Tilaurakot


Tilaurakot is a village development committee in Kapilvastu District in the Lumbini Zone of southern Nepal. At the time of the 1991 Nepal census it had a population of 5684 people living in 944 individual households.
It might have been the cardinal point of the ancient Shakyan city of Kapilavastu, where Gautama Buddha spent 29 years of his lifetime. It is situated west of Lumbini Grove, traditionally held to be the birthplace of Gautama Buddha. The site was listed as a UNESCO tentative site in 1996 by the Nepalese government.

History

The 19th-century search for the historical site of Kapilavastu followed the accounts left by Faxian and later by Xuanzang, who were Chinese Buddhist monks who made early pilgrimages to the site. Some archaeologists have identified the Tilaurakot archeological site as the location for the historical site of Kapilavastu, while others claim it was 16 km away at Piprahwa in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.