Timeline of Buddhism

The purpose of this timeline is to give a detailed account of Buddhism from the birth of Gautama Buddha to the present.

Foundation to the Common Era

Some sources give the date of the Buddha's birth as 563 BCE and others as 624 BCE; Theravada Buddhist countries tend to use the latter figure. This displaces all the dates in the following table about 61 years further back. See Theravada Buddhism.
There is controversy about the base date of the Buddhist Era, with 544 BC and 483 BC being advanced as the date of the parinibbana of the Buddha. As Wilhelm Geiger pointed out, the Sri Lankan chronicles, the Dipavamsa and Mahawamsa are the primary sources for ancient South Asian chronology; they date the consecration (abhisheka) of Asoka to 218 years after the parinibbana. Chandragupta Maurya ascended the throne 56 years prior to this, or 162 years after the parinibbana. The approximate date of Chandragupta's ascension is known to be within two years of 321 BC (from Megasthenes). Hence the approximate date of the parinibbana is between 485 and 481 BC - which accords well with the Mahayana dating of 483 BC.
The difference between the two reckonings seems to have occurred at sometime between the reigns of the Sri Lankan kings Udaya III (946-954 or 1007-1015)and Pârakkama Pandya (c. 1046-1048), when there was considerable unrest in the country.
563 BCE: Siddhārtha Gautama, Buddha-to-be, is born in Lumbini into a leading royal family in the republic of the Shakyas, which is now part of Nepal.
534 BCE: Prince Siddhartha goes outside the palace for the first time and sees The Four Sights: an old man, an ill man, a dead man, and a holy man. He is shocked by the first three—he did not know what age, disease, and death were—but is inspired by the holy man to give up his wealth. He leaves his house and lives with three ascetics. However, he wants more than to starve himself, so he becomes a religious teacher.
528 BCE: Siddhartha attains Enlightenment in Buddha Gaya (modern-day Bodhgaya), then travels to a deer park in Sarnath (near Varanasi), India, and begins expounding the Dharma.
528 BCE According to legend, Trapusha and Bhallika, two trader-brothers from Okkala (modern-day Yangon), offer the Gautama's first meal as the enlightened Buddha. The Buddha gives eight strands of his hair to the two brothers; the strands are brought back to Burma and enshrined in the Shwedagon Pagoda. Thus, according to myth, this is the year when the Shwedagon Pagoda was built.
c. 490–410 BCE: Life of the Buddha, according to recent research.
c. 483 BCE: Gautama Buddha dies ('attains parinibbana') at Kusinara (now called Kushinagar), India. Three months following his death, the First Buddhist Council is convened.
383 BCE: The Second Buddhist Council is convened by King Kalasoka and held at Vaisali.
c. 250 BCE: Third Buddhist Council, convened by Ashoka the Great and chaired by Moggaliputta Tissa, compiles the Kathavatthu to refute the heretical views and theories held by some Buddhist sects. Ashoka issues a number of edicts (Edicts of Ashoka) about the kingdom in support of Buddhism.
c. 250 BCE: Emperor Ashoka the Great sends various Buddhist missionaries to faraway countries, as far as China and the Mon & Malay kingdoms in the east and the Hellenistic kingdoms in the west, in order to make Buddhism known to them.
c. 250 BCE: First fully developed examples of Kharoṣṭhī script date from this period (the Aśokan inscriptions at Shāhbāzgaṛhī and Mānsehrā, a northwestern Indian subcontinent).
200s BCE: Indian traders regularly visit ports in Arabia, explaining the prevalence of place names in the region with Indian or Buddhist origin; e.g., bahar (from the Sanskrit vihara, a Buddhist monastery). Ashokan emissary monks bring Buddhism to Suwannaphum, the location of which is disputed. The Dipavamsa and the Mon believe it was a Mon seafaring settlement in present-day Burma.
c. 220 BCE: Theravada Buddhism is officially introduced to Sri Lanka by the Venerable Mahinda, son of the emperor Ashoka of India during the reign of King Devanampiya Tissa.
185 BCE: Brahmin general Pusyamitra Sunga overthrows the Mauryan dynasty and establishes the Sunga dynasty, apparently starting a wave of persecution against Buddhism.
180 BCE: Greco-Bactrian King Demetrius invades India as far as Pataliputra and establishes the Indo-Greek kingdom (180–10 BCE), under which Buddhism flourishes.
c. 150 BCE: Indo-Greek king Menander I converts to Buddhism under the sage Nāgasena, according to the account of the Milinda Panha.
120 BCE: The Chinese Emperor Han Wudi (156–87 BCE) receives two golden statues of the Buddha, according to inscriptions in the Mogao Caves, Dunhuang.
1st century BCE: The Indo-Greek governor Theodorus enshrines relics of the Buddha, dedicating them to the deified "Lord Shakyamuni."
29 BCE: According to the Sinhalese chronicles, the Pali Canon is written down in the reign of King Vaṭṭagamiṇi (29–17 BCE)
2 BCE: The Hou Hanshu records the visit in 2 BCE of Yuezhi envoys to the Chinese capital, who give oral teachings on Buddhist sutras