The Buddha
Indian philosopher and the founder of Buddhism (623 or 563 BCE – 543 or 483 BCE)
Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha (lit. 'the awakened one'), was a wandering religious teacher who lived in the eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist legends, he was born in Lumbini, in what is now Nepal, to royal parents of the Shakya clan, but renounced his home life to live as a wandering ascetic. After leading a life of mendicancy, asceticism, and meditation, he attained nirvana at Bodh Gaya in what is now Bihar, India. The Buddha then wandered through the lower Indo-Gangetic Plain, teaching and building a monastic order (sangha). Buddhist tradition holds he died in Kushinagar (in modern day Uttar Pradesh, India) and reached parinirvana ("final release from conditioned existence").
According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha taught a Middle Way between sensual indulgence and severe asceticism, leading to freedom from ignorance, craving, rebirth, and suffering. His core teachings are summarised in the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, a training of the mind that includes ethical training and kindness toward others, and meditative practices such as sense restraint, mindfulness, and dhyana (meditation proper). Another key element of his teachings are the concepts of the five skandhas and dependent origination, describing how all dharmas (both mental states and concrete 'things') come into being, and cease to be, depending on other dharmas, lacking an existence on their own (svabhava).
While in the Nikayas, he frequently refers to himself as the Tathāgata; the earliest attestation of the title Buddha is from the 3rd century BCE, meaning 'Awakened One' or 'Enlightened One'. His teachings were compiled by the Buddhist community into the Vinaya Piṭaka, containing codes for monastic discipline, and the Sūtra Piṭaka, a collection of discourses attributed to him.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “The Buddha” as indian philosopher and the founder of Buddhism (623 or 563 BCE – 543 or 483 BCE). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as indian philosopher and the founder of Buddhism (623 or 563 BCE – 543 or 483 BCE). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q9441. VIAF identifies the subject as 77109647. The Library of Congress control number is n80050504. 5 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Buddha” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.