Person
The Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama) सिद्धार्थ गौतम
Founder of Buddhism: the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path
He has no years of life—there are two reckonings, eighty years apart. The traditional one: c. 563–483 BCE (3198–3278 AM). The modern one, favoured by most since the 1988 symposium: c. 480–400 BCE (3281–3361 AM). So what stands here is not a lifespan but a window of activity on the traditional reckoning, and the bar is drawn dotted, as for everyone whose years of life the sources leave unsaid.
Sources
Scholarship
- “The Dates of the Buddha”, World History Encyclopedia; the 1988 symposium — the eighty-year spread between the traditional and the modern reckoning
Basis: documents and evidence.