Gauthama Buddha's Buddha bowl

The bowl which Lord Buddha used to bury gifts and to grow rice during his stay in Dambadiwa, he gave his bowl as a souvenir to the people of Vaishali city who constantly offered him support on the way to Kusinara to drink. The details of this are recorded in the reports written by Major General Alexander Cunningham after a visit to North and South Bihar in 1880-1881.

Monk Fahian and Hyunsan recorded that the bowl was placed in a Buddhist temple in Vaishali, and that the farmers of Vaishali made it a ritual to offer the top part of their harvest to this bowl. Chinese traveling Buddhist scholars Fahian Monk and Hyunsan Monk have recorded various facts about this giant Buddha bowl and its origin. This Buddha bowl has been in the Buddhist temple of Vaishali for about five centuries.

According to Taranath, a Tibbatha Buddhist monk and scholar in the sixteenth century, King Kanishka of Kushan attacked Pataliputra in the first century. King Kanishka won this battle, but he agreed to return Patali Putra to King Patali Putra himself. He has agreed in this way because King Pataliputra agreed to give this Buddha bowl to King Kanishka with Ashwagosha Thera, a famous Buddhist scholar.

King Kanishka took these two objects to the capital of his kingdom, Purushpur (present-day Peshawar in Pakistan). He placed this sacred bowl in a temple there and made Ashwagosha thera his chief advisor.

There are reports that Chinese tourists came to worship this Buddha bowl in Purushpur in the third and ninth centuries.

Until a few decades ago, it was preserved in a Jamia Muslim mosque in Kandahar. During the Afghan civil war in the late 1980s, President Najibullah took this Buddha bowl and arranged to place it in the Kabul National Museum.

This Buddha bowl is made of strong stone. The color is bright green with black color. Its diameter is 5.7 feet. The thickness of the bowl is 18 cm. The middle of the bowl and the base are even thicker. Its polished surface is carved with lotus petals reminiscent of Mauryan stone carving. The Buddhist character of the bowl is shown by this lotus carving. Six columns of Quranic texts are engraved above the lotus carving. The story of this bowl of Buddha is recorded in many Gandhara carvings.

This Buddha bowl, which is almost two meters in diameter, weighs more than 350 kilograms. This stone bowl fits well with the ancient Buddhist belief that Lord Buddha was an eighteen foot tall human being. Because an ordinary person cannot lift such a bowl except for such a big person. Therefore, it can be believed that this stone Buddha bowl is an enlarged replica of the real Buddha bowl.

So where is the real bowl of Buddha? 

Sri Lankan history books mention evidence that Buddha's bawl relic is in Sri Lanka. It is said that during the reign of King Devanam Piyatissa, the bawl relic of the Buddha was brought to Sri Lanka by Sumana Samanera. Since the middle period of Anuradhapura, the bawl relic has been enshrined and worshiped along with the Danta relic at Dalada Mandura.

The talk about the stone Buddha bowl replica, which is currently kept in the Kabul National Museum in Kabul, Afghanistan, was re-heard by the leader of the Indian Parliament, Rastriya Janata Dal Party, Dr. Raghuvansh Prasad Singh. With the announcement in the Indian Parliament that action should be taken. Many international Buddhist organizations also support his request.

The Indian government made a request to the Afghan government about this, but due to the Koranic texts written on this bowl, there is a difficulty in getting it back to India. The Indian government has to provide extensive information to confirm that this Buddha bowl in the Kabul museum is the same Buddha bowl that Emperor Kanishka took to Purushpura.

Due to various reasons, there is also a risk of losing the Buddha bowl from the right of Buddhists.