On the western side of the Mahabodhi Temple in Bodhgaya, Bihar, is a large pipal tree. Under the shade of the tree, on its eastern side, an exquisite diamond throne has been erected. At this very site, in the year 528 BCE, the thirty-five year old Gautama attained enlightenment and became the Buddha. We have no contemporary records of this event or of the events that occurred during Gautama's life time. The earliest Buddhist records, the Tripitaka, were written at least a hundred years after Gautama's death. Nevertheless, from these records, Jain scriptures and the Buddhist Jataka stories, we can piece together the intertwined history of the lives of Gautama and the two most powerful kings of this period and their sons – King Prasenajit of Kosala and his son Virudhaka and King Bimbisara of Magadha and his son Ajatasatru.

Occupying the less fertile hilly lands north of the three Gangetic kingdoms of Kosala, Kasi and Magadha were a number of republics or gana-sanghas. Gana means equal and sangha means assembly. These were not true republics, but oligarchies in which power was shared by a number of ruling families who met at the assembly, while the majority laboured unrepresented. Sakya, just north of the powerful kingdom of Kosala was one such gana-sangha with about 80,000 families. Though they were subject to the overlordship of the Kosala kingdom, the Sakyas were a proud people who considered themselves socially superior to all others including the brahmins. Some gana-sanghas banded together to form confederations of which the Vrijian confederacy north of Magadha was the most powerful.

Gautama's father, the chief of the Sakyas married two sisters. In 563 BCE, the elder of the two sisters was travelling to her parents’ home when she delivered Gautama in a grove at Lumbini, 16 kilometres east of Kapilavatsu, the principal town of the Sakyas. As his mother died seven days later, Gautama was brought up by his mother's younger sister. Gautama was also called Siddhartha which meant “child of destiny”. The young aristocrat led a life of comfort marrying his cousin in his mid teens. After coming across sickness, old age and death, he became dissatisfied with his life and decided he needed to understand the meaning of life and death. Shortly after the birth of his son, Gautama aged twenty-nine, renounced the world to become an ascetic.