600 BC to 400

Lumbini and the first states

Later chronicles name the Kirata as the first rulers of the Kathmandu Valley. On the southern plains, the Buddha is born at Lumbini, probably in the sixth or fifth century BC, into the Shakya clan, whose small republic lies at the edge of the Ganges plain. The emperor Ashoka visits the site and marks it with an inscribed pillar around 249 BC, when the plains belong to the Maurya Empire.