for Enlightenment One of the most influential teachers of the time was the Buddha. Over the centuries, his message spread across the subcontinent and beyond – through Central Asia to China, Korea and Japan, and through Sri Lanka, across the seas to Myanmar, Thailand and Indonesia. How do we know about the Buddha’s teachings? These have been reconstructed by carefully editing, translating and analysing the Buddhist texts mentioned earlier.
Historians have also tried to reconstruct details of his life from hagiographies. Many of these were written down at least a century after the time of the Buddha, in an attempt to preserve memories of the great teacher. According to these traditions, Siddhartha, as the Buddha was named at birth, was the son of a chief Ü Discuss... Is ahimsa relevant in the twenty-first century?
Hagiography is a biography of a saint or religious leader. Hagiographies often praise the saint’s achievements, and may not always be literally accurate. They are important because they tell us about the beliefs of the followers of that particular tradition. Ü Can you identify the script?
Fig. . A page from a fourteenth-century Jaina manuscript