On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v2.c17.s3.83

v2.c17.s3.83

Cunningham and Carlleyle fancied that they found the remains of Kuśinagara at Kasia in the south-east corner of Gorakhpur.² But there is nothing in their statements to make us accept the identification. These archæologists make much of a “colossal” image of Buddha in nirvāṇa, but there is no mention of any colossal image in Yuan-chuang’s account of the district. Kuśinagara, as men have known it, was never a large city; and it owed its celebrity to the fact that in its neighbourhood the Buddha died and was cremated. It was much against Ānanda’s wish that the master came here to die: he wanted the Buddha to pass away at some great city, not at this “contemptible little town”, this “small wattel and daub town, a town in the midst of the jungle, a branch township.” In a long ago past of which only the Buddha knew, it had been, Buddha relates, a magnificent city rich and prosperous, well-governed and of great renown.³ In Buddha’s time it was a town of the Pāvā country noted chiefly as the home of the Mallas or Athletes. Very recently Mr. V. A. Smith⁴ has shown conclusively that the Kasia of Cunningham and Carlleyle cannot be the Kusinārā or Kuśinagara of Buddhist writers. It is possible, as has been conjectured, that with the help of the recent discoveries in the Nepalese Terai the site of this place also will be found in the Terai. In some Chinese translations Kapilavastu and Kuśinagara seem to be one place. Thus we read of the Buddha passing away at the Twin Trees to the north of the Sakya city Kapilavastu, and we find Kuśinagara described as "the Buddha's birth-place".¹