This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Nepal gathers two cities that record, between them, both the disputed birthplace of the Buddha and a valley where Hindu and Buddhist practice have never separated cleanly.
Kapilavastu is named in Buddhist tradition as the town of the Shakya clan where Siddhartha Gautama grew up in his father's household before leaving it, and the account of the four sights that prompted his departure is set on the roads leading out of the city. Two sites, Tilaurakot in Nepal and Piprahwa across the border in India, are each argued by scholars to be the ancient town, and the question is not settled; this atlas records the dispute rather than favoring either claim.
Kathmandu answers with a valley shared between Hindu and Buddhist practice for centuries, its Newar religion in particular refusing any clean line between the two. Pashupatinath on the Bagmati is one of the most important Shiva temples anywhere and the principal cremation ground of Nepal, while the stupas of Swayambhunath and Boudhanath rank among the largest Buddhist monuments in the region, the latter a center of Tibetan exile religious life since 1959. The valley's living goddess tradition, the Kumari, continues in the city today.
Together the two show two different ways a place can hold a tradition's center: one by contested memory of where a founder was born, the other by an unbroken and still visible practice of two traditions side by side.