It is further said that the Indians do not rear monuments to the dead, but consider the virtues which men have displayed in life, and the songs in which their praises are celebrated, sufficient to preserve their memory after death. But of their cities it is said that the number is so great that it cannot be stated with precision, but that such cities as are situated on the banks of rivers or on the sea-coast are built of wood, for were they built of brick they would not last long — so destructive are the rains, and also the rivers when they overflow their banks and inundate the plains; those cities, however, which stand on commanding situations and lofty eminences are built of brick and mud. The greatest city in India is that which is called Palimbothra, in the dominions of the Prasians,*...
[*The Prasioi. — In the notes which the reader will find at pp. 9 and 57, the accepted explanation of the name Prasioi, by which the Greeks designated the people of Magadha, has been stated. General Cunningham explains it differently: — "Strabo and Pliny," he says, "agree with Arrian in calling the people of Palibothra by the name of Prasii, which modern writers have unanimously referred to the Sanskrit Prachya, or 'eastern.' But it seems to me that Prasii is only the Greek form of Palasa or Parasa, which is an actual and well-known name of Magadha, of which Palibothra was the capital. It obtained this name from the Palasa, or Butea frondosa, which still grows as luxuriantly in the province as in the time of Hiwen Thsang. The common form of the name is Paras, or when quickly pronounced Pras, which I take to be the true original of the Greek Prasii. This derivation is supported by the spelling of the name given by Curtius, who calls the people Pharrasii, which is an almost exact transcript of the Indian name Parasiya. The Praxiakos of AElian is only the derivative from Palasaka."]
...where the streams of the Erannoboas and the Ganges unite, — the Ganges being the greatest of all rivers, and the Erannoboas being perhaps the third largest of Indian rivers, though greater than the greatest rivers elsewhere; but it is smaller than the Ganges where it falls into it. Megasthenes says further of this city that the inhabited part of it stretched on either side to an extreme length of eighty stadia, and that its breadth was fifteen stadia, and that a ditch encompassed it all round, which was six plethra in breadth and thirty cubits in depth, and that the wall was crowned with five hundred and seventy towers and had four-and-sixty gates.*
[*The more usual and the more accurate form of the name is Palibothra, a transcription of Paliputra, the spoken form of Pataliputra, the name of the ancient capital of Magadha, and a name still occasionally applied to the city of Patna, which is its modern representative. The word, which means the son of the trumpet-flower (Bignonia suaveolens), appears in several different forms. A provincial form, Pataliputrika, is common in the popular tales. The form in the Panchatantra is Pataliputra, which Wilson (Introd. to the Dasa Kamara Charitra) considered to be the true original name of the city of which Pataliputra was a mere corruption, — sanctioned, however, by common usage. In a Sanskrit treatise of geography of a somewhat recent date, called the Kshetra Samasa, the form of the name is Palibhatta, which is a near approach to Palibotra. The Ceylon chroniclers invariably wrote the name as Patiliputto, and in the inscription of Asoka at Girnar it is written Pataliputta. The earliest name of the place, according to the Ramayana, was Kausambi, as having been founded by Kusa, the father of the famous sage Visvamitra. It was also called, especially by the poets, Pashpapura or Kusumapura, which has the same meaning — 'the city of flowers.' This city, though the least ancient of all the greater capitals in Gangetic India, was destined to become the most famous of them all. The Vayu Purana attributes its foundation to Udaya (called also Udayasva), who mounted the throne of Magadha in the year 519 B.C., or 24 years after the Nirvana (Vishnu Purana, p. 467, n. 15; Lassen, Ind. Alt. II. p. 63). Pataliputra did not, however, according to the Cingalese chronicles, become the residence of the kings of Magadha till the reign of Kalasoka, who ascended the throne 453 B.C. Under Chandragupta (the Sandrakottos of the Greeks), who founded the Buddhistic dynasty of the Mauriyas, the kingdom was extended from the mouth of the Ganges to the regions beyond the Indus, and became in fact the paramount power in India. Nor was Pataliputra [???] [Palibothra!]