|
Piprahwa is a village near Birdpur in Siddharthnagar district of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. ''Kalanamak'', a scented and spicy variety of rice is grown in this area. Piprahwa is best known for its archaeological site. A large stupa and the ruins of several monasteries are located within the site. Ancient residential complexes and shrines were uncovered at the adjacent mound of Ganwaria. Some scholars have suggested that modern-day Piprahwa-Ganwaria was the site of the ancient city of Kapilavastu, the capital of the Shakya kingdom, where Siddhartha Gautama spent the first 29 years of his life. Others suggest that the original site of Kapilavastu is located to the northwest, at Tilaurakot, in what is currently Kapilvastu District in Nepal. ==Excavation by William Claxton Peppe== A buried stupa was discovered by William Claxton Peppe, a British colonial engineer and landowner of an estate at Piprahwa in January 1898. Peppe led a team in excavating a large earthen 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 contained five small vases containing bone fragments, ashes and jewels. On one of the vases was a Brahmi inscription which was translated by Bühler to mean ''"This relic-shrine of divine Buddha (is the donation) of the Sakya-Sukiti brothers, associated with their sisters, sons, and wives"'', implying that the bone fragments were part of the remains of Gautama Buddha. In the following decade or so epigraphists debated the precise meaning of the inscription. One scholar, John Fleet, challenged the opinion of such fellow academics as M. Senart and M. Barth and proposed that it referred to the Buddha’s kinsman rather than the Buddha himself. However, academics today agree with the original interpretation as translated by Georg Buhler, Vincent Smith, the Sri Lankan Pali scholar, Subuthi, and others that the depositors believed these to be the remains of the Buddha himself. In the National Geographic documentary ''Bones of the Buddha'', Harry Falk translates the inscription as "these are the relics of the Buddha, the Lord" and concludes that the reliquary found at Piprahwa did contain a portion of the ashes of the Buddha and that the inscription is authentic. Noting the challenges that isolated finds present to paleographical study, Epigraphist and archaeologist Ahmad Hasan Dani observed in 1997 that "The Piprahwa vase, found in the Basti District, U.P., has an inscription scratched on the steatite stone in a careless manner. The style of writing is very poor, and there is nothing in it that speaks of the hand of the Asokan scribes". He concludes that "the inscription may be confidently dated to the earlier half of the second century B.C." 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Piprahwa」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|