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To understand the life of the Buddha, we need to understand the life of Siddhartha Gautama as a whole, both before he became the Buddha and afterwards.

The historical figure we know as the Buddha' lived in Northern India, on the borders with what is now Nepal, in the foothills of the Himalayas, about 2500 years ago. There is some debate about the exact dates, with some scholars quoting 563-483 BCE and others preferring 448-368BCE. What is important is that there was a historical figure called Siddhartha Gautama who lived for around eighty years between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE. He was a member of the Shakya (Sakya) tribe and so is sometimes referred to as the Shakyamuni' (Sakyamuni) Buddha or the sage of the Shakyas. The term Buddha is not really a name, but more a title meaning awakened one', referring to his enlightenment.

The stories of the life of the Buddha are found in their earliest form in the Pali Canon (a collection of the Buddha's teachings and rules that were passed down by chanting until they were written down in the first century CE). In the Pali Canon there is not a chronological account of his life, but different aspects are related at different times linked to particular teachings. The first full account of his life, Acts of the Buddha, was written by the Buddhist poet Ashvaghosa in the first century CE, and by this time there are many legendary and mythical details in the account.

Accounts of the Buddha's life are therefore fragmentary and it is difficult, if not impossible, to establish historical detail from myths and legends. People discovering the story have a choice, either to accept the early version of the story from the Pali Canon as accurate and accept that it is an incomplete account, or to believe one of the versions of the story that have been based on this, or to attempt to work out what is fact' and what is myth' bearing in mind that they might get this wrong. For many Buddhists, however, the exact historical details of the life of the Buddha are less important than the teachings and ideas linked to them. There are key events in his life that all Buddhists agree have deep significance in Buddhism.

The Birth

The man who became the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama (Siddhattha Gotama) was a member of the Shakya tribe who were part of the Kshatriya or ruling class. His father Suddhodana is described as a King in the scriptures, but modern scholarship shows that the Shakyas were probably ruled by a council of elders who elected a head of

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