Place · stupa · India
Kesāriya stupa
One of the largest Buddhist stupas in the subcontinent, in East Champaran district, Bihar, over 100 feet high and 400 feet in diameter. Tradition identifies it as the place where the Buddha, journeying to Kushinagar in the final year of his life, handed his begging bowl to the Licchavi lay followers who had followed him from Vaishali — his gift at parting. The stupa was built by Ashoka in the 3rd century BCE and enlarged in Gupta and Pala times, when it reached its full dimensions. ASI partial restoration began in 1998. The surrounding Vaishali-Kushinagar road is retraced each year in a formal Buddhist pilgrimage.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Tradition
- Pali canon; local tradition
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 26.335, 84.856
Connections (2)
- Mythic sequenceVaishālī
Leaving Vaishālī on his last journey, the Buddha is said to have given the Licchavis his begging bowl and turned to look at the city one final time. Kesāriya's stupa, possibly the tallest in India, stands where the tradition places that farewell. Kesāriya's stupa mound is about forty metres high and was largely unexcavated until the 1990s, so one of the largest Buddhist monuments in India was effectively unknown until recently.
- Mythic sequenceKushinagar
Kesāriya to Kushinagar is the last stretch of the final journey, and the sutta narrates it stage by stage — the meal at Cunda's house that made him ill, the water fetched from a muddied stream, the sāl grove chosen because he could go no further. Cunda's meal is named in the sutta as sūkara-maddava, a term nobody has translated with confidence for two thousand years, and the Buddha's last instruction was that Cunda should not be blamed.
Sources
Kesaria Stupa — ASI
Open Kesāriya stupa in the repository →