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Updated: June 22, 2025
At such a time, probably 557 B.C., was born Shaka, of the Muni clan, at Kapilavastu, one hundred miles northeast of Benares.
Then leaving the city of the five mountains with the company of his thousand disciples, and with a great multitude who went before and came after him, he advanced towards the Ni-kin mountain, near Kapilavastu; and there he conceived in himself a generous purpose to prepare an offering according to his religious doctrine to present to his father, the king.
This was not the night when he finally fled from Kapilavastu, and as he was leaving the palace, perceiving his sleeping father, and said, "Father, though I love thee, yet a fear possesses me, and I may not stay;" The Life of the Buddha, p. 25. Most probably it was that related in M. B., pp. 199-204. See "Buddhist Birth Stories," pp. 120-127.
He was king of Kosala, the son and successor of Prasenajit, and the destroyer of Kapilavastu, the city of the Sakya family. This would be the interview in the "Life of the Buddha" in Trubner's Oriental Series, p. 116, when Virudhaha on his march found Buddha under an old sakotato tree.
The men of Kapilavastu, hearing that my heart is fixed, will dismiss from their minds all thought of me, but you may make known my words, 'when I have escaped from the sad ocean of birth and death, then afterwards I will come back again; but I am resolved, if I obtain not my quest, my body shall perish in the mountain wilds." The white horse hearing the prince, as he uttered these true and earnest words, bent his knee and licked his foot, whilst he sighed deeply and wept.
Then the prince led his bride to the splendid palace of Kapilavastu. The king feared that the wickedness, poverty, and misfortune which prevailed in the world without might trouble the prince's mind, and he therefore had a high wall built round the palace, and guards posted at the gates. The prince was never to pass out through them.
The thousands who have made shipwreck of faith, who have become soured at the unequal allotments of Providence, who have learned to hate all who are above them and more prosperous than they, are just in the state of mind to take delight in Buddha's sermon at Kapilavastu, as rehearsed by Sir Edwin Arnold.
In the uplands of Asia, men have loftier ambitions. There they may become Buddha, who perhaps never was, except in legend. In the Lalita Vistâra the legend unfolds. In the strophes of the poem one may assist at the Buddha's birth, an event which is said to have occurred at Kapilavastu. Oriental geography is unacquainted with the place. With the thing even Occidental philosophy is familiar.
Other places in connection with them became remarkable, according to the manifestations which were made at them at particular times. The country of Kapilavastu is a great scene of empty desolation. The inhabitants are few and far between. On the roads people have to be on their guard against white elephants and lions, and should not travel incautiously.
This event is of recent occurrence; but in all the succession from that time till now, there has always been a Sramanera head of the establishment. Rama or Ramagrama, between Kapilavastu and Kusanagara. The bones of the human body are supposed to consist of 84,000 atoms, and hence the legend of Asoka's wish to build 84,000 topes, one over each atom of Sakyamuni's skeleton.
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