How to Use
Read the Buddha’s life year by year, drawing on the sutras, the Vinaya and later commentaries.
Start with the main account on an event page. To compare accounts, see “Different Accounts”. To check the sources, expand “Research Notes”.
Look up people, places and terms
Select an underlined name, place or term to see a short note beside it. Some notes contain explanations from the passage. Open the person’s page, place details or related accounts from there. Choose “Back to the passage” to continue reading. Try it in The First Sermon.
Read the source texts
Select “Source text” beside a paragraph to see its references in the Taishō canon or the Pali Canon. Select a reference to read the original text in a new tab.
For all references to an event, expand “Research Notes” at the end of the page and select a citation under “Sources”. Pali citations with a segment number open that passage; those with only a text number open the full text.
Dates and labels
How years are counted
Before the Awakening, the timeline is divided into stages by the Buddha’s age. This site takes his going forth at 29 and his Awakening at 35 as its points of reference. After the Awakening, each completed rains retreat counts as one year.
A story under “Related Stories” may appear in several years. Check which years it may belong to and why. See also Events of Uncertain Year and Events known only to fall within a span of years.
To include Mahāyāna accounts, use the “Reading scope” setting on the Texts page.
How to read the reliability labels
- Attested across multiple schools
- Recorded by at least three schools.
- Recorded by two schools
- Recorded by two schools.
- Recorded by one school
- Recorded by one school.
- Later addition
- Found only in later commentaries or later biographies of the Buddha.
- Reliability undetermined
- The sources still need to be compared.
See the dating notes on an event page for how precisely it can be dated. For the format of textual references, see About the Sources.
Common terms
- Rains retreat
- During the rainy season, the Buddha and his disciples stay in one place.
- Bhikkhu / bhikkhunī
- A fully ordained monk or nun.
- Upāsaka / upāsikā
- A male or female lay disciple.