According to the Buddhist tradition, the historical Buddha
Siddhartha Gautama was born to the
Shakya clan in
Mithila Kingdom, at the beginning of the
Magadha period (546–324 BCE). He is also known as the
Shakyamuni (literally "The sage of the Shakya clan").
After an early life of luxury under the protection of his father, Śuddhodana, the ruler of Kapilavastu which later became incorporated into the state of Magadha, Siddhartha entered into contact with the realities of the world and concluded that life was inescapably bound up with suffering and sorrow. Siddhartha renounced his meaningless life of luxury to become an ascetic. He ultimately decided that asceticism couldn't end suffering, and instead chose a middle way, a path of moderation away from the extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification.
Under a fig tree, now known as the Bodhi tree, he vowed never to leave the position until he found Truth. At the age of 35, he attained Enlightenment. He was then known as Gautama Buddha, or simply "The Buddha", which means "the enlightened one", or "the awakened one".
For the remaining 45 years of his life, he traveled the Gangetic Plain of central India (the region of the Ganges/Ganga river and its tributaries), teaching his doctrine and discipline to a diverse range of people. By the time of his death, he had thousands of followers.
The Buddha's reluctance to name a successor or to formalise his doctrine led to the emergence of many movements during the next 400 years: first the schools of Nikaya Buddhism, of which only Theravada remains today, and then the formation of Mahayana and Vajrayana, pan-Buddhist sects based on the acceptance of new scriptures and the revision of older techniques.
Followers of Buddhism, called Buddhists in English, referred to themselves as Sakyan-s or Sakyabhiksu in ancient India.[1][2] Buddhist scholar Donald S. Lopez asserts they also used the term Bauddha,[3] although scholar Richard Cohen asserts that that term was used only by outsiders to describe Buddhists.[4]
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Buddhism#Life_of_the_Buddha
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