What is Buddha's date of birth?

I found different years cited as Buddha's birth year. They were 560, 563, 564, 623 and 624 BCE. Almost all sources cited the full moon of May as the birth date, although 2 sources cited April 8.

The May full moons for these years are: May 7, May 11, May 21, May 14 and May 25. April 8 was a full moon in 560 BCE.

The Cambridge and Oxford histories of India accept 483 B.C as the date of Buddha's nirvana. He was 80 years old when he died, so this puts his birth year at 563 BCE.

If we accept 563 BCE as Buddha's birth year, his birth date would be May 11.

However, in January 2006 an Indian historian challenged the historical assertion that Buddha was born between 560-624 BCE. He cites evidence that Buddha was born in 1887 BCE. Assuming he was born on the May full moon, his date of birth would be May 8, 1887 BCE.

from http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=10,2190,0,0,1,0:

"author Kota Nityananda Sastry in his latest book 'Age of Lord Buddha' makes a critical appreciation of available data compiled by Western historians who, he thinks, made a mess of Indian history.

Sastry quotes his father Kota Venkatachelam's treatise 'Age of Buddha, Mililnda & Amtiyoka', which establishes that Buddha lived between 1887 B.C and 1807 B.C.

Venkatachelam's book 'The Plot in Indian Chronology' had gone into the history and the missing links in the chronology of events in Indian history.

Sastry states that Western scholars arbitrarily skipped 12 centuries of Indian history because their 'hypothesis' about Alexander's invasion did not match with centuries-old Indian chronology."

And in my opinion, this sounds like just the sort of thing that eurocentric British historians would do.

"The author asserts that Buddha was the contemporary of Kshemajit, Bimbisara and Ajatasatru, the 31st, 32nd and 33rd kings of Magadh respectively. This has been corroborated by the Puranic as well as Buddhist historical evidence, he adds.

Ultimately, Dr Sastry quoting evidences comes to the conviction that Lord Buddha was born in 1887 B.C and attained Nirvana in 1807 B.C."

see http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=10,2190,0,0,1,0

Litzi T. Hartley, Naperville IL; www.acc-dupage.com; info@ acc-dupage.com

Comment on the above:

It's interesting the apparent connection with the cycle of the moon phases. The same connection to heavenly movements (sun, moon, planets) has been found for other key religious figures. If you have any more information on Buddha and celestial movements, it would be facinating to read it.

First answer by ID0000000000. Last edit by Jeorne. Contributor trust: 32 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 2 [recommend question]