Lumbini

A garden at the foot of the Himalayas, in present-day Nepal, where tradition places the birth of Siddhartha Gautama around the sixth century BCE. The emperor Ashoka made a pilgrimage here two centuries later and left an inscribed pillar that still stands, among the oldest physical markers of any philosopher's life. It remains one of the four great pilgrimage sites of Buddhism.

Lumbini lies in the plain below the Himalayan foothills, in what is now southern Nepal. The tradition holds that Queen Maya, traveling to her family home to give birth, stopped in a grove and delivered her son standing, holding onto a branch. Ashoka came here on pilgrimage around 249 BCE and set up a pillar recording that the Buddha was born in this place, and cutting the village's taxes on account of it. The pillar is still standing, which makes this one of the few points in the story with physical evidence attached.