Stupas in Piprahwa Birdpur Uttar Pradesh Tourist Attraction in UP
- Piprahwa is particularly known for its large Buddhist Stupa which is argued to be one of the eight resting places of the Buddha's ashes.
Tourist Attraction :
- This Stupa was discovered by William Claxton Peppe, a British colonial engineer and landowner of an estate at Piprahwa.
- In 1897, W.C. Peppe led a team of men to unearth a large mound on his land. Having cleared away scrub and jungle they set to work building a deep trench through the mound. Eventually they came to a large stone coffer which, on opening, contained several small vases containing ashes and jewels .
- On one of the vases was an inscription which was translated at the time to mean "This relic deposit of the Lord Buddha is the share of this renowned Sakya brethren, his own sister’s children and his own son;" meaning that this reliquary contained the ashes of the Buddha, also known as Siddhārtha Gautama, a member of the Sakays.
- And in the 1970s the original interment site of the Buddha's ashes at Piprahwa was claimed to have been discovered by the Indian archaeologist S.M. Srivastava several feet deeper than the coffer containing the relics that W.C. Peppe had excavated.
- This find was dated by Srivastava to the period in which Buddha lived.
- Mr Srivastava's excavation also discovered some archaeological evidence that Piprahwa was within Kapilvastu - the homeland of the Buddha.