Founder of Buddhism. Also called the 'historical' Buddha.
To begin with, Shakya was the name of an ancient Indian tribe, and Buddha means "the enlightened one, the wise one".
The Buddha, whose real name was Gautama Siddhartha, was born in the 5th century B.C.E. as a prince of the Shakya tribe.
It is said that Maya, Siddhartha's mother, dreamed of a white elephant with six tusks while she was pregnant with him and that Siddhartha was born the moment she tried to break a branch of a beautifully blooming sal tree, delivered from the side of Maya's torso.
It is a famous anecdote that as soon as he was born, he walked seven steps and said, "Throughout heaven and earth, I alone am the honored one", in other words, "There is no one that surpasses me in this world".
Siddhartha, who had led a comfortable life as a prince of the Shakyamuni tribe, began to question Brahmanism, which had been the center of Indian thought and the basis of the caste system, and decided to become a monk because of his concern for the impermanence of the world.
After experiencing many hardships, which were the main form of asceticism at that time, Siddhartha realized that true enlightenment does not come through suffering, and meditated under the Bodhi tree by the lake in present-day Bodhgaya, and attained enlightenment.
Thereafter, he continuously preached for 40 years, laying the foundation for the current teachings of Buddhism. He is said to have died under a sal tree on the shore of Lake Badai in current-day Kusinagar.
The Buddha taught that all who performed righteous deeds would be saved, rejected the caste system that had existed until then, and preached the equality of human beings, gaining the support of the warrior class and the common people in particular.
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