54 Annual Address: {Feb. 



i>ent for many years. Mr. V. A. Smith had heard of one '*a dozen years 

 ago." Bat they took more definite shape in the spring of 1893 when a 

 Nepalese Officer, Major Jashkaran Singh of* Balrampur, saw an,d 

 reported an A9oka pillar in the Terai. Through the information thus 

 furnished Dr. Fiihrer was enabled in March 1895 to visit the spot, and 

 to find there, on the banks of the Kigali Sagar, a pillar, with an edict 

 of king A9oka inscribed on it. This edict, when deciphered in April 

 X895 by Hofrath Prof. Biihler,iO proved that the ruins of a stupa clo,se 

 by were those of the funeral monument of the mythicnl Buddha K5iia- 

 gamana. Dr. Fiilirer also noticed in the neighbourhood " vast ruins" which 

 clearly pointed to the existence there of a large inhabited place in ancient 

 days. A report of these discoveries was published by him in July 1895. 

 As soon as Dr. Waddell, who had for some time made Hiuen Tsiang's 

 account of Buddha's birth-place a special study, read the newly-found edict, 

 he at once saw the clue which it supplied towards fixing the site of 

 that place in the neighbourhood of the Konagarnana stupa and 

 its pillar. He published his discovery in June 1896,*^ • pointing 

 out that, in accordance with the indication given by Hiuen Tsiang, 

 Kapilavastu, the birth-place of Buddha, must be within a few 

 miles distance of Nigliva. Thereupon the Government of India was 

 moved, both by Dr. Waddell and Dr. Fiihrer, to obtain the permission 

 of the Nepalese Darbar to explore the site thus indicated, in order to 

 verify its being that of Kapilavastu. That permission having been 

 secured, and Dr. Waddell's services not being available. Dr. Fiihrer 

 was deputed to carry out the desired verification. In November 1896 

 he proceeded to Nigliva, and finding that the Nepalese Government were 

 not prepared to undertake excavations, he went on, south-eastward, to 

 Bhagwanpur, where he had been told, in the previous year, of the exist- 

 ence of another inscribed pillar. He there found the looked-for pillar 

 on the 1st December 1896, and upon it an inscription which identified 

 the spot upon which it stood as the celebrated Garden of Lumbini in 

 which Buddha is said to have been born. Starting from this spot as a 

 fixed point, Dr. Fiihrer next discovered the ruins of Kapilavastu, at a 

 distance of twelve miles north-west of it, and five miles west of Nigliva. 

 This places Kapilavastu practically at the point indicated for it by Dr. 

 Waddell.^'^ It still remains to explore the site of that celebrated town, and 

 to excavate its more prominent ruins. This is a task which, as I learn 

 from Dr. J'iihrer, is at present in progress under his superintendence. 



10 See the Academy, for 27th April 1895. 



11 In the Englishman of the 1st Jane 1896. 



12 For further particulars see Dr. Fiihrer b Annual Progress Reports for 1893-97 j 

 also Journal) Royal Asiatic Society, for 1897, pp. 429, 615, 644. 