— to judge from the account of its size and splendour given here by Arrian, and in Frag. XXV. by Strabo, who both copied it from Megasthenes — unworthy to be the capital of so great an empire. Its happy position at the confluence of the Son and Ganges [???], and opposite the junction of the Gandak with their united stream, naturally made it a great centre of commerce, which would no doubt greatly increase its wealth and prosperity. Asoka, who was third in succession from Chandragupta, and who made Buddhism the state religion, in his inscription on the rock at Dhauli in Katak, gives it the title of Metropolis of the Religion, i.e. of Buddhism. The wooden wall by which, as Megasthenes tells us, it was surrounded, was still standing seven centuries later than his time, for it was seen about the beginning of the 5th century after Christ by the Chinese traveller Fa-Hian, who thus writes of Paliputra, which he calls Pa-lian-fu: — "The city was the capital of king A-you (Asoka). The palaces of the king which are in the city have walls of which the stones have been collected by the genii. The carvings and the sculptures which ornament the windows are such as this age could not make; they still actually exist." These 'palaces of the king' are mentioned by Diodoros in his epitome of Megasthenes, as will be seen by a reference to p. 39. It was in the interval which separates the journey of Fa-Hian from that of his compatriot Hiwen Thsang -- that is, between the year 400 and the year 632 after Christ— that the fall of Pataliputra was accomplished, for where the splendid metropolis had once stood Hiwen Thsang found nothing but ruins, and a village containing about two or three hundred houses. The cause of its downfall and decay is unknown. The ruins seen by the Chinese traveller are no longer visible, but lie buried deep below the foundations of modern Patna. An excavation quite recently made in that city for the construction of a public tank placed this fact beyond question; for, when the workmen had dug down to a depth of 13 or 15 feet below the surface of the ground, some remains were discovered of what must have been the wooden wall spoken of by Megasthenes. I have received from a friend who inspected the excavation the following particulars of this interesting and remarkable discovery: — "During the cold season 1878, whilst digging a tank in Sheikh Mithia Ghari, a part of Patna almost equally distant from the chauk (market-place) and the railway station, the excavators, at a depth of some 12 or 15 feet below the swampy surface, discovered the remains of a long brick wall running from N.W. to S.E. How far this wall extended beyond the limits of the excavation — probably more than a hundred yards — it is impossible to say. Not far from the wall, and almost parallel to it, was found a line of palisades; the strong timber of which it was composed inclined slightly towards the wall. In one place there appeared to have been some sort of outlet, for two wooden pillars rising to a height of some 8 or 9 feet above what had evidently been the ancient level of the place, and between which no trace of palisades could be discovered, had all the appearance of door or gate posts. A number of wells and sinks were also found, their mouths being in each case indicated by heaps of fragments of broken mud vessels. From the best-preserved specimens of these, it appeared that their shape must have differed from that of those now in use. One of the wells having been cleared out, it was found to yield capital drinking water, and among the rubbish taken out of it were discovered several iron spear-heads, a fragment of a large vessel, &c." The fact thus established — that old Palibothra, and its walls with it, are deep underground— takes away all probability from the supposition of Ravenshaw that the large mounds near Patna (called Panch-Pahari, or 'five hills'), consisting of debris and bricks, may be the remains of towers or bastions of the ancient city. The identity of Pataliputra with Patna was a question not settled without much previous controversy. D'Anville, as has been already stated, misled by the assertion of Pliny that the Jomanes (Jamna) flows through the Palibothri into the Ganges, referred its site to the position of Allahabad, where these two rivers unite. Rennel, again, thought it might be identical with Kanauj, though he afterwards abandoned this opinion; while Wilford placed it on the left bank of the Ganges at some distance to the north of Rajmahal, and Francklin at Bhagalpur. The main objection to the claims of Patna— its not being situated at the confluence of any river with the Ganges — was satisfactorily disposed of when in the course of research it was brought to light that the Son was not only identical with the Erranoboas, but that up to the year 1379, when it formed a new channel for itself, it had joined the Ganges in the neighbourhood of Patna. I may conclude this notice by quoting from Strabo a description of a procession such as Megasthenes (from whose work Strabo very probably drew his information) must have seen parading the streets of Palibothra: — "In processions at their festivals many elephants are in the train, adorned with gold and silver, numerous carriages drawn by four horses and by several pairs of oxen; then follows a body of attendants in full dress, (bearing) vessels of gold, large basins and goblets an orguia in breadth, tables, chairs of state, drinking-cups, and lavers of Indian copper, most of which were set with precious stones, as emeralds, beryls, and Indian carbuncles; garments embroidered and interwoven with gold; wild beasts, as buffaloes, panthers, tame lions; and a multitude of birds of variegated plumage and of fine song." — Bohn's Transl. of Strabo, III. p. 117. ]
The same writer tells us further this remarkable fact about India, that all the Indians are free, and not one of them is a slave. The Lakedaimonians and the Indians here so far agree. The Lakedaimonians, however, hold the Helots as slaves, and these Helots do servile labour; but the Indians do not even use aliens as slaves, and much less a countryman of their own.
