How To Do Meditation | Begineer meditation Class For World Students At Gaya
Gautama Buddha, also known as
Siddhārtha Gautama,
Shakyamuni,[note 3] or simply the
Buddha, was a sage[3] on whose teachings Buddhism was founded.[web 2] He was born in
Nepal [web 3] and is believed to have lived and taught mostly in the eastern part of the
Indian subcontinent sometime between the sixth and fourth centuries
BCE.[4][note 4]
The word Buddha means "awakened one" or "the enlightened one". "Buddha" is also used as a title for the first awakened being in a
Yuga era. In most Buddhist traditions,
Siddhartha Gautama is regarded as the
Supreme Buddha (
Pali sammāsambuddha, Sanskrit samyaksaṃbuddha) of the present age.[note 5]
Gautama taught a
Middle Way between sensual indulgence and the severe asceticism found in the śramaṇa movement[5] common in his region.
He later taught throughout regions of eastern
India such as Magadha and Kosala.[4][6]
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 during the reign of
Bimbisara, the ruler of the
Magadha empire, and died during the early years of the reign of Ajasattu, who was the successor of Bimbisara, thus making him a younger contemporary of
Mahavira, the
Jain tirthankara.[7]
Apart from the Vedic Brahmins, the Buddha's lifetime coincided with the flourishing of influential śramaṇa schools of thoughts like Ājīvika, Cārvāka, Jainism, and Ajñana.[8]
Brahmajala Sutta records sixty-two such schools of thoughts. It was also the age of influential thinkers like Mahavira, Pūraṇa Kassapa, Makkhali Gosāla, Ajita Kesakambalī, Pakudha Kaccāyana, and Sañjaya Belaṭṭhaputta, as recorded in
Samaññaphala Sutta, whose viewpoints the Buddha most certainly must have been acquainted with.[9][
10][note 6] Indeed,
Sariputta and Moggallāna, two of the foremost disciples of the Buddha, were formerly the foremost disciples of Sañjaya Belaṭṭhaputta, the skeptic.[11] There is also evidence to suggest that the two masters,
Alara Kalama and
Uddaka Ramaputta, were indeed historical figures and they most probably taught Buddha two different forms of meditative techniques.[12] While the general sequence of "birth, maturity, renunciation, search, awakening and liberation, teaching, death" is widely accepted,[13][page needed] there is less consensus on the veracity of many details contained in traditional biographies.[14][15]
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.[1][16] More recently his death is dated later, between
411 and 400 BCE, while at a symposium on this question held in
1988,[17][18][19] the majority of those who presented definite opinions gave dates within 20 years either side of 400 BCE for the Buddha's death.[1][
20][note 4] These alternative chronologies, however, have not yet been accepted by all historians.[25][26][note 7]
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 eastern Indian subcontinent in the
5th century BCE.[28] 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.[28] According to the Buddhist tradition, Gautama was born in
Lumbini, now in modern-day Nepal, and raised in the Shakya capital of
Kapilvastu, which may have been in either 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
Kushinagar.
No written records about Gautama have been found from his lifetime or some centuries thereafter. One Edict of
Asoka, 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 edicts mentions several Dhamma texts, establishing the existence of a written Buddhist tradition at least by the time of the
Maurya era and which may be the precursors of the
Pāli Canon.[42][web 11] [note 8] 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
Gāndhārī language using the
Kharosthi script on twenty-seven birch bark manuscripts and date from the first century BCE to the third century CE.[web 12]