Buddha Jayanti
Gautam Buddha
In the month of Vaishakh the birthday of Gautam Buddha is celebrated. He
is considered the ninth avatar of Vishnu.
Gautam Buddha "lived and died in about the fifth century before the
Christian era." The number of Buddhists in the world ranges "from less than
two hundred million, to more than five hundred million, with the lower
number closer to reality."
Buddhism was originally a sect within the Hindu surname Gautama. He
belonged to the Sakya clan of the Ksway of life. Its originator had the
personal name of Siddharta, and the hatriya 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."