There are compelling reasons for believing that the site of Lumbini is an extraordinary hoax. The details of its discovery in 1896 reveal a tale of deception and intrigue, which is now told for the first time...
[T]he finds made at Piprahwa, in Basti District, Uttar Pradesh...that of Tilaurakot and its surrounding sites, in the Western Tarai of Nepal... neither of these claims can be considered as acceptable, and ... equal doubt attaches to the present site of Lumbini also...
[A]ny attempt to assess the reliability of the present identifications should begin by taking a close look at the circumstances surrounding their discovery. Chief among the participants in those events... was the notorious figure of Dr Alois Anton Fuhrer, a German archaeologist employed by the (British) Government of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh between 1885-98, and co-discoverer of the present Lumbini site.
Modern Indologists, while aware of Fuhrer’s unsavoury reputation, have neglected to conduct any really close scrutiny of his activities, fondly believing that these have long since been satisfactorily catalogued and assessed, and that Fuhrer may be safely consigned to oblivion in consequence. Unfortunately, this is far from being the case. Fuhrer, in fact, drove a coach and horses through critical areas of Indological research, and his deceptions continue to have far-reaching consequences for world history to this day. He was a prolific plagiarist and forger (who worked, alarmingly, on the first two volumes of the Epigraphia Indica) and I have good reason to believe that his deceptions were sometimes condoned, even exploited, by the Government of the day, for imperial reasons of their own...
Fuhrer’s first venture into fraudulent activity appears to have occurred in 1892, when he copied inscriptions from Buhler’s articles on Sanchi and Mathura, reworked them, and wrote the results into the report of his own excavations at the site of Ramnagar. This wholesale deception appears to have passed completely unnoticed during this period, including, apparently, by Buhler himself, with whom Fuhrer was then in correspondence. He also incised Brahmi inscriptions on to stone exhibits in the Lucknow Museum at this time...
Fuhrer found a pillar near the Nepalese village of Nigliva. An Asokan inscription was reportedly discovered by Fuhrer on a broken piece of this pillar, the main shaft of which lay close by...
The inscription referred to Asoka’s enlargement of the stupa of the ‘previous Buddha’, Konagamana, which according to Fuhrer was situated close by, ‘amidst vast brick ruins stretching far away in the direction of the southern gate of Kapilavastu’. Fuhrer gave extensive details of this ancient and impressive structure, declaring that it was ‘undoubtedly one of the oldest Buddhist monuments in India’, and stating that ‘on all sides of this interesting monument are ruined monasteries, fallen columns, and broken sculptures’.
All this was pure moonshine however, as later surveys soon revealed. The stupa didn’t exist, and it was found that Fuhrer had copied its elaborate details (including those ‘ruined monasteries, fallen columns, and broken sculptures’) from Alexander Cunningham’s book ‘Bhilsa Topes’...two years before Fuhrer’s visit -- Hoey had commissioned the local Governor, Khadga Shamsher, to take rubbings of the pillar inscriptions in this area, ‘but these were not of Asoka lettering’. Fuhrer also lied when he claimed that the inscribed portion of this pillar was ‘resting on a masonry foundation’, the precise measurements of which he also gave; this didn’t exist either, this broken piece being merely stuck into the ground at the site. Indeed, Hoey declared that Fuhrer had ‘lied and lied on a grand scale’ concerning his alleged Nepalese discoveries, adding that ‘one is appalled at the audacity of invention here displayed’.
Finally, the Divyavadana describes how Asoka was conducted to Lumbini for the first time by his spiritual preceptor, Upagupta, who pointed out to the king the spot where the Buddha was born. Though the Lumbini pillar inscription states that this visit occurred during the twentieth year of Asoka’s reign, the nearby Nigliva inscription states that Asoka ‘increased for the second time the stupa of Buddha Konagamana’ when he had been reigning for only fourteen years. This is absurd. Why would Asoka decide to enlarge the Konagamana stupa -- and for the second time -- six years before he had even set foot in the Lumbini area?...
