Gautama Buddha

Buddha was a monk, sage, teacher, and religious leader on whose teachings Buddhism was founded. He is believed to have lived and taught mostly in the northeastern part of ancient India sometime between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE. He taught of a "Middle Way" between sensual indulgence and the severe asceticism commonly found in his region. He later taught throughout other regions of eastern India.

While the general sequence of "birth, maturity, renunciation, search, awakening and liberation, teaching, death" is widely accepted as originating from him, there is less consensus on the veracity of many details contained in traditional biographies.