GAUTAM BUDDHA

Siddhartha was born in Lumbini and raised in the small kingdom or principality of Kapilvastu, both of which are in modern day Nepal. At the time of the Buddha's birth, the area was at or beyond the boundary of Vedic civilization; it is even possible that his mother tongue was not an Indo-Aryan language.His father was King Suddhodana, the chief of the Shakya nation, one of several ancient tribes in the growing state of Kosala.His mother, Queen Maha Maya (Māyādevī) and Suddhodana's wife, was a Koliyan princess. she gave birth on the way, at Lumbini, in a garden beneath a sal tree.The day of the Buddha's birth is widely celebrated in Theravada countries as Vesak.Various sources hold that the Buddha's mother died at his birth, a few days or seven days later.Hey was married at the age of 16 with Yaśodharā (Pāli: Yasodharā), a cousin of the same age.She gave a birth to a son, Rahula.At the age of 29 after the birth of his first son, Gautama on the same day saw an old man, a sick man, a diseased man and a dead man. The impact of the dark side of life made him renounce the world that same night and he left his wife and son and became a penniless wanderer.He studied and practised Hindu discipline initially, and later, Jainism. For several years he observed rigorous fasting along with extreme self-mortification. On realising that tormenting his body did not bring him closer to true wisdom, he resumed eating normally and abandoned asceticism.At the age of 35, one evening as he sat beneath a giant fig tree (Bodh tree), he felt that he had found the solution to his problem and felt that he had attained enlightenment. Thus, he came to be known as ?Gautama?, ?The Buddha?, or 'The Enlightened One'.Later, he spent 45 years in preaching the truth that he felt he had discovered. He travelled from city to city bare-footed, clean-headed, with nothing more on his self than his saffron robe, walking stick and begging bowl. He died at the age of 80 in the year 483 BC.

There are many countries which follows Gautam Buddha and his buddhism.