Shakya in the context of "Shakyamuni Buddha"

Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha (lit. 'the awakened one'), was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist legends, he was born in Lumbini, in what is now Nepal, to royal parents of the Shakya clan, but renounced his home life to live as a wandering ascetic. After leading a life of mendicancy, asceticism, and meditation, he attained nirvana at Bodh Gaya in what is now India. The Buddha then wandered through the lower Indo-Gangetic Plain, teaching and building a monastic order (sangha). Buddhist tradition holds he died in Kushinagar and reached parinirvana ("final release from conditioned existence").

According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha taught a Middle Way between sensual indulgence and severe asceticism, leading to freedom from ignorance, craving, rebirth, and suffering. His core teachings are summarised in the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, a training of the mind that includes ethical training and kindness toward others, and meditative practices such as sense restraint, mindfulness, dhyana (meditation proper). Another key element of his teachings are the concepts of the five skandhas and dependent origination, describing how all dharmas (both mental states and concrete 'things') come into being, and cease to be, depending on other dharmas, lacking an existence on their own (svabhava).

By 4000 BCE, the Tibeto-Burmese people had reached Nepal either directly across the Himalayas from Tibet or via Myanmar and north-east India or both. By the late Vedic period, Nepal was being mentioned in various Hindu texts, such as the late Vedic Atharvaveda Pariśiṣṭa and in the post-Vedic Atharvashirsha Upanishad. The Gopal Bansa was the oldest dynasty to be mentioned in various texts as the earliest rulers of the central Himalayan kingdom known by the name 'Nepal'. The Gopalas were followed by Kiratas who ruled for over 16 centuries by some accounts. According to the Mahabharata, the then Kirata king went to take part in the Battle of Kurukshetra. In the south-eastern region, Janakpurdham was the capital of the prosperous kingdom of Videha or Mithila, that extended down to the Ganges, and home to King Janaka and his daughter, Sita.

Around 600 BCE, small kingdoms and confederations of clans arose in the southern regions of Nepal. From one of these, the Shakya polity, arose a prince who later renounced his status to lead an ascetic life, founded Buddhism, and came to be known as Gautama Buddha (traditionally dated 563–483 BCE). Nepal came to be established as a land of spirituality and refuge in the intervening centuries, played an important role in transmitting Buddhism to East Asia via Tibet, and helped preserve Hindu and Buddhist manuscripts.In 249 BCE, Emperor Asoka founded Lalitapatan city of Nepal. Emperor Ashoka was responsible for the construction of several significant structures in Nepal. These include the Ramagrama Stupa, Gotihawa Pillar of Ashoka, Nigali-Sagar Ashoka Pillar inscription, and the Lumbini pillar inscription of Ashoka. The Chinese pilgrims Fa-Hien (337 CE – c. 422 CE) and Xuanzang (602–664 CE) describe the Kanakamuni Stupa and the Asoka Pillar of currently Nepal region in their travel accounts. Xuanzang speaks of a lion capital atop the pillar, now lost. A base of a Pillar of Ashoka has been discovered at Gotihawa, a few miles from Nigali Sagar, and it has been suggested that it is the original base of the Nigalar Sagar pillar fragments.

Lumbinī (pronounced [ˈlumbiniː] , 'the lovely') is a Buddhist pilgrimage site in the Rupandehi District of Lumbini Province in Nepal. According to the sacred texts of the Buddhist Commentaries, Maya Devi gave birth to Siddhartha Gautama in Lumbini in c. 624 BCE. Siddhartha Gautama achieved Enlightenment and became Shakyamuni Buddha (Sanskrit: शाक्यमुनि बुद्ध, lit. 'the Enlightened Sage of the Śākyas') who founded Buddhism. He later passed into parinirvana at the age of eighty, in c. 544 BCE. Lumbini is one of four most sacred pilgrimage sites pivotal in the life of the Buddha.

Lumbini has a number of old temples, including the Mayadevi Temple, and several new temples, funded by Buddhist organisations from various countries. Most of the temples have already been completed and some are still under construction. Many monuments, monasteries, stupas, a museum, and the Lumbini International Research Institute are also near to the holy site. The Puskarini, or Holy Pond, is where Mayadevi, the Buddha's mother, is believed to have taken the ritual bath prior to his birth and where the Buddha also had his first bath. At other sites near Lumbini, earlier Buddhas were born, then achieved ultimate Enlightenment and finally relinquished their earthly forms.

The Great Renunciation or Great Departure (Sanskrit: mahābhiniṣkramaṇa; Pali: mahābhinikkhamana) is the traditional term for the departure of Gautama Buddha (c. 563–c. 483 BCE) from his palace at Kapilavastu to live a life as an ascetic (Sanskrit: śrāmaṇa, Pali: sāmaṇa). It is called the Great Renunciation because it is regarded as a great sacrifice. Most accounts of this event can be found in post-canonical Buddhist texts from several Buddhist traditions, which are the most complete. These are, however, of a more mythological nature than the early texts. They exist in Pāli, Sanskrit and Chinese language.

According to these accounts, at the birth of Prince Siddhārtha Gautama, the Buddha-to-be, brahmin priests predicted that he would either become a world teacher or a world ruler. To prevent his son from turning to religious life, Prince Siddhārtha's father and rāja of the Śākya clan Śuddhodana did not allow him to see death or suffering, and distracted him with luxury. During his childhood, Prince Siddhārtha had a meditative experience, which made him realize the suffering (Sanskrit: duḥkha, Pali: dukkha) inherent in all existence. He grew up and experienced a comfortable youth. But he continued to ponder about religious questions, and when he was 29 years old, he saw for the first time in his life what became known in Buddhism as the four sights: an old man, a sick person and a corpse, as well as an ascetic that inspired him. Shortly after, Prince Siddhārtha woke up at night and saw his female servants lying in unattractive poses, which shocked the prince. Moved by all the things he had experienced, the prince decided to leave the palace behind in the middle of the night against the will of his father, to live the life of an wandering ascetic, leaving behind his just-born son Rāhula and wife Yaśodharā. He traveled to the river Anomiya with his charioteer Chandaka and horse Kaṇṭhaka, and cut off his hair. Leaving his servant and horse behind, he journeyed into the woods and changed into monk's robes. Later, he met King Bimbisāra, who attempted to share his royal power with the former prince, but the now ascetic Gautama refused.

The Coinage of India began anywhere between early 1st millennium BCE to the 6th century BCE, and consisted mainly of copper and silver coins in its initial stage. The coins of this period were Karshapanas or Pana. A variety of earliest Indian coins, however, unlike those circulated in West Asia, were stamped bars of metal, suggesting that the innovation of stamped currency was added to a pre-existing form of token currency which had already been present in the Janapadas and Mahajanapada kingdoms of the Early historic India. The kingdoms that minted their own coins included Gandhara, Kuntala, Kuru, Magadha, Panchala, Shakya, Surasena, Surashtra and Vidarbha etc.

The tradition of Indian coinage in the 2nd millennium evolved with Indo Islamic rule in India. and the British Raj in the 19th century.