Buddhism ⧸ History and Origin

Buddhism Buddhism is one of the most important Asian spiritual traditions. During its roughly 2.5 millennia of history, Buddhism has shown a flexible approach, adapting itself to different conditions and local ideals while maintaining its core teachings. As a result of its wide geographical expansion, coupled with its tolerant spirit, Buddhism today encompasses a number of different traditions, beliefs, and practices. During the last decades, Buddhism has also gained a significant presence outside Asia. With the number of adherents estimated to be almost 400 million people, Buddhism in our day has expanded worldwide, and it is no longer culturally specific. For many centuries, this tradition has been a powerful force in Asia, which has touched nearly every aspect of the Eastern world. Arts, morals, lore, mythology, social institutions, etc. Today, Buddhism influences these same areas outside of Asia, as well. The origin of Buddhism points to one man, Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha, who was born in Lumbini, in present-day Nepal, during the 5th century BCE. Rather than the founder of a new religion, Siddhartha Gautama was the founder and leader of a sect of wanderer ascetics, Sramanas, one of many sects that existed at that time all over India. This sect came to be known as Sangha to distinguish it from other similar communities. The Sramanas movement, which originated in the culture of world renunciation that emerged in India from about the 7th century BCE, was the common origin of many religious and philosophical traditions in India, including the Charvaka school, Buddhism, and its sister religion, Jainism. The Sramanas were renunciants who rejected the Vedic teachings, which was the traditional religious order in India, and renounced conventional society. Siddhartha Gautama lived during a time of profound social changes in India. The authority of the Vedic religion was being challenged by a number of new religious and philosophical views. This religion had been developed by a nomadic society roughly a millennium before Siddhartha's time, and it gradually gained hegemony over most of North India, especially in the Gangetic Plain. But things were different in this 5th BCE, as society was no longer nomadic, agrarian settlements had replaced the old nomad currents and evolved into villages, then into towns and finally into cities. Under the new urban context, a considerable sector of Indian society was no longer satisfied with the old Vedic faith. Siddhartha Gautama was one of the many critics of the religious establishment. After Siddhartha Gautama passed away, the community he founded slowly evolved into a religion-like movement and the teachings of Siddhartha became the basis of Buddhism. The historical evidence suggests that Buddhism had a humble beginning. Apparently, it was a relatively minor tradition in India, and some scholars have proposed that the impact of the Buddha in his own day was relatively limited due to the scarcity of written documents, inscriptions, and archaeological evidence from that time. By the 3rd century BCE, the picture we have of Buddhism is very different. The Mauryan Indian emperor Ashoka the Great, 304-232 BCE, who ruled from 268-232 BCE, turned Buddhism into the state religion of India. He provided a favorable social and political climate for the acceptance of Buddhist ideas, encouraged Buddhist missionary activity, and even generated among Buddhist monks certain expectations of patronage and influence on the machinery of political decision-making. Archaeological evidence for Buddhism between the death of the Buddha and the time of Ashoka is scarce, after the time of Ashoka is abundant.