Buddhism is the ‘-ism’ that is named after the Buddha. ‘Buddha’ is not a personal name, but a title meaning ‘the one who has awakened’. The Buddha was a historical individual who lived and died some centuries BCE, although it is difficult to be precise about his exact dates. The common traditional date for the Buddha’s birth is 563 BCE, and the sources agree he lived in North India for eighty years. However, modern scholarship questions the reliability of this date,