Gautama Buddha
Also called: Siddhartha Gautama, Shakyamuni, the Buddha
Founder of Buddhism (c. 6th–5th century BCE), Siddhartha Gautama, a prince of the Shakya clan who renounced the world, attained enlightenment and taught for the rest of his life
He was born at Lumbini, son of the Shakya ruler of Kapilavastu. Around the age of twenty-nine, moved by the suffering of age, sickness and death, he left home and practised severe austerities, but discovered the Middle Way between asceticism and indulgence and, at about thirty-five, attained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya. After preaching his first sermon to five ascetics at Sarnath he taught across the Ganges valley for forty-five years, and passed into nirvana at Kushinagar at eighty. His disciples gathered his teachings into scriptures at the councils.