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Key Facts |
| Other names |
Siddhārtha Gautama |
| Year of origin |
540 BCE |
| Location |
India |
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Background |
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Siddhārtha Gautama, in Sanskrit, or Siddhattha Gotama, in Pali, was a spiritual teacher from ancient India and the founder of Buddhism. He is generally recognized by Buddhists as the Supreme Buddha (Sammāsambuddha) of our age. |
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The precise nature of such a supreme Buddha - whether "merely" human or a transcendental, immortal, god-transcending being - is differently construed in Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism. |
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Theravada tends to view him as a super-human personage of supreme teaching skill and wisdom (uncontactable after his physical death), whereas Mahayana Buddhism goes further and tends to see him as a projection of an eternal, ultimate principle of Buddhahood (see Dharmakaya), present in all phenomena, immortal and transcendent. |
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The prime sources of information regarding Siddhārtha Gautama's life are the Buddhist texts. The Buddha and his monks spent four months each year discussing and rehearsing his teachings, and after his death his monks set about preserving them. A council was held shortly after his death, and another was held a century later. |
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At these councils the monks attempted to establish and authenticate the extant accounts of the life and teachings of the Buddha following systematic rules. They divided the teachings into distinct but overlapping bodies of material, and assigned specific monks to preserve each one. |
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The teaching was thus preserved orally for three centuries after the Buddha's death when they were finally recorded on palm-leaf scrolls that were arranged in three baskets (Pali: ti-pitaka). By this point, the monks had added or altered some material themselves, in particular magnifying the figure of the Buddha. |
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