Gautama
Buddha, also known as Siddhārtha Gautama, Shakyamuni, or simply the
Buddha, was a sage on whose teachings Buddhism was founded. About the
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He is believed to have lived and taught mostly in eastern India sometime
between the sixth and fourth centuries BCE.

The word Buddha means “awakened one” or “the enlightened one”. “Buddha”
is also used as a title for the first awakened being in an era. In most
Buddhist traditions, Siddhartha Gautama is regarded as the Supreme
Buddha (Pali sammāsambuddha, Sanskrit samyaksaṃbuddha) of our age.
Gautama taught a Middle Way between sensual indulgence and the severe
asceticism found in the Sramana (renunciation) movement common in his
region. He later taught throughout regions of eastern India such as
Magadha and Kośala.

Gautama is the primary figure in Buddhism and accounts of his life,
discourses, and monastic rules are believed by Buddhists to have been
summarized after his death and memorized by his followers. Various
collections of teachings attributed to him were passed down by oral
tradition and first committed to writing about 400 years later.

Scholars are hesitant to make unqualified claims about the historical
facts of the Buddha’s life. Most accept that he lived, taught and
founded a monastic order during the Mahajanapada era in India during the
reign of Bimbisara, the ruler of the Magadha empire, and died during
the early years of the reign of Ajatshatru who was the successor of
Bimbisara, thus making him a younger contemporary of Mahavira, the Jain
teacher.[7] Apart from the Vedic Brahmins, the Buddha’s lifetime
coincided with the flourishing of other influential sramana schools of
thoughts like Ājīvika, Cārvāka, Jain, and Ajñana. It was also the age of
influential thinkers like Mahāvīra, Pūraṇa Kassapa , Makkhali Gosāla,
Ajita Kesakambalī, Pakudha Kaccāyana, and Sañjaya Belaṭṭhaputta, whose
viewpoints the Buddha most certainly must have been acquainted with and
influenced by.[8][9][note 7] Indeed, Sariputta and Maudgalyāyana, two of
the foremost disciples of the Buddha, were formerly the foremost
disciples of Sañjaya Belaṭṭhaputta, the skeptic. There is also evidence
to suggest that the two masters, Alara Kalama and Udaka Ramaputta, were
indeed historical figures and they most probably taught Buddha two
different forms of meditative techniques. While the most general outline
of “birth, maturity, renunciation, search, awakening and liberation,
teaching, death” must be true, most scholars do not consistently accept
all of the details contained in traditional biographies.

The times of Gautama’s birth and death are uncertain. Most historians in
the early 20th century dated his lifetime as circa 563 BCE to 483 BCE.
More recently his death is dated later, between 411 and 400 BCE, while
at a symposium on this question held in 1988, the majority of those who
presented definite opinions gave dates within 20 years either side of
400 BCE for the Buddha’s death. These alternative chronologies, however,
have not yet been accepted by all historians.

The evidence of the early texts suggests that Siddhārtha Gautama was
born into the Shakya clan, a community that was on the periphery, both
geographically and culturally, of the northeastern Indian subcontinent
in the 5th century BCE. It was either a small republic, in which case
his father was an elected chieftain, or an oligarchy, in which case his
father was an oligarch. According to the Buddhist tradition, Gautama was
born in Lumbini, nowadays in modern-day Nepal, and raised in
Kapilavastu (Shakya capital), which may either be in present day
Tilaurakot, Nepal or Piprahwa, India.[note 1] He obtained his
enlightenment in Bodh Gaya, gave his first sermon in Sarnath, and died
in Kushinagara.

No written records about Gautama have been found from his lifetime or
some centuries thereafter. One edict of Emperor Ashoka, who reigned from
circa 269 BCE to 232 BCE, commemorates the Emperor’s pilgrimage to the
Buddha’s birthplace in Lumbini. Another one of his edict mentions
several Dhamma texts, establishing the existence of a written Buddhist
tradition at least by the time of the Mauryan era and which may be the
precursors of the Pāli Canon. The oldest surviving Buddhist manuscripts
are the Gandhāran Buddhist texts, reported to have been found in or
around Haḍḍa near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan and now preserved in
the British Library. They are written in the Kharoṣṭhī script and the
Gāndhārī language on twenty-seven birch bark scrolls, and they date from
the first century BCE to the third century CE.

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