Ashoka’s pillars carried Dharma to Greek kings
Buddhism begins in fifth-century BCE Magadha with Siddhārtha Gautama, the Shakyamuni. After awakening he taught for forty-five years and died at eighty with thousands of followers. Under Ashoka in the third century BCE, edicts claim Dharma reached rulers from Sri Lanka to the Hellenistic Mediterranean.
Early sources place Gautama’s birth in the Shakya republic within Kosala, in today’s Nepal. Continuous biographies appear only after 200 BCE and mix myth, yet texts agree he left household life, trained as a śramana, and attained nirvana and bodhi through meditation. He taught across the Gangetic plain in local languages, founded monk and nun orders, and spent long stretches near Sāvatthī, Rājagaha, and Vesālī. After his death the sangha recited teachings in councils whose historicity modern scholars often doubt—Charles Prebish notes near-universal skepticism about the first council at Rājagṛha.
Unity frayed into Sthavira and Mahasamghika fraternities, usually over vinaya rules; further schools followed, later adding Abhidharma analyses of momentary dharmas. Dating of the first schism is contested—some place it under Ashoka, others after his death, Theravada tradition at the Second Council in Vaishali about a century after the Buddha. From the Sthaviras sprang Sarvāstivāda, Dharmaguptaka, and lineages ancestral to Theravāda; Mahasamghika texts such as the Mahavastu hint at later Mahayana themes.
Emperor Ashoka (268–232 BCE) backed stupas, hospitals, and nonviolence after Kalinga, while still tolerating Jain and Brahmanical rites. Edict 13 lists Hellenistic recipients including Antiochus II, Ptolemy II, Antigonus Gonatas, Magas of Cyrene, and Alexander of Epirus. Sri Lankan chronicles credit his son Mahinda and daughter Saṅghamitta with planting Theravada and a bodhi sapling under King Devanampiya Tissa. The Pāli canon was written down in the first century BCE; Buddhaghoṣa later systematized commentarial tradition.
Source: History of Buddhism
