The Nigliva Discovery of lumbani

In 1893, Fuhrer reported that Jaskaran Singh, a wealthy landowner from Balrampur, had found an inscribed Asokan pillar at Bairat, a deserted spot near the Indo-Nepalese border. Two years later, Fuhrer ‘left for Balrampur...to look up the Asoka pillar’ which Singh had discovered, but ‘it turned out that the information furnished by Major Jaskaran Singh was unfortunately misleading as to the exact position of this pillar’, and ‘after experiencing many difficulties’, Fuhrer found a pillar near the Nepalese village of Nigliva ( . An Asokan inscription was reportedly discovered by Fuhrer on a broken piece of this pillar, the main shaft of which lay close by. Though the local villagers supposedly told him that ‘other inscriptions were hidden beneath the soil’ in which this stump was partly buried, Fuhrer was refused permission to excavate, and he was thus ‘compelled to content myself with taking impressions and paper moulds of the lines visible above ground’. Permission to excavate was granted two months later, but as this was ‘without any results whatsoever’, it is evident that the inscription was that of ‘the lines visible above ground’ on Fuhrer's arrival.. This is most important, as we shall shortly see.

The inscription referred to Asoka’s enlargement of the stupa of the ‘previous Buddha’, Konagamana, which according to Fuhrer was situated close by, ‘amidst vast brick ruins stretching far away in the direction of the southern gate of Kapilavastu’. Fuhrer gave extensive details of this ancient and impressive structure, declaring that it was ‘undoubtedly one of the oldest Buddhist monuments in India’, and stating that ‘on all sides of this interesting monument are ruined monasteries, fallen columns, and broken sculptures’.

All this was pure moonshine however, as later surveys soon revealed. The stupa didn’t exist, and it was found that Fuhrer had copied its elaborate details (including those ‘ruined monasteries, fallen columns, and broken sculptures’) from Alexander Cunningham’s book ‘Bhilsa Topes’. Fuhrer’s statement that this Asokan inscription was ‘visible above ground’ on his arrival raises further grave doubts. For in a later report by Drs Hoey and Waddell, it emerged that in 1893 – i. e. two years prior to Fuhrer’s visit - Hoey had commissioned the local Governor, Khadga Shamsher, to take rubbings of the pillar inscriptions in this area, ‘but these were not of Asoka lettering’. Fuhrer also lied when he claimed that the inscribed portion of this pillar was ‘resting on a masonry foundation’ (the precise measurements of which he also gave) ; this didn’t exist either, this broken piece being merely stuck into the ground at the site. Indeed, Hoey declared that Fuhrer had ‘lied and lied on a grand scale’ concerning his alleged Nepalese discoveries, adding that ‘one is appalled at the audacity of invention here displayed’.

Finally, the Divyavadana describes how Asoka was conducted to Lumbini for the first time by his spiritual preceptor, Upagupta, who pointed out to the king the spot where the Buddha was born. Though the Lumbini pillar inscription states that this visit occurred during the twentieth year of Asoka’s reign, the nearby Nigliva inscription states that Asoka ‘increased for the second time the stupa of Buddha Konagamana’ when he had been reigning for only fourteen years.. This is absurd. Why would Asoka decide to enlarge the Konagamana stupa - and for the second time - six years before he had even set foot in the Lumbini area?