Historical Geography of Ancient India c6.487

c6.487

Lumbinīgrāma.—The Rummindei Inscription of Aśoka mentions Lumbinīgrāma which is now Rummindei, also called Rupadeī, a small hamlet named after the shrine of Rummindei. Rummindei is only ten miles to the east of Kapilavastu and two miles north of Bhagavānpur and about a mile to the north of Paderia. Lumbinīvana was visited by the Chinese pilgrims, Fa-hien and Yuan Chwang. According to the former, it was fifty li (9 or 10 miles) east of Kapilavastu. Yuan Chwang refers to a stone-pillar set up here by Aśoka with the figure of a horse on the top. Afterwards the pillar had been broken in the middle and laid on the ground by a thunderbolt from a malicious dragon. P. C. Mukherji in his ‘Antiquities in the Terai’ has shown that the extant remains of the Rummindei pillar of Aśoka agree with the description given by the Chinese pilgrim. There is further evidence of the identification of the Lumbinīvana with the place where the Rummindei inscription was found. Yuan Chwang mentions that near the Aśokan pillar there was ‘a small stream flowing south-east, and called by the people the Oil River’. The tradition survives even today, and this river is now called Tilār-nade, which is a corruption of Telir-nadi, or the teli’s or oilman’s river. There is also a temple at Rummindei comparatively of a later date, which contains a sculptured slab representing the nativity of the Buddha, which is a further proof of the identity of the place with Lumbinīvana. The Rummindei pillar of Aśoka states that when king Aśoka was anointed twenty years, he himself came and worshipped this spot because the Buddha was born here. He erected a stone-pillar to mark the site of the Buddha’s birth. He made the village of Lumbinī free of taxes and paying (only) an eighth share (of the produce) (*C.I.I.*, 264-265).