It is said that the Buddha was a prince of the Sakya tribe of Nepal who was born as Siddhartha Gautama around 556 B.C. (Buddhism). When he was around twenty-nine years of age, he left home to seek the meaning of suffering through yogic training, but after six years he abandoned the way of "self-mortification" and sat in "mindful meditation" under a bodhi tree (Buddhism). According to legend, one full moon in May, with the rising of the morning star, Siddhartha became the Buddha, the enlightened one (Buddhism). For more than forty-five years, the Buddha wandered the plains of northeastern India teaching the path or Dharma, during which time a community or Sangha of monks and nuns developed, who came from every tribe and caste, each devoted to practicing the path (Buddhism). When the Buddha died around 486 B.C. at the age of eighty, it is said that his last words were: "Impermanent are all created things; Strive on with awareness" (Buddhism).

             After the Buddha's death, some five hundred monks, under the leadership of Kashyapa, met at the first council at Rjagrha, where Upali recited the Vinaya, or monastic code, and Ananda recited Buddha's lessons, the Sutras (Boeree). .

             Here, the monks debated details and voted on final versions, then these were committed to memory by other monks, and translated into the many languages of the Indian plains (Boeree). In fact, Buddhism remained an oral tradition for over two hundred years (Boeree). .

             One of the most significant events in the history of Buddhism revolves around the chance encounter of the monk Nigrodha and the emperor Ashoka Maurya (Boeree). It is said that Ashoka was distraught over the carnage of war in 268 B.C., and Nigrodha convinced the emperor to devote himself to peace, whereupon Ashoka ordered thousands of rock pillars to be erected, bearing the words of the Buddha, in the brahmi script, which became the first written evidence of Buddhism (Boeree).