Gautama Buddha, or Siddhartha, was a contemporary of Mahavira. According to tradition he was born in 567 BC in a Shakya kshatriya family in Lumbini in Nepal near Kapilavastu, which is identified with Piprahwa in Basti district and is close to the foothills of Nepal. Gautama's father seems to have been the elected ruler of Kapilavastu, and headed the Shakya [...]
The Buddha neither rejected nor accepted the existence of God because he was more concerned about, the actions of the individual in this world as well as in his previous birth. Nor did he talk about the existence of soul as well. As the origin and ancestry of the Buddha are well known to all, no reference is nude to [...]
The Jaina literary tradition strongly advocates that the 24 Thirthankaras were responsible for the origin and development of Jainism, the other prominent heterodox religion. Of these, the historicity of the first twenty-two is very doubtful and it is said that with a view to claiming more antiquity for Jainism, these Thirthankaras might have been projected as the founders of Jainism. [...]