Bauddha Dharma

The Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path; dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda); non-self (anātman) and nirvāṇa.

Founded by Siddhārtha Gautama in the Gangetic plain, Bauddha Dharma diagnoses suffering (duḥkha), traces it to craving (tṛṣṇā), and prescribes the Eightfold Path. Its schools flowered into Theravāda, Mahāyāna, and Vajrayāna, each with its own scriptural corpus. Sanātana tradition regards the Buddha as the ninth avatāra of Viṣṇu; scholarly history places Buddhism as a śramaṇa reform sharing the same soteriological grammar as Jainism and later Vedānta.