Vesāli
Vesāli was the capital of the tribal republic of Vajji and the scene of many important events in the Buddha’s life. The Buddha had a special affection for the city and when, during his final journey he left it for the last time, he turned around to have one last lingering look at it (D.II,1220) The second Buddhist council was held there about a hundred years after the Buddha’s passing. Today, the ruins of Vesāli are spread over a wide area and the most important of these are a huge stone pillar with a lion capital, a large stūpa next to it and another stūpa nearby thought by archaeologists to be the very one erected over the Vajjian’s one-eighth share of the Buddha’s ashes. Vesāli is 40 kilometres north of Patna, the capital of the modern Indian state of Bihar.
Vaisali Excavations 1950, K. Deva, 1961.
