trad. 500 BCE–trad. 301 BCE
First sermon in Buddhist tradition
Religion · Buddhist traditions · Origins, canon, and monasticism
Narratives place the first sermon at Sarnath and connect it with the community’s beginnings. The date expresses a biographical tradition, without contemporary testimony of the episode.
Precision, calendar, and review
- Start
- century · attributed by a tradition
- End
- century · attributed by a tradition
- Dating in the source document
- ~ siglos V–IV a. C.
- Calendar and convention
- Historical-era years; the source calendar is not identified. No conversion of days is assumed.
- Year zero
- The scale goes from 1 BCE to 1 CE without year zero. Changing era names changes labels only.
- Documentary review
- 2026-09-04
Reading the date: dating window; it does not mean the event lasted for that entire interval.
Sources
- Met — Life of the Buddha (opens in a new tab)
Source provenance and scope
- Publication date
- 2003-10-01
- What this date describes
- The cited source or edition; it may postdate the historical event.
- Bibliographic date checked
- 2026-09-23
The correspondence between this reference and individual claims has not yet been itemized.
This record is an editorial synthesis. Consult the sources to check claims and their limits. Chronological relationships alone do not establish causation.