Gautama, Siddhartha

Siddhartha Gautama (Pāli: Siddhattha Gotama) is the name of the man who came to be known as the Buddha in ancient India approximately 2,500 years ago. His charisma, in part, provided the stimulus for the formation of the religion now called “Buddhism.” Siddhartha is his personal name, while Gautama refers to his family's clan name. The term buddha is an honorary epithet literally meaning “awakened” and refers to a fully enlightened being who has attained perfect knowledge and full liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth (saṃsāra). In discussing events prior to his enlightenment, Siddhartha is frequently referred to in sources as the bodhisattva (Pāli: Bodhisatta), a term that refers to a being on the path to enlightenment.

Few today seriously question Gautama's actual existence; however, debate continues over the dates of his life due to the lack of irrefutable evidence. Traditional accounts place the date of his death anywhere from 2420 to 290 BCE. However, some scholars have narrowed this range to roughly 486 to 360 BCE, with newer literary, archaeological, epigraphical, and cultural-historical evidence suggesting an even narrower—although not definite—range of 420 to 350 BCE. The Buddha is held to have been approximately 80 years old at the time of his death, though again the dates cannot be historically verified with accuracy.

No single biography or hagiography about the Buddha Gautama exists. The life story of the Buddha is part of a larger biographical process that is both complex and multilayered. Although the varying Buddhist traditions have much in common with regard to the life of the Buddha, they also differ, sometimes considerably, in many ways. Nevertheless, by weaving together events from a wide array of sources—both canonical and noncanonical, and from a variety of languages including Pāli, Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese, a general and chronological narrative does emerge.

[Page 429]Siddhartha Gautama came from a line of kṣatriyas (“noble warriors”) belonging to the Śakya tribe who resided in Kapilavastu (Pāli: Kapilavatthu), a town at the base of the Himalayan mountains near the present-day India-Nepal bor der. His father was the kṣatriya Suddhodana, and his mother was Māyā. The commonly used epithet Śakyamuni (“Sage of the Śakyas”) reflects Siddhartha's heritage. In hagiographical accounts, royal designations such as king and queen are often employed in descriptions of Siddhartha's parents, and Siddhartha himself is frequently described as a prince coming from the wealthy ruling kingdom of Kapilavastu. However, one of the Indic terms for kings, rājā, need not imply anything more than that his father was the head of a clan. Scholars have argued that the Śakyas were part of a republican system in which the kṣatriyas governed through regular public assemblies composed of members from the leading clans. Therefore, when sources mentioning Śakya assemblies speak of rājās in the plural, they may merely indicate that each representative kṣatriya at the assembly was honorifically referred to as a raja, a “king.”

According to commonly accepted accounts within the Buddhist tradition, Siddhartha was born just outside Kapilavastu in Lumbinī Park in the present-day area of southern Nepal. Here, his mother, Māyā, is said to have given birth standing while holding on to the branch of a tree. Twenty years after his consecration (248 BCE), the Mauryan emperor Asoka visited Lumbinī to pay homage to the birthplace of the Buddha and erected a pillar documenting his pilgrimage. Lumbinī and nearby Kapilavastu continue to be one of the four main pilgrimage destinations in Buddhism, the other three being (1) the bodhi (Enlightenment) tree at Bodh Gaya, where Siddhartha is believed to have attained enlightenment; (2) Deer Park at Sārnāth, where the Buddha gave his first instruction in the Dharma; and (3) the village of Kuśinagarī, where the Buddha passed away.

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