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Buddhism

The Mahajanapadas, Buddhism and Jainism · Part 2 / 3 · Fact-checked on 8 November 2026 · how we check

Written with AI from the sources listed at the bottom of this page, then fact-checked by a separate AI.

Why new religions arose in the sixth century BCE; the life of the Buddha and the places and symbols linked with it; the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path and the ideas of impermanence, no-self and nirvana; the sangha and the Tripitaka; the four Buddhist councils; Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana; the spread across Asia; and why Buddhism declined in India and what it left behind.

Part 1 showed the sixteen Mahajanapadas, the new towns and the rise of Magadha. The same centuries were also a time of restless religious questioning in the middle Ganga plain. Dozens of teachers walked from town to town, arguing about why people suffer and how they might escape the round of birth and death. Two of these teachers founded traditions that are alive today: Gautama the Buddha and Vardhamana Mahavira. This part follows Buddhism in India from its origins to its decline. Jainism and the other schools of the age come in part 3.

Why did so many new paths appear at once? By the Later Vedic period, worship had come to centre on long and costly yajna rituals that only Brahmana priests could perform and only the wealthy could afford, and many of them involved killing animals. In the new rice economy, cattle pulled the plough, so farmers had little reason to welcome their slaughter at sacrifices. The varna order had hardened, placing Brahmanas at the top; Kshatriyas, who now ran powerful states, resented this claim, and both the Buddha and Mahavira were Kshatriyas. Merchants and moneylenders in the growing towns had wealth but modest ritual rank, and they were drawn to teachings that judged people by conduct. The Upanishad thinkers had already questioned ritual. Above all there was the shramana stream: wandering ascetics who left home, did not accept the authority of the Vedas, and sought freedom from rebirth through their own effort. Buddhism and Jainism grew out of this stream.

Siddhartha, of the Gautama gotra, was born into the Shakya clan, a gana-sangha whose chief town was Kapilavastu in the Himalayan foothills. His birthplace was the garden of Lumbini, now in Nepal; his father was Shuddhodana and his mother Mahamaya. Tradition dates his life to 563–483 BCE, though many historians now place his death roughly a century later. Buddhist tradition says that the sight of an old man, a sick man, a corpse and a calm ascetic convinced him that comfort could not end suffering, and at twenty-nine he left home, an event called the mahabhinishkramana, the great departure. Six years of seeking followed, including extreme fasting that nearly killed him and that he finally gave up. At thirty-five, meditating under a pipal tree at Bodh Gaya beside the Niranjana river, he attained enlightenment and became the Buddha, 'the awakened one'.

The Buddha gave his first sermon in the deer park at Sarnath, near Varanasi, to five companions who had once fasted with him. Buddhists call it the dhammachakkapavattana, 'setting the wheel of the dharma in motion'. For about forty-five years after that he walked through Magadha and Kosala, teaching in the open. Kings Bimbisara of Magadha and Prasenajit of Kosala respected him, and the merchant Anathapindika gave the Jetavana grove at Shravasti for the monks. At eighty he died at Kushinagar, a town of the Mallas, an event called the mahaparinirvana; his ashes were shared among several peoples and placed in stupa mounds. Early Buddhist art did not show the Buddha in human form but through symbols linked with each great event of his life. The Mahabodhi Temple Complex at Bodh Gaya has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2002.

The core of the Buddha's message is the Four Noble Truths. First, life as we usually live it is marked by dukkha: suffering, frustration, the sense that nothing satisfies for long. Second, dukkha has a cause, tanha, a thirst or craving for pleasure, for possessions and for continued existence. Third, because it has a cause, it can be ended. Fourth, there is a way to end it, the Eightfold Path: right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration. The steps are usually grouped under wisdom, ethical conduct and mental discipline. The Buddha called this the middle way because he had tried both extremes, a prince's life of pleasure and an ascetic's self-torture, and found that neither worked.

