Buddhism: Historical Timeline and Present-Day Status

1.1 What is Buddhism, and where did it begin?

Buddhism is a religion that began in India. It follows the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, called the Buddha. Scholars generally accept that he lived from about 563 to 483 BCE.

1.2 What are the big turning points?

• c. 400 BCE: the First Council at Rajgir.
• c. 260 BCE: Ashoka embraces Buddhism and sends missionaries abroad.
• 538 CE: Buddhism reaches Japan.
• 1193 CE: Nalanda is destroyed.
• 2020: about 324 million Buddhists, 4.1% of the world.

2.1 Where did the key events happen?

Four places mark the Buddha’s life.

Source: World History Encyclopedia (Buddhism).

2.2 What did he teach first?

At Sarnath he preached his first sermon. In it he first described the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path.

2.3 How did enlightenment happen?

He went and sat beneath a Bodhi tree, on a bed of grass. The village was Bodh Gaya. The sources describe this as the moment of his enlightenment.

3.1 What was a Buddhist council?

A council was a meeting of monks to agree on the teachings. The early ones also settled rules for monks, called monastic discipline.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia (Buddhism) and New World Encyclopedia (Ashoka).

3.2 What was the first split?

The Second Council in 383 BCE ended in a split. The Sthaviravada and Mahasanghika schools separated over differences in monastic discipline. It was the first schism in Buddhism.

3.3 What are the three main schools today?

• Theravada: the School of the Elders.
• Mahayana: the Great Vehicle.
• Vajrayana: the Way of the Diamond.

4.1 Who was Ashoka?

Ashoka the Great ruled from 268 to 232 BCE. His name means “without sorrow” in Sanskrit. He was a patron of Buddhist missionary work.

4.2 What changed after Kalinga?

After the Kalinga War, about 260 BCE, he renounced violence. He embraced Buddhism and spread its teaching across India under the name dhamma.

4.3 How did the faith leave India?

He also sent missionaries to other countries. His son Mahinda and daughter Sanghamitta took the Pali canon, the Tipitaka, to Ceylon, now Sri Lanka.

5.1 Who brought Buddhism to Sri Lanka?

Mahinda Thera arrived in Lanka at the bidding of his father, Emperor Ashoka. King Devanampiyatissa had appealed to Ashoka for the new teaching. Mahinda met the king at Mihintale, once called Missakha-pabbatha.

5.2 What did Sanghamitta bring?

Sanghamitta Theri came with ten other bhikkhunis, Buddhist nuns. She brought a sapling of the Sri Maha Bodhi, the tree under which the Buddha was enlightened.

5.3 Why is that tree famous?

The Bo sapling was planted in the Mahamegha Uyana garden at Anuradhapura. It is described as the world’s oldest historical tree, still living.

5.4 Do the dates agree?

Not fully. A Sri Lankan source gives King Devanampiyatissa’s years as 307 to 287 BC. Another source dates Ashoka’s reign to 268 to 232 BCE. The two ranges do not overlap, so treat the exact years with care.

6.1 How did Buddhism reach Japan?

It came from the Korean Peninsula. It was brought from Baekje, a kingdom in southwestern Korea, in 538. This was part of official talks between the two lands. Another listing gives 552 CE as the traditional date.

6.2 What did Baekje’s king do?

King Seong made Buddhism the state religion of Baekje in 528.

6.3 How did Myanmar become Theravada?

King Anawrahta of Bagan unified the country. In 1056 he made Theravada Buddhism the dominant religion. A missionary monk from Thaton, Shin Arahan, helped him.

6.4 What was the Pitakat Taik?

After the sack of Thaton, Anawrahta carted off 30 elephant loads of Buddhist scriptures. He built the Pitakat Taik library in Bagan to house them in 1058.

7.1 When did it reach Tibet?

Most Tibetan historians date the first introduction of Buddhism to the seventh century. That was the reign of King Songtsen Gampo.

7.2 What was Samye?

Samye was the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery. Emperor Trisong Detsen commissioned it in 766, modelled on Odantapuri in India. It was completed in 775.

7.3 Why does one source say 780?

Another source says Samye was founded in approximately 780 CE. The sources differ by a few years. Both say it came from the reign of Trisong Detsen.

7.4 Why did Tibet look to India?

Trisong Detsen invited Shantarakshita, the abbot of Nalanda, India’s preeminent monastic university. This began Tibet’s long pattern of bringing India’s finest teachers.

8.1 What was Nalanda?

Nalanda was a great Buddhist monastic university in Bihar. Bihar Tourism says it was founded in the 5th century CE and flourished for the next 700 years. Mahayana was strongly established there from the sixth to the ninth century.

8.2 What happened in 1193?

During Turkish raids led by Bakhtiyar Khalji in 1193, Nalanda faced catastrophic destruction. Its immense library, one of the largest in the ancient world, was burned. Many monks were killed.

8.3 Was Nalanda alone?

No. Other Buddhist universities, such as Vikramasila, suffered the same fate.

8.4 Do the dates agree?

Not exactly. Bihar Tourism, run by the state government, says the final blow was Khilji’s invasion around 1200 CE. EBSCO says 1193. The name is spelled Khilji or Khalji in different sources.

8.5 What was Vajrayana?

Tantric texts began to appear in the middle of the eighth century. The later form of Tantra was known as Vajrayana. It used mantras, sacred chants and other rituals.

9.1 Who worked to revive Bodh Gaya?

Anagarika Dharmapala went on a pilgrimage to the Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya in 1891. That year the Maha Bodhi Society was founded at Colombo. One of its main aims was to restore the temple to Buddhist control.

9.2 What happened at Nagpur in 1956?

B. R. Ambedkar embraced Buddhism at Deekshabhoomi in Nagpur on 14 October 1956. Two sources give different crowd sizes. IndiaSpend says he and 600,000 followers converted. The Better India says nearly five lakh people gathered.

9.3 How many Buddhists are there now?

Pew Research says the number of Buddhists fell by 19 million between 2010 and 2020. It stood at 324 million in 2020. That is 4.1% of the world, a drop of 0.8 percentage points.

10.1 What traps repeat?

• Birth place: Lumbini. Enlightenment: Bodh Gaya. First sermon: Sarnath. Death: Kushinagar.
• First Council: Rajgir. First schism: Second Council, 383 BCE.
• Sri Lanka: Mahinda and Sanghamitta, Ashoka’s children.
• Nalanda: destroyed by Bakhtiyar Khilji, 1193 or around 1200 CE.
• Deekshabhoomi: 14 October 1956.