The Buddha’s Gesture
Several decades ago, a major controversy erupted over A.K. Ramanujan’s essay “The Three Hundred Ramayanas.” Right-wing critics accused left-leaning scholars of reducing Rama from a historical person to a merely literary character.
Curiously, no similar debate surrounds the idea of “three hundred Buddhas,” despite the many diverse narratives about the Buddha’s life. The Buddha is widely accepted as a historical figure, even though most scholars of Buddhism acknowledge that the version of his life familiar today was largely assembled by 19th-century European scholars, who worked from a range of texts and applied selective, sometimes arbitrary, criteria.
When did the Buddha live?
Accounts of the Buddha’s life were first written down some 500 to 700 years after the time he may—or may not—have lived. Estimates of his birth date are calculated indirectly, based on how many years are thought to have passed between his death and the coronation of Emperor Ashoka.
There is no agreement on this timeline. Some traditions place the Buddha about 200 years before Ashoka, others about 300 years earlier. When we widen the scope to include chronicles from East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia, we encounter roughly forty different ways of calculating the Buddha’s dates, none of which has gained universal acceptance.
Sources of the Buddha’s story
The Buddha’s life story draws on Sanskrit texts such as the Buddhacarita, the Lalitavistara, the philosophical works of Nagarjuna, and numerous Jataka tales. None of these texts is contemporary with the Buddha. Moreover, they often assume the existence of other Buddhas who lived before him.
In this sense, Buddhist narratives openly acknowledge a lineage of Buddhas, much like Jainism’s tradition of the Tirthankaras. In Jain thought, each tirthankara’s life follows a fixed sequence of five key events: conception, birth, renunciation, awakening, and death.
Similarly, Buddhist texts—depending on the tradition—describe anywhere from seven to twenty-eight Buddhas. Their lives repeatedly follow the same pattern: conception, birth, renunciation, awakening, and finally death (parinirvana).
Conception, birth, and family life
Details of the Buddha’s conception vary widely. In some accounts, it is miraculous: his mother dreams of a celestial elephant entering her womb. When this narrative was translated into Chinese, Confucian values favored an interpretation that emphasized moral purity, reinforcing the elephant imagery.
Other traditions describe the Buddha remaining untouched by his mother’s “impure” body, meditating within a jeweled casket in her womb and preaching to the gods. He is said to have emerged from his mother’s right side while she stood holding a tree branch in a grove.
Today, it is commonly accepted that the Buddha was born in Lumbini. Yet earlier texts do not mention this location at all. Lumbini gained prominence only during Ashoka’s reign; it became important because Ashoka identified it as such, not because earlier sources emphasized it.
The Buddha’s marital status is equally uncertain. Some texts describe him as having one wife, others two, three, or several. In certain stories, his son is born on the night he leaves the palace; in others, on the day he attains enlightenment.
These inconsistencies even gave rise to accusations of infidelity in some traditions, particularly in stories involving Yashodharā, who is tested or judged by the Buddha’s other wives—some sympathetic, others hostile. Accounts of the Buddha’s death, or parinirvāṇa, also differ across traditions.
A modern construction?
Narratives of the Buddha’s life vary significantly in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean traditions. British Orientalist scholars, treating the Pali Canon as the most authentic source, removed many supernatural elements. Even the term “enlightenment” was carefully framed to resonate with Europe’s own Age of Enlightenment, especially in stories like the Buddha’s confrontation with Mara.
Today, scholars know that the oldest surviving Buddhist manuscripts are written in Gandharan Prakrit and date from around the 1st century BCE to the 1st century CE. These texts do not explicitly mention the Four Noble Truths, though they contain many closely related ideas.
According to Theravada tradition, the Pali Canon was first written down in Sri Lanka around the 1st century BCE, during the reign of King Vattagamani Abhaya. However, the version known today took shape over several centuries, particularly through later commentaries such as those by Buddhaghosa in the 5th century CE.
History, myth, and truth
Ultimately, we should remember that history does not automatically convey truth, and mythology does not automatically convey falsehood. They are simply two different ways of engaging with the past—one grounded in evidence, the other in faith. Neither, on its own, tells the whole story.
