In Kapilavastu, the capital of the small kingdom of the Siddhartha tribe, in the north of Ancient India, in the country of Koshala, at the foothills of the Himalayas, was probably born in 623 or 563 BC, the son of the king, later called Buddha, i.e. "awakened" from the night of delusion, or "enlightened". He was handsome; in the sixteenth year he took three wives and first lived in luxury and pleasure. But imbued with sorrow that the world is dominated by disaster, he abandoned the crown in his twenty-ninth year of life, shaved his head, and, dressed in a yellow dress, secretly left the palace and wives. The future Buddha withdrew to the desert to reflect on the suffering of mankind and the deliverance of people from them. In the legend it is motivated by the story that one day, after going for a walk, he saw an old man, a sick man, a dead body and a priest. This made him think about old age, illness, death and priestly life.
Tsarevich Siddhartha began to call himself Shakyamuni, that is, a desert from the military family of Shakya, or Gautama, by another family name, and eating alms, first wandered the hermits of ancient India near the city of Rajagriga, learning from these ascetics and brahmans. Therefore, the ancient Indian region of Magadha is considered by all Buddhist peoples to be the motherland of their religion, although it is not the birthplace of its founder. Dissatisfied with the wisdom of the ascetics and brahmans, the tsarevich withdrew a few years later into the complete seclusion of the desert forest on the banks of the Nairanjara, one of the southern tributaries of the Ganges, and lived there for six years without fire, exposing himself to the most severe deprivations and self-harassment, deepening his thoughts. Finally, after fifty days of thought, his mind was illuminated and he learned the truth by becoming a Buddha ("Enlightened"). Then he appeared to the Indians as the founder of religion.
Accompanied by several disciples, the Buddha walked through the Ganges region, preaching his teachings in towns and villages, urging people to seek deliverance from the suffering and sorrows of life, not in asceticism and the dead formalism of rituals, but in the knowledge of truth. The Buddha preached his first sermon in the Grove of Gaza near Benares; it was a sermon about evil and salvation from evil. Like the poor, with a pot in his hand to gather alms, he and his disciples went from one area of ancient India to another, from city to city, preaching. Friendly, gentle, and humble, Buddha attracted all hearts, and soon acquired many followers. The performance of miracles is attributed to him only in later legends; but the belief that he had omniscience and knew of all men than they had been in their old births spread quickly; this helped him to acquire proselytes. Even some Indian kings began to patronize the teachings of Buddha, especially the powerful Bimbisarah king and Kaushambi king. But he found the greatest number of followers between the poor and people of the lower classes, who were looking to get rid of the haughtiness of the brahmans and the burden of the castes. The Buddha himself did not attack the caste structure of ancient India, but the denial of the caste lies in the spirit of his teachings, which called upon all people to participate in salvation.
Buddha had been preaching for twenty years; then he withdrew again into solitude and died an eighty year old man near Kushinagara, on the banks of the Hiranyawati River, two days' journey from the city where he was born. He died, says the legend, under the same fig tree (boddhi, "tree of knowledge"), under which he was illuminated by the full knowledge of the truth. The year of Buddha's death is defined differently; some take 483 years, others 543 years before Ρ X. His body was burned with royal splendor; his ashes were collected in a gold urn, and later distributed among eight ancient Indian cities, which were particularly important in his life. The Buddha died free from the rebirths.
Buddhist cathedrals
Buddhism began to spread rapidly across ancient India. Buddhist monasteries (vihars) appeared in all the Indian regions, filling with large numbers of monks (bhikshu). The Buddhists' desire to unite for religious studies was made even more evident by the fact that they had established cathedrals to establish dogmas of faith, rules of morality, and church discipline, in short, to bring harmony and unity to their religious institutions. Legend has it that a few years after the death of the Buddha, Kashyapa, who was the closest of all Buddha's disciples to his teacher's heart, convened, with the consent of the Magadhist King Ajatashatra, who had converted him to Buddhism, a "collection of good law", a cathedral of the most influential and virtuous followers of the new religion. It is believed that Ajatashatra reigned from 546 to 514 B.C. At this full cathedral, which began in the rainy season and lasted seven months, the memoirs of its members, the teachings and commandments, the sayings and the establishment of the Buddha were recorded, and the compilation thus compiled was recognized as sacred in Ancient India. It is divided into three parts, so it is called Tripitaka ("Three Baskets"). The first part of it, the Sutra, contains the sayings and sermons of the Buddha; the second part, the Wine, contains the rules of church discipline.
