Life of the Buddha (1)

Name: Siddhartha Gautama
a.k.a.: Sakyamuni ("Sage of the Sakya tribe")
a.k.a.: Buddha ("awakened one")

(Other titles: Mahapurusha ("great person," Tathagata ("One who has attained what is really so")

Birth: poss.: 566 - 486 BCE, in garden in Lumbini; foothills of Himalayas)

Gautama's birth - death	Indian Sources		Sri Lankan Chronicles
poss. Dates:	180 - 100 before coronation		298 - 218 before coronation
Ashoka's coronation	326 BCE		268 BCE
poss. Dates	506-426	624-544	448-368	566-486

father: Suddhodana, ruler of the Sakya tribe at Kapilavattu
mother: Queen Maya, dies 7 days after Gautama's birth
maternal aunt: Mahapajapati lookes after child

Sage Asita predicts that he either becomes a Buddha or a universal monarch.
Siddhartha marries Yasodhara son Rahula (fetters)

4 signs:

an old man

a sick man

a corpse

an ascetic monk

beginning of search of spiritual truths at the age of 29; becoming a homeless religious mendicant