3233 AM · 528 BCE · world history
The Buddha and the Birth of Buddhism
Prince Siddhartha Gautama leaves his palace and finds a path out of suffering.
A prince of the Shakya clan, raised in luxury, sees old age, sickness and death for the first time and leaves to find an answer. After six years of asceticism he rejects both indulgence and self-torture, and under a tree at Bodh Gaya formulates the middle way: four truths about suffering and an eightfold path.
Sources
Documents of the period
- Indian inscriptions and chronicles — the edicts of Ashoka and the Pali canon — the earliest evidence of the teaching
Scholarship
- studies in Indian history — the dating of the Buddha’s life and the routes by which Buddhism spread across Asia
Basis: documents and evidence.