The Stupa That Was Never Opened
Of all the eight original stupas built after the Buddha’s passing, only one remained untouched. That stupa is here, in a grassy mound by a quiet river in Nepal’s Nawalparasi District.
When the Buddha died at Kushinagar in the fifth century BCE, his cremated remains were divided into eight portions. Eight clans and kingdoms each received a share. Each built a stupa. One of those eight was the Koliya kingdom — the very clan from which Queen Maya Devi, the Buddha’s mother, had come. The Koliyas carried their portion home and built their stupa at Ramagrama, the ancient capital, in what is now Ramgram Municipality in Nawalparasi (East) District.
Three centuries later, the Emperor Ashoka made it his purpose to redistribute the relics of the Buddha into 84,000 new stupas across his empire. He succeeded with seven of the eight original stupas. At Ramagrama, according to the Mahavamsa and the Ashokavadana, he met a Naga king — a serpent deity — who had been guarding the stupa through generations and who refused to yield the relics. Ashoka, recognising that no force of empire could surpass such devotion, withdrew. The stupa remained sealed.
It has remained sealed to this day. Underneath a grass-covered mound on the banks of the Jharahi River, the original relic chamber of the Ramagrama stupa is believed to be intact — the only undisturbed original relic stupa of the Buddha anywhere on earth. Archaeological surveys have confirmed successive layers of construction from the Mauryan through the Gupta periods, but the core has never been opened. The stupa complex stands ten metres high and twenty-three and a half metres in diameter. A single tree — actually four species of tree grown into one, their roots and branches intertwined — rises from the mound, which many regard as a living symbol of the harmony the Buddhist tradition aspires to embody.
UNESCO placed Ramagrama on its World Heritage Tentative List in 1996. In 2023, the Lumbini Development Trust signed a formal agreement to conserve and develop the site. Italian architect Stefano Boeri unveiled a masterplan for its preservation and enhancement, and the government of Nepal has committed to developing it as a major pilgrimage destination. The site remains quiet and unhurried, which is itself a part of its character.
