Siddhartha Gautama is born at Lumbini, renounces his palace life, wakes under the Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya, preaches at Sarnath, and dies at Kushinagar at the age of eighty; his dates are the most disputed in this timeline, the tradition's long chronology and modern scholarship's shorter one standing side by side in the date above.
Tagged: Buddhist Mahayana Theravada Vajrayana
The Event
- Date
- c. 563–483 BCE (traditional); c. 480–400 BCE (scholarly) (disputed)
- Also called
- Siddhartha Gautama, Life of Siddhartha Gautama
- Era
- Early Buddhism; Standard periodization of Buddhist history
- Location
- Lumbini, Bodh Gaya, Sarnath, Kushinagar; today Nepal and Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, India
- Traditions
- Buddhism
- Streams
- Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana
- Key figures
- Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha
- Key texts
- Ariyapariyesana Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 26), Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta
How the Tradition Tells It
The Buddha's dates stand in two chronologies that this timeline does not merge. The Theravada long chronology, kept in the Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa, places the death in 544 or 543 BCE; the corrected long chronology places it in 486 or 483 BCE; the short chronology near 368 BCE; and the Gottingen symposium on the dating of the Buddha tended toward a death within about twenty years of 400 BCE. Each school keeps its own count, and the record carries both of the table's stated ranges.
Primary Sources
- The Pali Nikayas
Secondary Sources
- Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History and Practices (Cambridge, 2nd ed. 2013)
- Bechert (ed.), The Dating of the Historical Buddha (Gottingen, 1991-1997)
Provenance: HIST-0401; confidence 0.7; accessed 2026-10-27.
Related on This Site
- Destruction of Nalanda History Event
- Emergence of the Mahayana History Event
- First Council at Rajagaha History Event
- Nalanda at its height History Event
- Reign of Ashoka History Event
- Second Council at Vaishali History Event
- Third Council at Pataliputra History Event
- World Fellowship of Buddhists History Event