Many people “know” that that the Buddha “was born a Hindu.” But this, like the ideas that he was a prince and that he left home after seeing “the four sights” is also untrue.
Writers often bundle myth of the Buddha having been born a Hindu together with his supposed princely status. For example, a website called “Smart History” says:
The man who became known as the Buddha was a Hindu prince, named Siddhartha Gautama, who was born in the 5th or 6th century B.C.E. to a royal family—the leaders of the Shakya clan—living in what is now Nepal.
This is just one of many places making this claim. The problem is, as I’ve said in earlier mythbusting articles, that many writers just repeat what other writers have said. They don’t check this information against the scriptures, which are our earliest and most reliable guide to the Buddha’s history. And so myths can go unchallenged for centuries.
This presentation of the Buddha as a former Hindu is just a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad account of history.
Practitioners of the spiritual traditions around at the time of the Buddha didn’t necessarily give names to their religions. There was nothing called “Buddhism.” Followers of the Buddha just said they were “followers of the Buddha” or or his Dharma. They didn’t say they were “Buddhists.”
Brahmins don’t seem to have had a name for their tradition either. Buddhist say they were Brahmins who had “mastered the Vedas” (vedānaṁ pāragū). Or they describe them as “accomplished in the Vedas” (vedasampanno). That may be how they described themselves, too.
Nowadays we call this religious tradition “Brahmanism.” Its not called “Hinduism,” which is a much later term.
It’s true that Brahmanism was one of the phenomena that, combined with others, became Hinduism. But it wasn’t Hinduism.
Wikipedia summarizes the current understanding of the relationship of Brahmanism and Hinduism by saying: “Brahmanism was one of the major influences that shaped contemporary Hinduism, when it was synthesized with the non-Vedic Indo-Aryan religious heritage of the eastern Ganges plain (which also gave rise to Buddhism and Jainism), and with local religious traditions.” [Emphasis added]
Another Wikipedia article says, “Hinduism developed as a fusion or synthesis of practices and ideas from the ancient Vedic religion and elements and deities from other local Indian traditions.”
Brahmanism was an influence on Hinduism, which emerged later, but it was just one influence.
Let’s imagine you were to take a modern Hindu back to the time of the Buddha. They probably would not accept that they and the Brahmins back then were doing the same thing.
The modern Hindu would see Brahmins reciting the Vedas, and think, “Cool!”
But then they’d see them sacrificing cattle and be shocked.
The modern Hindu would see no temples in the Buddha’s India. He’d hear Brahmins talk of an afterlife in heaven or with the ancestors, but no talk of reincarnation. But he’d hear Buddhists talking about rebirth all the time. He’d also hear Buddhists, but not Brahmins, talking about samsara.
The modern Brahmin would see animist cultures worshipping local deities and believe that this was “Hinduism,” but the Brahmins of the Buddha’s time would not recognize the animists as being part of their own religious tradition and the animists would certain not regard themselves as being part of Brahmanism.
As Bhikkhu Sujato says in a talk on whether the Buddha was a Hindu, “what we understand of as Hinduism today didn’t even remotely exist in the time of the Buddha.”
One thing that will surprise many people is that Buddhism is older than Hinduism. The Buddha established the Buddhadharma during his lifetime, some 2,500 years ago. Hinduism is much younger.
When something comes about through a slow process of amalgamation and innovation, it’s hard to say when exactly it started. The formation of what we now call Hinduism took place from about the 5th to the 8th centuries, according to Bhikkhu Sujato, in the same talk I just mentioned. This, he says, was the birth of Hinduism. Guy Welbon, in “Hindu Beginnings” puts the essential synthesis rather earlier. He wrote, “It is only at or just before the beginning of the Common Era that the key tendencies, the crucial elements that would be encompassed in Hindu traditions, collectively came together.” The disagreement arises simply because it’s not possible to pin down precisely the line when a slowly evolving entity stops being one thing and starts being another.
Bhikkhu Sujato points out, “If India has always been a Hindu country, how come for hundreds of years in the archaeological record — nearly a millennium in fact — we find nothing of Hinduism and plenty of things of Buddhism and Jainism?”
Note that this isn’t some trick of language — that “Hinduism” is a new term, while the religion itself dates back to the Buddha. No, the religion itself dates from a period several centuries to a millennium after the Buddha. What came before was a collection of different religious traditions that did not consider themselves to be doing the same thing.
But even if we were to stretch the definition of Hinduism — way beyond credibility — so that it were to encompass the Brahmanical practices of the Buddha’s time, the Buddha’s people did not even practice mainstream Brahmanical teachings.
I’ve searched the scriptures looking for a single encounter between the Buddha and a Brahmin in his homeland, Sakya, and found nothing. I’ve seen mention of “Brahmin villages” in surrounding territories (these were lands gifted by kings to Brahmin settlers) but none in Sakya.
