A book that follows a long line

The notes take up Kim Mi-sook’s A History of Indian Buddhism. The book, they write, sets out in a clear and interesting line the history that begins with Gautama the Buddha. It follows him as he leaves home, as followers gather, as scriptures are made after his death to keep his words, and as the story then changes through an earlier vehicle — a term they also give as the Lesser Vehicle — then the Great Vehicle and the Diamond Vehicle. It also introduces a recent wind of Buddhism blowing again in India. The writer follows the book first through India itself and through the Buddha’s life and death.

India, and the start of a life

The religious temperament of Indians, they write, has made a culture hard to find elsewhere, and people do not hesitate to call India a land of religion, or a land of mystery. Among those inheritances, Buddhism stands first. The author, they say, begins the flow of Indian Buddhist history with an account of India itself and with the Buddha’s birth. Shakyamuni is the founder of Buddhism. Shakya, they write, is a tribal name meaning able and kind, and muni means a holy person. Other titles include some ten honorifics, among them World-Honored One and Tathagata, and a childhood name, Siddhartha Gautama. He was born the eldest son of king Suddhodana in Kapilavastu, a centre of the Shakya, in what is now Nepal.

A going forth, an awakening, and a death at eighty

Seeing that human life is made of the repeating pain of birth, aging, sickness, and death, he left home at twenty-nine to escape it. At first he followed the methods of other practitioners, and harsh practice, but he came to see that this was empty and that a middle path was needed. Sitting in meditation under the Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya, he attained complete awakening at thirty-five and became a buddha. After that he travelled through many parts of India teaching, and he died at eighty at Kushinagar. The notes give a traditional span of years, 624–544 BCE, and they add that the dates of birth and death are not certain, and that there are several views, but that the World Fellowship of Buddhists officially adopted this one. That uncertainty is the notes’ own, and it is kept here. The notes leave the subject there. The same Korean report, written out more fully, sits on CampusDown.

Sources

1. Student notes on Kim Mi-sook, A History of Indian Buddhism, staying with the Buddha’s life.

Last updated 15 November 2026