Behind these truths lie a few ideas that set Buddhism apart. Everything is anicca, impermanent: bodies, feelings, possessions and kingdoms all change and pass. There is anatta, no permanent and unchanging self; a person is a stream of changing physical and mental processes. This is a sharp break from the Upanishadic idea of an eternal atman. The Buddha accepted karma and rebirth, but taught that craving keeps the cycle turning, and that when craving is ended a person reaches nirvana, literally a 'blowing out', as a flame goes out when its fuel is gone. He did not rest his teaching on a creator god, rejected the authority of the Vedas and the value of sacrifice, and taught that a person's worth comes from conduct rather than birth. He spoke in the everyday language of the people rather than Sanskrit. A follower 'takes refuge' in the three jewels: the Buddha, the Dhamma (his teaching) and the sangha (the community of monks and nuns).

The sangha turned a teacher's circle into a lasting institution. Men of any varna could be ordained as bhikkhus, though the rules kept out people who could not freely leave their obligations, such as debtors, slaves and soldiers in royal service. Monks shaved their heads, wore simple robes, owned almost nothing, ate what they received on the begging round, and stayed in one place during the rainy season. After some hesitation the Buddha allowed an order of nuns, the bhikkhunis; his foster-mother Mahaprajapati Gotami is remembered as the first, and the Therigatha preserves verses by early nuns. Lay followers, men and women called upasakas and upasikas, supported the order with food, clothing and shelter. The sangha met in assemblies and settled matters by discussion and agreement, much like the gana-sanghas described in part 1.

The Buddha wrote nothing; his words were memorised by monks and recited together. They were gathered into the Tripitaka, the 'three baskets', in the Pali language. The Vinaya Pitaka holds the rules of discipline for monks and nuns. The Sutta Pitaka holds the Buddha's discourses, arranged in five collections called nikayas, one of which is the Anguttara Nikaya with its list of sixteen Mahajanapadas. The Abhidhamma Pitaka offers a systematic analysis of mind and matter. According to the Sri Lankan tradition, the Pali canon was first written down on the island in the first century BCE. The Jatakas, more than five hundred stories of the Buddha's earlier lives as animals, merchants and kings, belong to the Sutta Pitaka and were carved on the railings of stupas such as Bharhut and Sanchi.

Because the teaching lived in memory, monks met in councils, called sangitis or 'reciting together', to fix the canon and settle disputes. The first met at Rajagriha soon after the Buddha's death under King Ajatashatru, with Mahakassapa presiding; Ananda recited the discourses and Upali the rules of discipline. The second met at Vaishali about a century later under Kalashoka; a quarrel over monastic rules, such as whether monks could accept gold and silver, split the order into the Sthaviravadins, the 'elders', and the Mahasanghikas, the 'great community'. The third met at Pataliputra under Ashoka, with Moggaliputta Tissa presiding; it completed the Abhidhamma and was followed by missions sent to other lands. The fourth met in Kashmir under the Kushana king Kanishka in the first century CE, with Vasumitra presiding and Ashvaghosha as his deputy; its commentaries were composed in Sanskrit, and it is linked with the rise of the Mahayana.

From these splits grew the main schools. Theravada, the 'doctrine of the elders', descends from the Sthaviravada line; it keeps the Pali canon and holds up the arhat, a monk who reaches nirvana through his own discipline, as the ideal. Its critics called it Hinayana, the 'lesser vehicle', a label its followers do not use. Mahayana, the 'great vehicle', took shape around the beginning of the Common Era and spread under the Kushanas. Its ideal is the bodhisattva, a being who could enter nirvana but stays in the world out of compassion to help others; Mahayana treated the Buddha as a divine saviour, worshipped him in images, wrote in Sanskrit, and produced thinkers such as Nagarjuna. Vajrayana, the 'thunderbolt vehicle', grew in eastern India from about the seventh century CE, adding mantras, tantric rites and goddesses such as Tara.

Buddhism travelled because monks were trained to wander and merchants carried them along trade routes. After the third council Ashoka sent his son Mahinda and, by tradition, his daughter Sanghamitta to Sri Lanka, which became the stronghold of Theravada and passed it on to Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos. Mahayana moved along the Silk Road through Central Asia to China, and from there to Korea and Japan; Vajrayana reached Tibet from the eighth century. In India itself the faith slowly declined. Brahmanical religion revived and absorbed much of its appeal through bhakti, and the Buddha came to be counted as an avatar of Vishnu. Buddhism grew closer to its rivals by adopting Sanskrit, image worship and tantric rites. Rich monasteries drifted away from ordinary lay people, royal patrons turned elsewhere, and attacks around 1200 CE ruined great centres such as Nalanda and Vikramashila.

