Lumbini Province

Lumbini Province (Nepali: लुम्बिनी प्रदेश, romanized: Lumbinī pradēśa, IPA: [lumbiniː]) is a province in western Nepal. The country's third largest province in terms of area as well as population, Lumbini is home to the World Heritage Site of Lumbini, where according to Buddhist tradition Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, was born.

Lumbini borders Gandaki Province and Karnali Province to the north, Sudurpashchim Province to the west, and Uttar Pradesh and Bihar of India to the south. Lumbini's capital, Deukhuri, is near the geographic center of the province. The major cities in the province are Butwal and Siddharthanagar in Rupandehi district, Nepalgunj in Banke district, Tansen in Palpa district, and Ghorahi and Tulsipur in Dang district.^{[citation needed]}

The Provincial Assembly adopted Lumbini Province as the permanent name by replacing its initial name Province No. 5 on 6 October 2020 and Deukhuri was declared the provincial capital.

The Churiya range linked with the Dang valley of Lumbini province has been archaeologically considered very ancient with the existence of Sivapithecus, a link between man and ape. The pre-historic studies of the valley have been carried out extensively since the last century; by Tribhuvan University since 1966, American Museum of Natural History and the Department of Mines of then His Majesty's Government of Nepal from 1976, as well as the Paleolithic study of Dang valley by University of Erlangen-Nuremberg of Germany in 1984, among others. These researches have pointed out that Dang valley was a lake approximately 2.5 to 1 million years ago.

As per the Buddhist tradition, Queen Maya Devi of Kapilavastu was traveling to her father's Koliya kingdom in Devdaha to give birth to her child as was the Shakya tradition. However, on the way she stopped near the garden of Lumbini to rest and went into labour thus giving birth to the future Buddha under a sal tree. Gautama Buddha was born in 623 BC in Lumbini, testified by the inscription on the pillar erected by the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka in 249 BC which marks the spot as the birthplace of Buddha Shakyamuni. The inscription mentions, as translated by Paranavitana:

When King Devanampriya Priyadarsin had been anointed twenty years, he came himself and worshipped (this spot) because the Buddha Shakyamuni was born here. (He) both caused to be made a stone bearing a horse and caused a stone pillar to be set up, (in order to show) that the Blessed One was born here. (He) made the village of Lumbini free of taxes, and paying (only) an eighth share (of the produce).

According to the Buddhist texts, Gautama Buddha was born as a prince in a royal Shakya clan reigning over the kingdom of Kapilavastu. This ancient city has been widely identified as Tilaurakot of present Kapilvastu district where ruins of the ancient fortified city have been found. Gautama was a prince of Kapilavastu until the age of 29, after which he left the palace behind and wandered throughout the Ganges plain as an ascetic – learning yoga and related concepts from various teachers.

After the death of Gautama Buddha, eight princes out of sixteen mahājanapadās received Buddha's relics, one of them a Koliyan king of Rāmagrāma (present Parasi district) who built a stupa enshrining the relic. Buddhist texts point out the princes constructed a stupa at or near their capital city and enshrined Buddha's relics. The site has the only undisturbed original stupa containing the relic of Gautama Buddha in the world, and was added to the World Heritage Tentative List by UNESCO on 23 May 1996.