumbinI is located "fifty li [= 13 km] to the east of the city" (Fa-hsien, 38) or, beginning 30 li south of the city, "80 or 90 li north-east" from that 34Biihler in particular took Fiihrer's portrayal of himself at face value, having carried on an active correspondence with him. Cf. G. Biihler, "Uber eine kiirzlich gefundene AsokaInschrift aus dem nepalesischen Terai," Anzeiger der Kaiserl. Akad. der WisscnschC{ftcn, Vienna 34 (1897): 1-7; esp. p. 2: "In March of 1895, however, Dr. Fiihrer ... brought a document to light in the village of Nigliva .... "; p. 3: "Dr. Fiihrer supplemented these results with a comparison of Hiuen-Tsiang's memoires. He found that according to the itinerary given in them ... Kapilavastu ought to be located very near to Nigliva." J5"A Tibetan Guide-book" (n. 8), 276. J6The original is not available to me. I cite from the reproduction in Wadc\ell, "Birthplace" (n. 24), 647. The Discovery of Lumbini 13 point (Hsiian Tsang 11, 14)-in other words, not too far east of Kapilavastu. Moreover, the inscription in Nigliva does not state that the pillar had ever stood at the birthplace of the Buddha KOI)agamana. The equation, therefore, was somewhat too hasty, if understandable. With Waddell prohibited from leaving Calcutta, the Archaeological Survey sent Dr. Fiihrer to Nepal. Fuhrer intended to search between Nigliva and Bhagvanpur, in the same false direction that Waddell had proposed. 37 It was agreed with the Nepalese authorities that Nigliva would be the meeting place and starting point. 38 When Fuhrer entered the country, however, he was informed that he would find General Kha<,iga Shamsher in the vicinity of Pa<,ieriya. Fiihrer later described this meeting on 1 December 1896 in terms suggesting that the place had been selected "by a lucky chance," and intimating that he had discovered "a slightly mutilated pillar" "close to the General's camp, near the debris of four stupas."39 "On digging away the accumulated debris, it proved to be an Asoka monolith"-Ua" monolith, be it noted, and not "the" monolith being sought. This historical moment is portrayed somewhat differently by Smith. 40 One Mr. Duncan Ricketts, estate manager, had also come to Rummindei with the Nepalese, it seems. This Ricketts watched the Nepalese put spade to earth at the pillar and was a witness when "the inscription was being unearthed. Dr. Fuhrer arrived a little later."41 This means that neither the 37Fiihrer, Birth-Place (n. 30), 22: "the capital of the Silkyas is situated just five miles to the north-west of ... Nigillf Sagar." To the north-west is located the larger Bhagvanpur, which Waddell had in mind. Later Fiihrer entered an identically named spot onto his map south of Lumbini. 38Fiihrer, Antiquities (n. 22), v. 39Fiihrer, Antiquities, 27. 40Vincent A. Smith, "The Birthplace of Gautama Buddha," JRAS (1897): 617f. 4JThese Nepalese also turn up in Biihler, Anzeiger (n. 34), 4: "He [Dr. Fiihrer] thus immediately searched out the pillar of Bhagvanpur and found it on 1 December, some 13 English miles from Nigllva near the Nepalese village of Paderia, 2 English miles north of the Nepalese district town of Bhagvanpur. Upon his arrival he found only a small fragment visible, nine feet high, and it was covered with numerous inscriptions by pilgrims, including one from the year 800 A.D. As luck would have it, the Nepalese governor of Palpa, General Kha<;lga Shamsher Jang Ral)a Baha:dur, had an encampment right nearby. At the request of Dr. Fiihrer, he had the pillar completely uncovered." Harry Falk 14 Nepalese officials nor the onlooking estate manager had any trouble finding a second pillar in the wider surroundings of Nigliva, even if confusing directions had been supplied to them. The reason for this is obvious: the pillar was by no means unknown, as Fuhrer would have it later. Smith, who had been a magistrate around 1880, had already back then heard of the pillar, and had had rubbings of the inscriptions sent to him. But since at that time Asoka's text lay buried underground, he secured only fairly modem graffiti and attached no significance to the pillar. 