Contents: Foreword. 1. Social and religious situation in sixth-century India. 2. Buddha's conception, birth and renunciation. 3. From the great departure to illumination. 4. Preaching of the Buddha. 5. The road to Parinirvana. 6. Evolution and expansion of Buddhism. Epilogue.

"This is the story of the Indian prince who, over 2500 years ago, abandoned a life of luxury and pleasure to find the one imperishable thing in this evanescent and painfilled life. In mid-life, at the end of a long spiritual search, Siddhartha Gautama underwent the experience in which he became the Buddha, or 'The enlightened one'. Thereafter Sakyamuni, as he came to be called, spent forty years of wanderings, during which he preached the good law and the four noble truths and founded a community of disciples. The final chapter of the book deals with the development and spread of Buddhism, with its various schools and countless adherents, up to the present day."

[Jeannine Auboyer is the former Chief Curator of the Guimet Museum in Paris.] 

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