Ashtamahasthana — the Eight Great Buddhist Places
The eight sites traditionally associated with pivotal events in the Buddha's life, including Lumbini (in present-day Nepal).
Significance & tradition
These eight sites correspond to major events in the Buddha's traditional biography — his birth (Lumbini), enlightenment (Bodh Gaya), first sermon (Sarnath), and death (Kushinagar), along with four sites tied to miracles later in his teaching life — making this a chronological pilgrimage through his life story rather than a geographically clustered circuit.
History
Interest in these sites as a fixed pilgrimage circuit dates back at least to the travel accounts of Chinese pilgrim-monks Faxian (5th century CE) and Xuanzang (7th century CE), whose records are among the key historical sources later used to identify and excavate several of these locations.
How this list was compiled
An exhaustive, canonical list of the eight great places.