42 The pillar was not completely uncovered by the Nepalese-only down to just below the inscription. 43 Dr. Fiihrer had rubbings made and reported on his expedition in the same month's issue of Pioneer (Allahabad) and in a telegram of the London TimeS« of 28 December 1897. When Waddell (see n. 24) remonstrated against Fiihrer's claim to the discovery, the latter attempted to save face. Waddell's reply allowed only the argument of the false directions to stand and went about further unmasking the German. 45 The massive falsifications in the latter's reports finally led in 1898 to the Archaeological Survey's breaking all ties with Fiihrer,46 and withdrawing his 42Smith, "Birthplace" (n. 40), 617, n. 2. Cf. Fiihrer, Birth-Place (n. 30), 617, n. 2; and T. W. Rhys Davids's article "LumbinI" in ERE 8 (1915): 196f. 43Biihler, Anzeiger (n. 34), 4, following Fiihrer's information, reports that the pillar was "completely" uncovered and was 25 feet tall. During the later digging by Mukherji (see n. 31), though, several layers of apparently undisturbed bricks around the pillar came to light. Mukherji himself "could not go down to the foundation" (34). The height by his guess is "21' or so." 44 A "Correspondent," "The Birthplace of Buddha," reproduced the words of "Dr. Fahrer," to the effect that, in the first place, an orig,inal search had been carried out "ten miles to the north-west of Mauza Nigliva," and that then "by a lucky chance" Fiihrer came across Kha<,iga Shamsher at Pa<,ieriya, where "the archaeologist's attention was at once caught" by this pillar fragment he had accidently chanced upon. 45A. Fiihrer and L. A. Waddell, "Who Found Buddha's Birthplace?" JRAS (1898): 199203. 46See R. Pischel, "Die Echtheit der Buddhareliquien," Beilage zur Allgemeinen Zeitung (Munich), 27 Jan. 1902,26-28. Pischel (27a) refers to a report (Annual Progress Report of the Arclu;eological Survey Circle United Provinces of Agra and Oudh) of 1897/1898, published in Naini Tal in 1899. The Discovery of Lumbini 15 book on Buddha Sakyamuni's Birth-Place from circulation. 47 FLihrer continued to insist,48 however, that he had discovered the pillars of NiglIva. and LumbinL He continues up to the present day to be accorded the honour of being the discoverer of the Buddha's place of birth in scholarll9 as well as popular)Q literature. 8. In Vienna Biihler received once more a copy of the inscription, the text of which he published on more than one occasion, at first in the Anzeiger. 51 Since in the course of hundreds of years a pile of debris had formed around where Asoka had had the pillar erected, the inscription had become buried, and so was in a fine state of preservation. The text allows no doubt as to the identity of any character. It reads: devanapiyena piyadasina la.jina visativasabhisitena atana agaca mahiyite hida budhe jate sakyamuni ti silaviga<;labhica kalapita silathabhe ca usapapite hida bhagavarp jate ti lurpminigame ubalike kate athabhagiye ca If one excepts two terms, the content of this inscription is fully clear. The text consists of three sentences, whose relation one to another was correctly 47The National Union Catalogue appends the note that only four copies reached Europe. 48A. A. Fiihrer-Basel (a talk on 6 Nov. 1901), "Die Geburtsstatte Buddhas Sakyamunis im Nepalesischen Tarai," lahresberichte des Frankfurter Vereins flir Geographie ulld Statistik (1901/2-1902/3): 92-94. 49See A. Barth, "Decouvertes recentes de M. le Dr. Fiihrer au -Nepal," Journal des Savants (1897): 65-76, CRAIBL 25 (1897): 258; RHR 37 (1898), 163; Barth was later greatly disappointed at the revelations surrounding Fiihrer: see RHR 41 (1900): 177f. = Oeuvres 11, 31lf.; D. R. Bhandarkar in John Cumming, ed., Revealing India's Past (London: 1939),205; H. Hiirtel 1991 (see n. 1),69; John Irwin. "'Asoka' Pillars: A Reassessment of the Evidence-II: Structure." The Burlington Magazine 116 (1974). 