An early bronze statue of the Buddha, seated
Seated Buddha, 1st to mid-2nd century
Marked Lumbini

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

The Buddha and the first Buddhists

Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, taught in north-eastern India in about the 5th century BC, though his exact dates are debated. His teaching on suffering and how to end it was carried on by monks and nuns, and spread under the emperor Ashoka.

Date
About 500 to 230 BCVI · The classical world
Place
Lumbini · Bodh Gaya · Sarnath · KushinagarAsia
Laid out as
A beliefA faith or a way of thinking, from its central idea outwards to its practice and its spread.
Lessons
5 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IA prince leaves home
  2. IIUnder the bodhi tree
  3. IIIThe teaching
  4. IVMonks and nuns
  5. VHow Buddhism spread

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Siddhartha Gautama
  • Mahapajapati Gotami
  • Ashoka

Objects

  • The Piprahwa vase
  • Ashokan pillars

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

500 BC to 230 BC. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?