Enlightenment of the Buddha at Bodh Gaya

Date

c. 528 BCE (traditional)

Category

Religion & ideology

Region

India (Magadha, Bihar)

Era

Classical Antiquity

Significance

According to Buddhist tradition, Siddhartha Gautama (c. 563-483 BCE), a prince of the Shakya clan who had renounced worldly life, attained enlightenment while meditating beneath a pipal tree (the 'Bodhi tree') at Uruvela, present-day Bodh Gaya in Bihar, India.

Having rejected both indulgence and extreme asceticism in favour of a 'Middle Way,' he is said to have realised the Four Noble Truths and the path to liberation from suffering and the cycle of rebirth, thereby becoming the Buddha ('the Awakened One'). He then delivered his first sermon at Sarnath, 'setting in motion the wheel of the Dharma,' and gathered a monastic community (sangha). The teaching he founded grew into one of the world's great religions, eventually spreading across South, Central, East, and Southeast Asia. Bodh Gaya remains Buddhism's most sacred pilgrimage site. Dates are traditional and debated; many scholars place the Buddha's death nearer 400 BCE.

Empires active in c. 528 BCE (traditional)

• Achaemenid Empire
  550 BCE – 330 BCE
• Roman Kingdom
  753 BCE – 509 BCE
• Scythians
  800 BCE – 300 BCE
• Zhou Dynasty
  1046 BCE – 256 BCE
• Carthaginian Empire
  650 BCE – 146 BCE
• Kingdom of Kush
  1070 BCE – 350 CE

Related religion & ideology events

• Death (moksha) of Mahavira and the consolidation of Jainism
  c. 527 BCE (traditional)
• Nebuchadnezzar II Destroys Jerusalem and the First Temple
  587/586 BCE
• Josiah's reform and the 'Book of the Law' (Deuteronomic Reform)
  c. 622 BCE
• Ashoka commissions the Great Stupa at Sanchi
  c. 250 BCE
• The Septuagint: Hebrew scripture translated into Greek
  c. 250 BCE
• Third Buddhist Council and Ashoka's Buddhist missions
  c. 250 BCE

Further reading

A Little History of Religion

The wider story

A Little History of Religion

Richard Holloway

Accessible sweep of humanity's faiths and belief systems from prehistory to the present.

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