721, n. 42: "The NigaH Sagar pillar-fragments were discovered by Dr. A. Fiihrer." SOSee Pischel, "Echtheit" (n. 46), 27a; Perceval Landon, Nepal, vo!. 1 (London: 1928), 3ff., where Fiihrer's version is given almost verbatim; L. F. Rushbrook Williams, A Handbook for Travellers in India (... ), 22nd ed. (London: 1975), 68l. 51See n. 34; id., "The Asoka Edicts of Paderia ancI Nigliva," El5 (1898/99): 1-6. Harry Falk 16 analyzed by Janert.52 The first sentence states: "King Priyadarsin, who is dear to the gods, came here in the twentieth year following his consecration and paid reverence." The two following sentences manifest a parallel construction, and each begins with direct speech: "Thinking (iti), 'Here the Buddhas was born-the muni of the Sakya [clan]" I caused a vigar;labhl53 of stone to be made and a pillar of stone to be erected. Thinking, 'Here the Lord was born', I exempted the village of LumbinI from imposts and made it athabhagiya." The respect paid by the king consisted, as will be shown in detail, of two parts, namely of a donation and of a waiver. The donation consisted of a stone female vigar;labhl and a stone pillar; the waiver referred to imposts and something that went by the name athabhagiya. Up to now the first term, vigar;labhl, lacks a firm explanation. 54 Once we consider what the Chinese pilgrims to Lumbini were shown, we can at least form a picture of the possibilities any interpretation would entail. At the beginning of the fifth century A.D., Li Tao-yuan compiled his Shui-Ching-Chu 55 from at least nine travel reports about India. The most recent one, and the one most cited, is that of Fa-hsien. Consequently, whatever the compiler has preserved that differs from what the youngest author writes about Lumbini must be older than 400 A.D. He writes (35): The marvelous tree, which the excellent queen grasped when the Buddha came to life, is called hsii-ko (asoka). King Asoka made, out of lapis lazuli, a statue of the queen in the act of grasping [the tree] 52Klaus Ludwig Janert, Studien zu den Asoka-Inschriften, f/II, NA WO 1959 (06ttingen: 1959), 76, n. 6. 53This the rendering in the case where ca is taken as ca and a separation of terms is required. But this is by no means certain. 54Thieme has evaluated the previous explanations; see n. 5. The interpretations by S. Paranavitana ("Rummindei Pillar Inscription of Asoka," JAGS 82 (1962): 163-167 [sil-avi . = verbal form]) and D. E. Hettiaratchi ("'Silii-Viga<,labhl' in Asokan," in Paranavitana Felicitation Volume (Colombo: 1965), 223-225 [vikata according to PW = mother of 5akyamuni]) have met with little acceptance. 55L. Petech, Northern India according to the Shui-Ching-Chu, Serie Orientale Roma no. 2 (Rome: 1950). The Discovery of Lumbint 17 and giving birth to the prince. When the old tree had no more offshoots, all the srama1J,a took the old trunk and planted it; and over and over again it continued itself till the present time. The branches of the tree are as of old, and they still shelter the stone statue. Since the siliiviga{iabhl is a female form, it may in fact be a likeness of the Buddha's mother. There is no way to prove this. The figure that the pilgrim saw with his own eyes must, according to archaeological findings (see below), go back to a time that was already centuries later than Asoka. The same traveller offers another interpretive possibility directly afterwards: "Also the outlines of the marks of where the prince walked seven steps are still preserved today. King Asoka enclosed the marks with lapis lazuli on both sides, and again had them covered over with one long slab of lapis lazuli." Is viga{iabhl thus another name for cankama? "Lapis lazuli" need not be taken literally, as this expression, as used by the Chinese pilgrims,56 also designates the polished sandstone of the Asokan pillars. The archaeological findings, insofar as they have been made public, are ambiguous. A few years ago five fragments of plastically modelled "Maurayan [sic] polished chunar sand stone" came to light. 