Art and Culture with Devdutt Pattanaik | Is Buddha a historical or a mythological figure?

A few decades ago, there emerged a rift between the two ideologically opposed groups around an essay, Three Hundred Ramayanas , written by A K Ramanujan. The right-wing groups accused the left-wing groups of attempting to present Rama as a literary figure rather than a historical one.

Yet, no one ever talks about the “300 Buddhas” or the many narratives that recount the story of the Buddha. The assumption is that the Buddha is a historical figure, even though every Buddhist scholar knows that the Buddha story we recognise today was constructed by 19th-century Europeans using a variety of texts and arbitrary principles.

When did the Buddha really live?

The Buddha’s biography was documented for the first time 500 to 700 years after the period in which he may, or may not, have lived.