BUDDHA (aThe Enlightened One*), the founder of the Buddhist religion: b. near Kapi lavastu, India, 570-560 B.C. ; d. near Kusinari, India, 490-480 B.C. (the exact dates are uncer tain). The name Buddha is a theological title (see BUDDHISM), and its bearer was usually known to his contemporaries by his family name Gotama (or, in Sanskrit, Gautama). The facts of his life are enveloped in a mist of pious legend, but it appears certain that he was the son of Suddhodana, a chieftain of the Sakya clan (whence Gotama's epithet Sakyamuni, ((Sage of the Sakyas"), who inhabited a dis trict at the base of the Himalayas on the border of the present Nepal, almost due north of Benares. Gotama is said to have received the personal name Siddhattha (Sanskrit Sidd hartha), The who has accomplished his pur pose,' and to have been brought up by his aunt Maha-Pajapati (Sanskrit Prajapati), his mother Maya having died seven days after his birth. He passed his early years in ease and luxury, but he seems to have been deeply impressed by the misery of the world, as exemplified by old age, sickness and death. At the age of 29, his spiritual unrest caused him to leave his home, his wife and his new-born son, and to go forth as a wandering ascetic. He attached himself in turn to two religious teachers, Mara and Uddaka, but, finding their systems inadequate, he resolved to practise the severest forms of bodily penance. According to the Buddhist texts, he continued to do this for six years until he was nigh death. Then, suddenly abandoning his self-torture, he gave himself to profound meditation, and during one night's ecstatic vigil he attained the supreme knowledge and enlight enment that constituted him the Buddha. The tradition names as the scene of this crisis the sacred Bodhi tree (atree of enlightenment') at Uruvela (now Bodh-Gaya in Bengal, about 60 miles south of Patna).
After spending some weeks in meditation, Gotama, now Buddha,' resolved, according to the texts, to proclaim his doctrine to the world, and sought out five ascetics who had formerly been his companions and who were then living in the Deer-park" near Benares. By his first sermon he converted them, an event which is celebrated as °The Setting in Motion of the Wheel of the Law' He soon gathered 60 more disciples, the nucleus of his monastic com munity, and then sent them forth as mission aries, while he himself returned to Uruveli, where he made a thousand converts. Thence he proceeded to Rajagaha, the capital of the kingdom of Magadha (now the district South Bihar), gained the adherence of the King, Bimbisara, as a lay disciple, and received from him a grove as a residence for himself and his followers. Not long afterward Gotama is said to have visited his native town Kapilavastu and to have received his own son Rahula into the monastic order as a novice. After these first events the most trustworthy texts give no con nected account of the 45 years of Gotama's public ministry, but it appears that he passed them in journeying through the eastern part of the Ganges Valley, teaching and preaching in each place, accompanied by.a band of disciples.
The rainy seasons he was accustomed to spend in some one of the °abodes° (mhitras) provided for the new community by generous lay ad herents. His mission seems to have encountered little organized opposition, and the list of his chief disciples shows them to have been largely from the priestly Brahman caste and from the aristocratic and wealthy classes, including many members of his own family and clan. The two Brahmans Sariputta and Moggallana are mentioned as the leaders in the community after Gotama himself, but Ananda, his cousin, who was his personal attendant during the last 25 years of his life, seems to have been his most intimate and beloved companion. An other cousin, Devadatta, tried to create a schism in the community after having failed to supplant Gotama as its head, but had little success. The story also relates that he plotted Gotama's death with the help of the wicked king Ajatagatru (who was afterward converted), but perished miserably himself.
When Gotama approached the age of 80, his health began to fail, but he continued his journey ings until the end. While on the way to Kusi nark an ancient city on or near the Gandak River, he was seized with his last illness, a dysentery caused perhaps by eating pork, and expired in a grove near the city. His last ex hortation to his disciples was that they should henceforth regard his doctrine and discipline as their master and should strive with earnest ness. After his body had been burned with great pomp, the tradition says that the ashes were divided into eight parts and distributed as sacred relics, over which monumental mounds (Stiipas) were erected.
Bibliography.— Dutoit, J., (Das Leben des Buddha' (1906, a translation of the Pali sources for B.uddha's life, representing in the main the earlier tradition) ; Aivaghosha,