57 The excavator Rijal takes the fragments to be pieces of the horse that according to Hsiian Tsang once stood atop the pillar. Without inspecting them from all sides, it would be difficult to assign the pieces to a particular form. There is no reason, however, to consider them a horse. The Maya figure the travellers tell of may still exist, for rummindel, i.e. Lumbini-devi, "the goddess of Lumbini," was found in a temple not far from the Asokan pillar. This is a representation of Maya, some 120 centimetres tall, shown in the act of giving birth while grasping the branch of an asoka tree, with two nagas and a woman aiding her in the delivery through her side. 56See John Irwin, "The Uit Bhairo at Benares (Varal}asi): Another Pre-Asokan Monument?" ZDMG 133 (1983), 326ff. 57Babu Krishna Rijal, Archaeological Activities in Lumbini 1976-77 (Kathmandu: n.d.), 11 ("reprint from Ancient Nepal 30/39 (1975/77)"). Harry Falk 18 The claim has been made that this Maya actually goes back to the Mauryan period,58 but the portrayal of the new-born child alone would argue against this. A relief of the future Buddha from the time of Asoka would be without parallel. If the sculpture of rummindel is identical with the Maya of the Chinese, then we may presume that the pilgrim had been misled, as far as its age is concerned, by his local guides. The second controversial word in Asoka's text is less problematic. In his declaration of waiver, the king made Lumbinl ubalika, i.e. Skt. *udbalika 'exempt from imposts'. The word lived on in South India, where it is documented in land transfers down to the thirteenth century, in the form uf!lbali or vUf!lbali.59 In addition, however, the king made the place athabhagiya. In one of two possibilities, this term was taken to mean a$tabhagika, which in turn admitted two interpretations. The most common opinion is that the villagers from then on had only to pay an eighth (a$ta as an ordinal number) of their income as tribute instead of the normal sixth. 60 That Asoka is thereby made to appear as ignominiously money-minded61 seems not to have disturbed anyone down to the recent present. Smith, on the other hand, would have the village be the recipient of eight portions (a$ta as a cardinal number) of land. 62 The second interpretation equates the word with Skt. arthabhagika, suggesting that the villagers were to obtain a share of the king's income. 58Radhakumud Mookerji, Asoka (Delhi: 1962),203. 59E.g. Vasundhara Filliozat, L'epigraphie de Vijayanagar du debut a 1377 (Paris: 1973), p. 9, §14, \. 9; p. 51, §59, \. 6. 6OCf. Hultzsch, Inscriptions of Asoka (Oxford: 1925), 165; D. C. Sircar, Select Inscriptions, vo\. 1 (Calcutta: 1942), 71; Bloch, Les inscriptions (n. 4), 157; B. N. Mukherjee, Studies in Aramaic Edicts of Asoka, Indian Museum Reprint Series no. 1 (Calcutta: 1984). 6l. 6iHultzsch. 165. n. 3: "bureaucracy prevailed against charity." 62V. A. Smith, "The Rummindei Inscription, Hitherto Known as the Paderiya Inscription," lA 34 (1905): 1-4. The Discovery of LumbinI 19 As so often, the right answer had long been on the table unnoticed. Pischel63 showed in 1903 that in land transfers in South India-that is, in the very texts that still preserve the only traces of ubalika-eight rights were frequently accorded in addition to the customary user rights, and were generally subsumed under the term a$tabhogateja(s)sviimya. For the most part, they include all rights to discovered treasure (nidhi), unclaimed collateral (nik$epa), water (jala) and stones (pii$iina). Pischel noted that the number of rights has symbolic value, as "the numbers 2, 4, 16, 20 occur particularly often, so that the number four seems to have been favoured" (734). Given these insights, it is incomprehensible how Pischel could have so misunderstood the text in question, for he directly proceeds to interpret athabhiigiya as "eight parcels" (733), translating: "[he] granted it [= the village] an eighth (of the crown land)" (734). In 1931 Venkatasubbiah64 again showed, without knowledge of Pischel's article, the connection between Asoka's athabhiigiya and a$tabhogateja(s)sviimya. These eight rights enjoy a far older tradition than Pischel or Venkatasubbiah could advert to, their oldest piece of evidence dating to 1236. I have found the earliest traces in Sircar,65 in documents of Sailas (Madhya Pradesh) from the eighth century (314: 27+33) and on copperplates of the Palas of Bengal that can be dated to the ninth century (84: 41f.). If one glances through the sources that are available in Sircar alone,66 they are seen to range from approximately 800 A.D. to 1528; the development can be followed, therefore, over a period of seven hundred years. A comparison demonstrates changes in content; the number of these 63R. Pischel, "Die Inschrift von Pa<;ieriya," SitzungsbeTichte der Konigl. Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin) 35 (1903): 724-734. 64 A. Venkatasubbiah, "Athabhagiye," lA 60 (1931), 168-170; 204-207. 65Dines Chandra Sircar, Select Inscriptions, vol. 2 (Delhi: 1983). 66Texts of the Plllas around 950 A.D. p. 98:52-54, Sircar thereon on p. 94; Rajasthan 946 A.D. p. 252: lO-13, 253:24, and also p. 250; Varanasi lO42 A.D. p. 343:37; lO92 A.D. p. 277:23; 1125 A.D. p. 285:17; V.P. 1129 A.D. p. 290:15; Dharwar 1182 A.D. p. 756:63f.; Jaunpur 1196 A.D. p. 302:22; Hoysala 1192 A.D. p. 547:42f., and also p. 541; Orissa 1456 A.D. p. 201:6lf.; Kanchipuram 1528 A.D. p. 599:84f. Harry Falk 20 rights, however, is stubbornly maintained. If the location of the land transfer documents is taken into account, it is highly likely that these eight rights are far older than the finds would lead one to believe. I am thus of the same opinion as Venkatasubbiah that the final sentence in the Rummindei text should be translated as: "Thinking, 'Here the lord was born', I have exempted the village of Lumbini from imposts and granted [it] the eight rights."67 Referring back to the two sentences with which Asoka announced his donations and his waiver makes it clear that the king wished to express more than this. For both sentences begin with direct speech, and these two cases are almost identical: hida budhe jate sakyamuni and hida bhagavaf(ljate. It appears, however, as though Asoka wanted to make a basic distinction: in the first sentence he talks of the Buddha as a man, a "muni of the Sakyas"; in the second, by contrast, he calls him bhagavan ithe Lord'. This split between man and higher being is reflected, in my opinion, in the donations. In keeping with the Buddha as man, of the first sentence, is a monument of the birth that brought into this world the Siddhartha as Sakya. And Asoka established a pillar; all that he gave is stone, is matter. In the second sentence, by contrast, he talks of bhagavan. And a higher being receives bali; a god commands bhaga. I believe that Asoka purposely made the village udbalika in order to suggest that he retreated in the presence of the bhagavan as far as bali is concerned; and that Asoka purposely granted the village ｡ｾｴ｢ｨｧ＠ rights in order to suggest the similar sound of the terms-that any form of bhaga is due first the bhagavan and only afterwards to a king. What he renounced, therefore, are rights. If I am interpreting the king's words properly, then he injected much more meaning into his text than has hitherto been supposed. Asoka divided the Buddha, so to speak, into a man and a divine being, and he chose his 67 1 interpret arhabhiigiya as ｡ｾｴ｢ｨｩｧｹＮ＠ Hultzsch (Inscriptions of Asoka [see n. 60], cxii) posits an Ｊ｡ｾｴ｢ｨｩｧｫ＠ and sees in it a sound change of intervocalic k to y. Such a change seems very doubtful in Asoka's own language (pillar edicts). The assumption of a svarabhakti vowel, on the other hand, can be justified on the basis of several examples: PES (B) and Cc) avadhiyani and avadhyani, CH) tisiiyam, tisiyam and tisyam; PE6 (c) patiyiisamnesu and patyiio; cf. also RE9 (H) Err. vataviya, Gir. vatavyam; SEl (C) Dhau. l1lokhya, CD) Jhau mokhiya. The Discovery of Lumbinl 21 donations and waIvers to be such that they would correspond to this dichotomy. 