(1896) found Fuhrer back in Nepal once more, this time ‘to explore the whole neighbourhood of Taulihawa as far as Bhagvanpur, where there is said to exist another Asoka Edict pillar’... V. A. Smith had obtained rubbings from it ‘a dozen years’ earlier, and had found only ‘mediaeval scribblings’ on its exposed portion at that time.
The site was supposedly called ‘Rummindei’, this being considered to be a later variant of the name ‘Lumbini’...it appears that neither the Nepalese officials nor the hill-men called it 'Rummindei'...
The Indian Survey map of 1915 lists the spot as ‘Roman-devi’; it should be noted that another ‘Roman-devi’ exists about 30 miles WSW of the Nepalese site, near the Indian town of Chandapar. Today, the site is situated in the ‘Rupandehi District’ of Nepal...
The subsequent excavations around the pillar reportedly disclosed an Asokan inscription about a metre below ground, and level with the top of a surrounding brick enclosure...
Fuhrer had supposedly left the site just before any excavations had begun, leaving the Governor and his ‘sappers’ to do the digging. In his official letter on the matter, Fuhrer stated that he had advised the Governor ‘that an inscription would be found if a search was made below the surface of the mound’ on which the pillar was situated. Since there was no previous historical reference to such an inscription, one wonders at Fuhrer’s remarkable prescience on this occasion...
The appearance of this inscription in 1896 marked its first recorded appearance in history...
In Watters’ book ‘On Yuan Chwang’s Travels in India’ (prepared from an unpublished manuscript after his death) the following statement is found with reference to the Lumbini site:‘Yuan-chuang, as we have seen, mentions a stone pillar, but he does not say anything about an inscription on it. The Fang-chih, however, tells us that the pillar recorded the circumstances of Buddha's birth’.
The Fang-chih -– a shortened version of Yuan-chuang’s account -- does nothing of the sort...
It was a posthumous interpolation into Watters’ original text by its editors, Rhys Davids, Bushell, and Smith...
Fuhrer was later found to have fraudulently laid claim to the discovery of about twenty relic-caskets at sites close to Lumbini, which allegedly bore Asokan, and even pre-Asokan inscriptions. One of these items supposedly contained a tooth-relic of the Buddha, which Fuhrer illicitly exchanged for gifts with a Burmese monk, U Ma (the correspondence between these two makes for lamentable reading, with Fuhrer exploiting U Ma’s gullibility quite unmercifully). Following an official enquiry into the matter, this tooth-relic was found to be ‘apparently that of a horse’ : Fuhrer had explained its large size to an indignant U Ma by pointing out that according to ‘your sacred writings’ the Buddha was nearly thirty feet in height!
According to Fuhrer, this ‘Buddhadanta’ had been found by a villager inside a ruined brick stupa near Tilaurakot, and was ‘enshrined in a bronze casket, bearing the following inscription in Maurya characters: “This sacred tooth-relic of Lord Buddha (is) the gift of Upagupta” (the mentor of Asoka). Having obligingly parted with the relic, the villager had refused to part with the inscribed casket itself ‘which is still in his possession’. Fuhrer reported finding this bogus Asokan inscription during the selfsame visit which saw the discovery of the Asokan inscription at Lumbini. Moreover, according to Fuhrer, the Lumbini inscription included words which were supposedly spoken by Upagupta whilst showing Asoka the Buddha’s birth-spot: ‘It would almost appear as if Asoka had engraved on this pillar the identical words which Upagupta uttered at this place’, he tells us, all wide-eyed. However, what with a bogus Upagupta quote on the casket, an Upagupta quote on the pillar, and Fuhrer’s keen taste for forging Brahmi inscriptions, we may here recall that he had fraudulently incised Brahmi inscriptions on to stone four years earlier (see ‘Fuhrer's Early Years’). And indeed, this pillar inscription ‘appeared almost as if freshly cut’ when Rhys Davids examined it in 1900, a view echoed by Professors N. Dutt and K. D. Bajpai, who noted that ‘it appears as if the inscription has been very recently incised’ when they examined it fifty years later. W. C. [William Claxton] Peppe observed that ‘the rain falling on this pillar must have trickled over these letters and it is marvellous how well they are preserved; they stand out boldly as if they had been cut today and show no signs of the effects of climate; not a portion of the inscription is even stained’.
Inscriptions on other Asokan pillars located at sites associated with the Buddha’s life and ministry -- Sarnath and Kosambi, for example -- contain no references to their Buddhist associations, as this pillar so conspicuously -- and twice -- does; and no other inscription makes reference to any erection of a particular pillar by Asoka (as this one does) either...
There is an additional mystery here. As noted above, Fuhrer had supposedly left the site just before the inscription was unearthed. Yet he had travelled up from Lucknow, crossed the Nepalese Tarai to Nigliva by elephant -– a difficult and laborious undertaking -- and then been further redirected to the ‘Rummindei’ site, where he had been officially appointed to superintend the excavations. The existing accounts state that having finally arrived at the site, Fuhrer identified the pillar as Asokan, assured Khadga Shamsher that an Asokan inscription would be found after further excavation, and then, astonishingly, left before the inscription was exposed. This is frankly unbelievable...V. A. Smith stated that a nearby landowner, Duncan Ricketts, ‘had the good fortune to be present while the inscription was being unearthed. Dr Fuhrer arrived a little later’. But Smith’s statement ignores Fuhrer’s earlier presence at the site; and since the accounts which were furnished by Fuhrer and Khadga Shamsher make no reference to Ricketts anyway, one assumes that Fuhrer had alerted him to these excavations after this mysterious departure (Ricketts lived just a few miles away). So what’s to stop Fuhrer from forging the inscription, reinterring the excavated soil (a common archaeological practice) and then notifying Ricketts of events at the site, an action which would have served to remove any subsequent awkward questions on the matter? Only this scenario, it seems to me, can explain Fuhrer’s sudden absence at this critical moment - by far the most important in his entire archaeological career - and it is evident that skulduggery was very much at work here.
Fuhrer also refers to a ‘pilgrim's mark’ on the upper part of this pillar, and whilst providing no photograph of it, still less any details of its language, script, or content, he dates it at around 700 AD. He states that since this item was visible above ground whilst the Asokan inscription lay hidden beneath the soil, this somehow explains Yuan-chuang’s failure to notice the latter during his visit to Lumbini around 635 AD. However, since there is no such ‘pilgrim's mark’ on this pillar anyway -- this was yet another Fuhrer lie –- it is evident that this was merely another clumsy attempt by Fuhrer (as with the phony Nigliva stupa) to add credence to this Asokan inscription also...
There are, moreover, serious epigraphical problems with the pillar inscription itself...
More damaging still, however, is the presence of the term ‘Sakyamuni’ in this inscription. Simply put, it shouldn’t be there. ‘Sakyamuni’ is a later, Sanskritised form of this term, and thus has no place in an allegedly Asokan Brahmi inscription...There would thus appear to be no epigraphical support for the presence of ‘Sakyamuni’ in this Asokan Brahmi inscription, and I shall charge that this exposes it as yet another Fuhrer forgery...
In 1994, I photographed an official notice at the present Lumbini site (see Fig. 1 ) the text of which ran as follows:‘The famous Chinese traveller Hiuen Tsang says:- “Lumbini is on the bank of the River Telar where an Asokan pillar (with a split in the centre), the Mayadevi Temple, the Sacred Tank, and a few stupas are situated”.’
Yuan-chuang, alas, makes no such statement, and like Fa-Hsien, his account makes no mention whatsoever of any ‘Mayadevi Temple’ at Lumbini. He is also, as we have seen, quite specific about the stupas at the site, and of their significance, and his account mentions only a ‘little river of oil’ and not the River Telar (which runs about a kilometre away from the present site anyway). As for the ‘Mayadevi Temple’ itself, I can find nothing to connect this structure with Lumbini, let alone with anything Buddhist. Neither pilgrim makes any reference to it as I have noted, and the present item is an entirely modern affair anyway, beneath which lay the remains of an earlier structure exposed by P.C. Mukherji in 1899. The ornately-carved bricks which formed part of this earlier edifice were identical to those found in structures at the nearby Sivaite sites of Sagarwa and Kodan, these being dated by Debala Mitra at ‘not earlier than the eighth century AD’.
Similarly, the sandstone image in this ‘temple’ (see Fig. 2) supposedly of Mayadevi giving birth to the Buddha, appears equally dubious on a close examination of its origins. This bas-relief, in which the figures are so defaced as to be unrecognisable (see Fig. 5) formed part of the remains of various broken statues which Mukherji found during his visit to the site in 1899. These items consisted of Hindu deities such as Varahi, Durga, Parvati, Ganesh, etc -- nothing Buddhist -- and it is noted that the supposed image of Mayadevi bears a striking resemblance to figures of yakshis and devatas also...all of these items -- the so-called ‘Mayadevi’ figure included -- were associated with the earlier structure found by Mukherji, and are therefore of mediaeval Hindu provenance. There is thus nothing Buddhist about the ‘Mayadevi Temple’ at all, and it is not a temple either.
In January 1898, W. C. [William Claxton] Peppe, manager of the Birdpur Estate in north-eastern Basti District, U. P., announced the discovery of soapstone caskets and jewellery inside a stupa near Piprahwa (see map) a small village on this estate. An inscription on one of these caskets appeared to indicate that bone relics, supposedly found with these items, were those of the Buddha. Since this inscription also referred to the Buddha’s Sakyan kinsmen, these relics were thus generally considered to be those which were accorded to the Sakyas of Kapilavastu, following the Buddha’s cremation...
• Peppe had been in contact with Fuhrer just before announcing the Piprahwa discovery (Fuhrer was then excavating nearby, at the Nepalese site of Sagarwa: see map). Immediately following Peppe's announcement, it was discovered that Fuhrer had been conducting a steady trade in bogus relics of the Buddha with a Burmese monk, U Ma. Among these items -– and a year before the alleged Piprahwa finds -- Fuhrer had sent U Ma a soapstone relic-casket containing fraudulent Buddha-relics of the Sakyas of Kapilavastu, together with a bogus Asokan inscription, these deceptions thus duplicating, at an earlier date, Peppe’s supposedly unique finds. Fuhrer was also found to have falsely laid claim to the discovery of seventeen inscribed, pre-Asokan Sakyan caskets at Sagarwa, his report even listing the names of seventeen ‘Sakya heroes’ which were allegedly inscribed upon these caskets. The inscribed Piprahwa casket was also considered to be both Sakyan and pre-Asokan at this time -- though its characters have since been shown to be typically Asokan -- and no other Sakyan caskets have been discovered either before or since this date.
• The bone relics themselves, purportedly 2500 years old, ‘might have been picked up a few days ago’ according to Peppe, whilst a molar tooth found among these items (and retained by Peppe) has recently been found to be that of a pig. The eminent archaeologist, Theodor Bloch, declared of the Piprahwa stupa that ‘one may be permitted to maintain some doubts in regard to the theory that the latter monument contained the relic share of the Buddha received by the Sakyas. The bones found at that place, which have been presented to the King of Siam, and which I saw in Calcutta, according to my opinion were not human bones at all’....
• The caskets appear to be identical to caskets found in Cunningham’s book ‘Bhilsa Topes’ (see Figs. 7-12) a source also used by Fuhrer for his Nigliva deceptions. A photograph of the ‘rear’ of the inscribed Piprahwa casket, taken in situ at Piprahwa in 1898 (and never published thereafter) discloses that a large sherd was missing from the base of the vessel at this time (see Fig. 8). Having closely examined this casket in 1994, I noted that a piece had since been inserted into this broken base, and that this had been ‘nibbled’ in a clumsy attempt to get this piece to fit. The photograph also reveals a curious feature on the upper aspect of the casket; this, I discovered, was a piece of sealing-wax (since transferred to the inside) which had been applied to prevent a large crack from running further. From all this, it is evident that this casket had been badly damaged from the start, a fact not mentioned in any published report. But is it likely, one is prompted to ask, that this damaged casket, supposedly containing the Buddha’s relics, would have been deposited inside the stupa anyway? Or is this the broken casket, ‘similar in shape to those found below’, which was reportedly found near the summit of the stupa, and which had vanished without trace thereafter? This casket -– also damaged -- was the first of the alleged Piprahwa finds; so did Peppe take it to Fuhrer, and did Fuhrer then forge the inscription on it? Is the Piprahwa inscription simply another Fuhrer forgery? As Assistant Editor on the Epigraphia Indica, Fuhrer would certainly have had the necessary expertise to do this, quite apart from his close association with the great epigraphist, Georg Buhler (who may have unwittingly provided Fuhrer with the necessary details, according to the existing accounts).
• On his return to the U.K., Peppe was contacted by the London Buddhist Society, and agreed to answer readers’ questions on his finds. Shortly afterwards however, the Society was notified that Peppe had suddenly been taken seriously ill, and was therefore unable to answer any questions as proposed. The Society declared the matter to be ‘in abeyance’ in consequence; but Peppe died six years later, leaving all such questions still unanswered.
-- Lumbini On Trial: The Untold Story. Lumbini Is An Astonishing Fraud Begun in 1896, by T. A. Phelps