AN Ilkley archaeologist could be about announce a major discovery about one of the world's great religions.

Dr Robin Coningham was due back from Nepal this week where he has been working on the foundations of the Buddhist religion.

He is looking to solve the controversy over whether the founder of Buddhism, Siddhartha Guatama - the Buddha - grew up in India or Nepal.

Buddha was born in Lumbini, India, but in the 1960s Indian teams discredited finds made in the 19th century suggesting that he had grown up in the Nepalese town of Tilaurakot.

Indian authorities have always insisted the religious figure grew up in Pipprahawa, near the Nepalese border.

Dr Coningham, of Maufe Way, went to Tilaurakot with fellow Bradford University archaeologist Dr Armin Schmidt last winter.

The Bradford University group claims to have dug deeper in their UNESCO-funded excavation than the Indian teams did.

The researchers have spent more than four years on the dig, dating soil and a range of items including iron furnaces, terracotta crucibles and fragments of ancient scripture.

The Bradford team believes that the Indian archaeologists in the 1960s may have incorrectly dated remains found at the site, because they tested only one section of it and not the deepest.

But the final results of the dig, which could be seminal, will not be known until Dr Coningham returns from Nepal later this week and announces his findings.

A spokesman for Bradford University said that Dr Coningham's results would be eagerly awaited by his department.

When the team's official findings were published last December Dr Coningham said: "Seldom has archaeology had such a superb opportunity to uncover the origins of one of the world's greatest religions."

A spokesman for the tourism department at the High Commission for India said the country was still the birthplace of Buddha and debates about his childhood had rumbled