9. Let us return from the text one pilgrim left behind to the site of his pilgrimage. More than two thousand years separate the erecting of the Asokan pillar and the date when his inscription could be published outside of India. After Lumbini was rediscovered, increasing numbers of scholars have made their way to it. One impressive report on the outward appearance of the site ninety years ago is provided by Levi,68 who journeyed with Dr. Fiihrer on the back of an elephant, first to what they supposed to be Kapilavastu, and from there thirty kilometres east to Lumbini. There he found a "fakir, as filthy as he was ignorant" (76), who had built himself a chapel up on the temple grounds. This fakir lived together with a child who served him, and every day he worshipped Asoka's pillar with prayers, flowers and libations of water. In the main, however, he watched over the above-mentioned statue of rummindef, whom he called riipaf!ldeVl. According to Levi, the ascetic himself did not really care about her but simply performed the rites in front of the statue when the local population came to worship her. Levi does not appear to have personally seen the figure. In 1897 W. Hoey and Waiter Lupton were also on location,69 and the two were the first persons to make a concerted effort to obtain a look inside the temple: "The Brahman in charge was very unwilling to permit the image to be seen, but some persuasion and rupees overcame his scruples." Both visitors immediately realized that in RTIpam Devi they had Maya before them, even though at the time the statue was still headless. In 1899 P. C. Mukherji carried out excavations in the Tarai, including in Lumbini. By then the babajI had died, so that the archaeologists could dig on the rising undisturbed, something the holy man would have 68"Rapport de M. Sylvain U:vi, professeur au College de France, sur sa mission dans l'Inde et au Japon," Comptes rendus de I'Acadi!lnie des inscriptions et belles lettl°es 27 (1899): 71-92. 69Smith, "Birthplace" (no 40), 619. Harry Falk 22 hindered during his earthly sojourn. Mukherji first found the upper part with the representation of the head in the temple hall, and he replaced it on the statue in the interior (36). Mukherji, too, told of the local people who venerated the shrine even after the demise of the Brahmin custodian. The Paharis of the surrounding villages expected that the goddess would fulfill their wishes and brought her all sorts of vegetarian dishes as offerings, as well as goats and domestic fowl, which were slaughtered in front of the temple. Even though its role had radically changed during an intervening period, the site of the Buddha's birth nevertheless had been visited down through the centuries. The name of the rising had been kept alive among the farmers and hunters of the surrounding region, even if the origins of its veneration had apparently little by little fallen into oblivion from the tenth century onwards. 70 The mother Maya necessarily came to be the focus of worship, and in the end was brought blood sacrifices as a Hindu DevL 71 At least one sadhu took advantage of the sanctity of the place and made a living for himself as a custodian of the cult figure. 7°Debala Mitra, Buddhist Monuments (Calcutta: 1971),60: "To judge from the available antiquities, the Buddhist establishment of Lumbirn maintained its existence till at least the tenth century A.D." 71Buddha figures were also Hinduized without a passing thought. Among the cases that Alexander E. Caddy notes ("Asoka Inscriptions in India," PASB (1895), 160£.), one at Nruanda is particularly striking: a statue of the Buddha that came to be worshipped as RukminI. This recalls J. S. Speyer's ("Lumbinl," WZKM 11 (1897): 22-24) derivation of the place-name Pali lumbinl < Asoka-Magadhl lU1!lminl < Skt. rukmi/:ti. Table of Abbreviations AAWG ASI BEFEO CRAIDL El ERE lA JA JAOS JASB JRAS NAWG PASB RAS RHR WZKM ZDMG Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Gottingen, Phil.-Hist. Klasse Archaeological Survey of India Bulletin de L'Ecole Francaise de L'Extreme Orient Comptes rendus de I' Academie des Inscriptions et BellesLettres Epigraphia Indica Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics Indian Antiquary Journal Asiatique Journal of the American Oriental Society Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Gottingen Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal Royal Asiatic Society Revue de l'Histoire des Religions Wiener Zeitschrift fUr die Kunde des Morgenlandes Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft