c. 1996 Religion News Service

UNDATED (RNS)-For a religion that asserts belief in a process of spiritual perfection achieved over multiple lifetimes, the birthplace of a Buddhist might be considered an unremarkable thing.

But an international team of archaeologists announced in Nepal this week that it had uncovered the site where the Buddha himself was born.

It was remarkable news indeed, not only to 340 million Buddhists worldwide, but also to Buddhist and Christian scholars interested in how historical information about religious figures relates to religious faith. And the discovery, the culmination of a 30-year archaeological effort sponsored by the United Nations, also points up how much remains unknown when faith and fact converge.

Archaeologists from Japan, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh directed workers who dug for two years around the Maya Devi Temple in the town of Lumbini, 145 miles southwest of the Nepalese capital of Katmandu. There, in a garden traditionally believed to have been the Buddha’s birthplace, they unearthed a series of rooms, identified by a pillar put in place by the ancient Buddhist king Ashoka. Engravings on the pillar, the archaeologists said, indicated this was was the site that a noblewoman named Maya Devi gave birth to Prince Siddhartha Gautama.”There’s never been any real doubt that this was the general vicinity of the birthplace of the Buddha,”said Donald Lopez Jr., a Buddhist scholar at the University of Michigan.”But it sounds as if they’ve found the marker of the precise place. Anything from Ashoka’s time is quite a find. It’s like identifying the cave in Bethlehem where Christ was born.” Like the New Testament story of the birth of Jesus, accounts in Buddhist scripture of Siddhartha’s birth are full of miracles, signs and wonders, the truth of which no archaeological dig can ever verify.

The miracles stories are found in early Buddhist scripture known as the Jataka Tales, a sort of Buddhist Aesop’s Fables that recount moral lessons from the multiple lives the Buddha lived-many in the form of animals-before he assumed human form in the Lumbini Gardens.”After the hundreds of lifetimes he was perfecting himself to be the Buddha, he was so highly evolved a being that when he died, he was able to choose the time and place and family in which he would be born in his next life,”said Gerald Larson, director of Indiana University’s India Studies Department.

Other scriptures relate how Siddhartha’s mother was on her way to visit her parents and stopped at the Lumbini Gardens to bathe in a pond. There, her child was born in an unusual manner: from under her right arm.”It was a form of virgin birth,”Larson said.”He was so pure he couldn’t emerge through the usual route.” Other birth narratives speak of attending devis, or angels, to welcome the newborn baby and streams of hot and cold water pouring out of the sky to bathe him.

After years of searching and spiritual discipline, tradition says, the young prince Siddhartha achieved enlightenment at the age of 35. He became known as the Buddha-the awakened one-and spent the remainder of his 80 years on earth traveling and preaching the message that all sentient beings can achieve enlightenment. The core message he preached spread from India to Tibet, Nepal, China, Southeast Asia Korea and Japan. Its many schools and sects have varying practices and beliefs.”It’s almost like the quest for the historical Jesus-there probably is a historical core: the Buddha was a historical figure,”Larson said.”But Buddhists don’t really care much about historical accuracy. Christians generally are very concerned about the historicity of Jesus.” Though Siddhartha Gautama was the founder of the Buddhist faith, Larson explained, Buddhists believe he was the 24th in a line of 25 Buddhas. A new Buddha comes along every 10,000 years or so. Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future, has yet to make an appearance.

And though the archaeological team contends Buddha was born sometime in the 6th century B.C., different schools of Buddhism assign different dates for his birth.”In fact, there is no agreement on what day, what month, what year or even what century the Buddha was born,”said the University of Hawaii’s David W. Chappell, founding editor of the Journal of Buddhist-Christian Studies.”Various traditions count time in different ways.” Chappell asserts history is just as important to Buddhists as it is to many Christians, but in a different way.”I’ve heard a number of prominent Christian theologians and biblical scholars who say history doesn’t matter for Buddhists as it does for Christians. And Zen Buddhists suggest that the state of being awakened is more important than proving that the Buddha actually lived,”Chappell said.”It could be argued that charismatic Christians who are inspired by the Holy Spirit are as ahistoric as Buddhists.”But the fact that the Buddha did live and achieve enlightenment on earth is very important to the Buddhist sensibility. And the value of historical findings is a debate that will continue. If you scratch the surface, both religions have traditions that value history and traditions that are free of history. And to see one more bit of historical evidence about the Buddha is very exciting.” END CONNELL