Yet Buddhism left India far richer than it found it. Its builders gave the country its first great monuments: the stupa at Sanchi and Bharhut, rock-cut chaitya halls and viharas at Karle and Ajanta, and monastic universities such as Nalanda, whose remains became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016. It enriched Pali and Sanskrit literature, carried Indian ideas, scripts and art across Asia, and gave lasting weight to compassion, non-violence and the equal worth of people regardless of birth. To tie the part together: the Buddha's answer to suffering grew out of the shramana challenge to costly ritual; his four truths and eightfold path offered a middle way; the sangha and the Tripitaka preserved his teaching; the four councils fixed the canon and recorded its splits; Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana carried it across Asia; and changes inside and outside the faith explain its decline at home. Part 3 turns to Jainism, which shared the same roots but took a stricter path.

Exam traps

• Keep the four places apart: born at Lumbini, enlightened at Bodh Gaya, first sermon at Sarnath, died at Kushinagar. Bodh Gaya is not where he first taught.
• The third council (Pataliputra) had Ashoka as patron and Moggaliputta Tissa presiding; the fourth (Kashmir) had Kanishka as patron and Vasumitra presiding, with Ashvaghosha as deputy.
• The Sthaviravada–Mahasanghika split came at the second council at Vaishali, not the first.
• The Jatakas belong to the Sutta Pitaka, not the Vinaya Pitaka; the Vinaya is the rule book for monks and nuns.
• Buddhism's three jewels are the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha. 'Right faith, right knowledge, right conduct' are the three jewels of Jainism.
• The Buddha denied a permanent self (anatta) but did accept karma and rebirth; nirvana ends the cycle by ending craving.
• Mahayana: bodhisattva ideal, Buddha images, Sanskrit texts. Theravada: arhat ideal, Pali canon, Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia.
• UNESCO years: Mahabodhi Temple Complex, Bodh Gaya, 2002; Nalanda Mahavihara, 2016.

Recap

• New religions arose against costly sacrifice and Brahmana privilege, with support from Kshatriyas, farmers and merchants, out of the shramana tradition.
• Siddhartha of the Shakya clan: born at Lumbini, left home at 29, enlightened at Bodh Gaya at 35, first sermon at Sarnath, died at Kushinagar at 80.
• Four Noble Truths: suffering, its cause (craving), its end, and the path to its end, the Eightfold Path or middle way.
• Key ideas: impermanence, no permanent self, karma and rebirth, nirvana; the three jewels are Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha.
• The sangha admitted people of all varnas; Mahaprajapati Gotami was the first nun; lay followers supported the order.
• Tripitaka in Pali: Vinaya (rules), Sutta (discourses, including the Jatakas), Abhidhamma (analysis).
• Councils: Rajagriha (Ajatashatru), Vaishali (Kalashoka, first split), Pataliputra (Ashoka), Kashmir (Kanishka).
• Theravada (Pali, arhat), Mahayana (Sanskrit, bodhisattva, images), Vajrayana (mantras, tantra, Tibet).
• Decline in India: Brahmanical revival and bhakti, loss of distinctness and patronage, attacks on monasteries; legacy in stupas, viharas, Nalanda and Asian culture.

Practice questions

Sources

• Centre for Cultural Resources and Training (Ministry of Culture): material on Buddhism, Jainism and the religious movements of the sixth century BCE — https://ccrtindia.gov.in
• Archaeological Survey of India: site notes and excavation reports on Sarnath, Kushinagar, Vaishali, Sanchi and Nalanda — https://asi.nic.in
• UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Mahabodhi Temple Complex at Bodh Gaya (inscribed 2002); Archaeological Site of Nalanda Mahavihara (inscribed 2016) — https://whc.unesco.org