Kapilvastu Districtकपिलवस्तु जिल्ला

Kapilvastu spans 1,738 km² of Tarai plain and low Chure hills (93 m to 1,491 m) on the Indian border west of Rupandehi, watered by the Banganga river and dotted with wetlands — including the Jagdishpur reservoir, Nepal's largest, a Ramsar site since 2003. The 2021 census counted 682,961 people, up 1.70% per year from 571,936 in 2011, at a density of 393 per km²; literacy of 71.8% is the lowest among the province's Tarai districts. It is Nepal's most Awadhi-speaking district — Awadhi is the first language of 66.9% of residents — and Muslims (17.4%) and Tharus (11%) are the largest communities after the Madhesi caste groups.

The economy is overwhelmingly agrarian: the district produces over 150,000 tonnes of paddy and 175,000 tonnes of sugarcane a year, among the highest in the country, while the border municipality of Krishnanagar serves as a customs and market town facing Uttar Pradesh. The headquarters Taulihawa — formally Kapilvastu Municipality — is an old Tarai bazaar whose name now stands for one of South Asia's most important archaeological landscapes.

A short walk north of Taulihawa lies Tilaurakot, the moated and walled site identified as ancient Kapilavastu, capital of the Shakya republic where Prince Siddhartha — the future Buddha — spent his first three decades before renouncing the palace. Excavations since 2013 by Nepal's Department of Archaeology and Durham University have traced settlement back some 2,800 years, with urban planning from the sixth century BC, and the Department counts 136 archaeological sites across the district, the most in Nepal — among them Niglihawa and Gotihawa with their Ashokan pillar fragments. On the UNESCO tentative list since 1996, Tilaurakot's formal World Heritage nomination was submitted in January 2025 and deferred for further work at the 2025 committee session; if inscribed it would become Nepal's fifth World Heritage site.