Buddha Purnima Legends

The three most significant events in the life of Great Buddha occurred on the same day. His birth, enlightenment and death (nirvana), all happened on a full moon night in April/May. This makes the day - called Buddha Purnima or Buddha Jayanti - all the more sacred for Buddhists. The Buddha was born Siddhartha Gautama in 544 BC, to King Shuddhodhana and Queen Mayadevi, rulers of Lumbini, Nepal. According to legend, Siddhartha's wife Yashodhara, his charioteer Channa, his disciple Ananda and his horse Kantaka were also born on Buddha Purnima day. Buddhism was originally a sect within the Hindu way of life. Its originator had the personal name of Siddharta, and the surname Gautama. He belonged to the Sakya clan of the Kshatriya or warrior caste. He married and had a son, Rahula. But after some years he left his parents, wife and child. The king, his father, had three palaces built for him, and at the age of sixteen gave him forty thousand dancing girls. Yet thirteen years later Gautama left everything to find, in his own words, "the incomparable security of a 'Nirvana' free from birth and endless reincarnation." One day, as he sat in meditation under a bodhi tree, he became the "enlightened one". The "enlightenment" took place in Gautama's thirty-sixth year. His death occurred around the age of eighty. His day was divided between itinerant preaching in the morning and receiving visitors for discussion at night, with the afternoons reserved for private meditation. He gathered a number of followers. He was strongly opposed by the Brahmins for teaching that gifts to the Buddhist order were of more merit than the sacrifices, which Hindus practiced.