34 
L. A. Waddell —On the site of Buddha's death. 
[No. 1, 
holy site in Asam, but Hiuen Tsiang, who visited Gauhati at the invita¬ 
tion of the king of Kamrup, positively notes the absence of Buddhist 
buildings in Asam.* Sir W. Hunter also in his statistical account of 
Asam statesf that 4 there are now no traces of Buddhism’ in Asam. 
I therefore felt curious to learn further particulars of this impor¬ 
tant site in Asam, which had apparently been overlooked by geographers. 
In Jiischke’s Tibetan Dictionaiy* I found 4 rtsa-mckhog-grong ’ de¬ 
fined as a 44 town in West Asam where Buddha died,” and this state¬ 
ment, it is noted, is given on the authority of the 4 Gyalrabs ’, a vernacu¬ 
lar history of Tibet. Csoma de Koros also notes§ that “ the death of 
Sliakya, as generally stated in the Tibetan books, happened in Asam 
near the city of Kusa or Cama-rupa (Kamrup).” 
Here then was a clue to the mystery. Buddha’s death, it is well 
known, occurred between two sal trees near Kusinagara or Kusanagara 
in the Nortli-West Provinces of India, thirty-five miles east of Gorakhpur 
and about one hundred and twenty miles N. N. E. of Benares ; and the 
site has been fully identified by Sir A. Cunningham|| and others from 
the very full descriptions given by Hiuen Tsiang and Fa Hian. The 
name Kusanagara means 4 the town of Kusa grass^[ ’; and as the 
early Lama missionaries in their translation of the Bauddha Scriptures 
habitually translated all the Sanskrit and Pali names literally into 
Tibetan, Kusanagara was rendered in the 4 6Kah-/igyur ’ (the Tibetan 
version) as Vtsa-mchhog-grong,’ from 4 rtsa-mchhog,’ kusa grass + 
4 grong ’ a town ( = Skt. nagara). 
Now, near the north bank of the Brahmaputra, almost opposite 
Gauhati, the ancient capital of Kamrup, is, I find, an old village named 
Sdl-Kusa, and it lies on the road between Gauhati and Dewangiri, one 
of the most frequented passes into Bhotan and Tibet. With their 
extremely scanty knowledge of Indian geography the Lamas evidently 
concluded that this 4 town of Sdl-Kusa ’ was the 4 town of Kusa,’ where 
Buddha entered into nirvana between the two sal trees—seeing that 
the word sal was also incorporated with the equivalent of 4 Tsam-chlio- 
dung ’, and that in the neighbourhood was the holy hill of Hajo, where, 
# Si-yu-Tci, trans. by Beal, II, p, 196. 
f I. p. 39. 
t p. 437. 
§ Asiatic Researches, XX, p. 295. 
H Arch. Surv. India Repts., 1, 76; XVII, 55 &c. 
IT Eusa grass (Poa cynosuroides ), the sacrificial grass of the Hindus, is also prized 
by the Buddhists on account of its having formed the cushion on which the Bod- 
dhisattva sat under the Bodhi tree. It is also used as a broom in Lamaic temples and 
as an altar decoration associated with peacock’s feathers in the pumpa or holy water 
vase* 
