Gautam Buddh

Buddh religion starts with Gautam Buddh (1894-1814 BC) son of Shuddhodan who was the king of Kapilvastu which is at the border of Nepal near Gorakhpur. Buddh’s original name was Siddharth Gautam and his mother’s name was Mahamaya. He was born in 1894 BC at Lumbini in a mango grove when his pregnant mother was proceeding to her parents’ home. He was called Buddh when he got enlightenment. Thus he became famous as Gautam Buddh.
When he was young, he saw the miseries of the world in the form of old age, sickness and death that gripped every living being and he began to think deeply for a way to escape this situation. Seeing him gloomy and totally reluctant from the activities of the kingdom, his father got him married to Yashodhara, who, in time, got a son named Rahul, but the heart of Siddharth was still yearning to find the path of salvation from the pains. So, one evening he came out of the palace, went out of town, stripped off his fine clothes and jewelry which he was wearing, put on a hermit’s robe and started on an unknown journey to find the truth of the world. He reached Gaya and, resolving to perfect austerity, he sat and meditated under a peepal tree (a native tree of North India) for 49 days. In his enlightenment he discovered that ‘desires’ are the only cause of all the pains so they have to be totally removed to make one happy. Gautam Buddh was now thirty-five. He then proceeded to Varanasi and started preaching his religion. In his last days he also visited Vaishali. He lived for 80 years.
The Mahabharat war had happened in 3139 BC and, according to the Bhagwatam, after the war Brihadrath dynasty ruled for about 1,000 years, Pradyot dynasty for 138 years, and then it was taken over by Shishunag dynasty. The fifth king of Shishunag dynasty was Bimbsar. It is a well known historical fact that Gautam Buddh was propagating his religion during the reigning period of King Bimbsar.
In the Shishunag dynasty (according to Kaliyug Rajvrittant) Shishunag ruled for 40 years, Kakvarn 36, Cfihem Dharma 26 and Chamoja 40 years, then Bimbsar took over the throne and ruled for 38 years. Thus, deducting [1,000+138 +142 (40+36+26+40)] 1,280 years from 3139 comes to 1859 BC. Now adding 35 years of Buddh’s existing age of that time to 1859 comes to 1894 BC which is the birth date of Buddh.
The characteristics of his religion and his philosophy: Gautam Buddh was born in such a period when the prideful chatriya kings of Bharatvarsh had become extremely worldly. Their sensuality and meat eating habits had taken so much importance in their life that they wanted to get it justified in the name of God. Thus, during that period (before the birth of Buddh) those chatriya kings with the help of poor and greedy brahman scholars got such Sanskrit entries made in our religious books (like Manu Smriti, Grihya Sutras, Dharm Sutras and Tantra books etc.) that introduced the killing of an animal in yagya as an ordained act; and in this way those chatriyas freely killed animals in the name of yagya and ate them. In those days all of our religious books were in the shape of manuscripts so it was easy to reconstruct some verses and add to it and create a new manuscript.
Gautam Buddh, although he was a Divine personality, did not introduce the Divinity at all in his teachings. According to the need of the existing social conditions of that time, he only introduced the path of compassion for the beings of the world which is just the sattvic quality of maya. Maya is such a peculiar power which exists like ‘nothing’ for a God realized Saint, and, during the maha pralaya, it exists like ‘absolute nothingness.’ So, Gautam Buddh designed his theory of “nothingness.” Accordingly, it is called “shoonya vad,” which means the philosophy of nothingness or the philosophy of mayavad. There are four branches of Buddhism, called: Madhyamik, Yogachar, Vaibhashik and Sautrantik. There are slight differences in their philosophy, but all of them, in general, are called shoonya vad. That’s why Buddhism is called a non-Godly religion.