I.

Introduction

Buddha (c. 563-c. 483 bc), the founder of Buddhism, born in the Lumbini park near Kapilavastu, in present-day Nepal near the Indian border. The name Gautama Buddha by which the historical Buddha is known is a combination of his family name Gautama and the epithet Buddha, meaning “Enlightened One”. Despite many efforts, the dates of the Buddha's birth and death remain uncertain. The various Buddhist sources agree that the Buddha lived for 80 years, but they disagree on the precise dates. Modern Theravada countries place his birth in 623 bc, and his death in 543 bc, but these dates are rejected by most Western and Indian historians. The ancient sources offer two different chronologies: the long chronology, based on Sinhala sources, places the Buddha's final nirvana around 218 years before King Ashoka's consecration (c. 273 bc); the short chronology, attested by all Sanskrit and Chinese sources, places the Buddha's death 100 years before Ashoka's consecration.

All the surviving accounts of the Buddha's life were written many years after his death by idealizing followers rather than by objective historians. Consequently, it is difficult to separate facts from the great mass of myth and legend in which they are embedded. Furthermore, most Buddhist traditions hold that the Buddha was merely the ultimate incarnation in a series of lives chronicled in various edifying stories; and the Mahayana tradition maintains that the Buddha is a manifestation of the universal Buddha of the cosmos, which underpins all being. The myths and beliefs obscuring the figure of the “historical” Buddha are almost as important to Buddhism as the words and deeds of the Buddha himself. The historical details of the Buddha's life are therefore hard to establish, but perhaps enjoy no privileged claim over the appended tales and doctrines.