In fact the single mention I’ve come across of a Brahmin being in Sakya was in a conversation the Buddha had with someone called Ambaṭṭha, who recounted to the Buddha how he had once, at the instruction of his teacher, visited the capital, Kapilavatthu, and had been treated with an utter lack of respect. The Sakyans, he said, giggled at him and wouldn’t even offer him a seat. The Sakyans treated him like an alien curiosity, not as a religious teacher. Ambaṭṭha doesn’t talk about having met any other Brahmins in Sakya.
Sakya was not Brahmin-friendly.
The Sakyans had a belief system that was at odds with that of the Brahmins. Brahmins were obsessed with caste, or varṇa, which was a four-fold system of socioreligious purity, with themselves at the top. The Buddha’s people saw themselves as warriors (khattiyas, which literally means “owners”). They saw themselves as superior to the Brahmins.
The Sakyans being khattiyas doesn’t mean that soldiering was necessarily their profession. Sakya didn’t have a standing army. Most men living there would have been farmers, craft workers, or traders, although probably all males had some martial training.
The thing is: the fact that they saw themselves as superior to the Brahmins utterly conflicts with Brahmin belief. To the Brahmins, the fourfold social-religious hierarchy with themselves at the top was ordained by the gods and spelled out in their scriptures. The Sakyans insisting they were superior to the Brahmins was a rejection of the Brahmin world view, and of their religious scriptures.
The Sakyans had completely different beliefs of social classes. To the Brahmins, one’s caste was an intrinsic part of one’s being, and you could no more change your caste than you could change your species. One of the Buddha’s arguments against the Brahmin’s views on social and religious hierarchy was that there were places — Sakya was one of them — where there were only two social classes: masters and servants, and it was possible for a master to become a servant and vice versa. There was nothing intrinsic about one’s social worth, and these class distinctions were just social conventions. To the Sakyans, caste, in the Brahmanical sense, didn’t really exist. This is a huge deal. It’s an utter rejection of a key part of Brahmanical teachings.
One of the Buddha’s epithets was Ādiccabandhu, or “Kinsman of the Sun.” Some people have suggested that the Sakyans were therefore sun-worshippers. But there’s no direct evidence they were, and in fact there’s no mention in the Buddhist scriptures of any gods the Sakyans might have worshipped. Whoever or whatever they worshipped, they apparently did it without the help of Brahmin priests.
They did seem to regard certain trees as sacred, and used them as shrines. The oldest known shrine in Sakya was a sacred tree at the Buddha’s birthplace, Lumbini. Trees as special places crop up all the time in the Buddhist scriptures. The Buddha was born under a tree. He realized that he’d previously had a glimpse of the path to enlightenment while he’d been sitting under a tree as a boy. He got enlightened under a tree. He taught under trees, encouraged people to meditate at the foot of trees, and died under a tree.
There are many mentions of yakkhas (native spirits that inhabited trees, mountains, etc.) in the Pāli texts, which may mean that the Sakyans worshiped not the trees themselves, but the spirits they believed resided in them. To my mind it’s highly likely that the Sakyans were animists.
I’ve seen no mention of animal sacrifice of ritual fires in Sakya, or of ritual bathing or other purification rituals, all of which were important parts of Brahmanical practice. Sakyans buried the cremated remains of their dead in burial mounds known as stupas. This was not a Brahmanical practice.
So the Buddha’s tribe (presumably along with other tribes in what is now southern Nepal) seem to have had their own religious tradition, entirely separate from what the Brahmins were doing.
The single strongest argument that the Sakyans were part of orthodox Brahmanism is their gotra (clan) name, which was Gautama, or Gotama. This is traditionally a Brahmin name. In fact it’s the name of a Brahmin seer (rishi), from whom the Sakyans claimed descent. This descent wasn’t genetic, incidentally (the rishi was not their ancestor), but cultural and symbolic.
How would non-Brahmins end up with a Brahmin name?
Bhikkhu Sujato explains:
As the brahmins spread across India, one of their chief tasks was to ally with the local kings and provide legitimization for kingship via their rituals and traditions. There were different Brahmanical lineages according to the specifics of how the rituals were performed and the texts transmitted, and these are sometimes raced back to the ancient seers (rishi) who originated the lineage.
Since the Sakyans didn’t embrace anything like Brahainical orthodoxy, we might safely assume that this connection with the rishi Gautama was fairly superficial. It may be that a monarch who the Sakyans were vassals of, forced them to undergo some kind of ritual blessing by a brahmin of the Gautama lineage. This would be similar to the way in which some pagans, under the influence of Christianity, underwent “conversion” but carried on with their old ways regardless.
The Sakyans were not alone in being identified with an ancient seer. The neighboring Mallas were called Vāseṭṭhas, after another ancient rishi, the sage Vāseṭṭha (Skt. Vasiṣṭha). They, too, were khattiyas (warriors), rather than Brahmins.
So the Buddha was not a Hindu.
First, Hinduism didn’t exist.
Second, the Sakyan people did not follow or even agree with Brahmanical practices.
To say that the Buddha had been a “Hindu prince” is horribly inaccurate. It also feeds into Hindus’ claims that theirs is “India’s oldest religion” — which is simply propaganda.
Hindus claim that the Buddha was really a Hindu, and even that he was an incarnation of Vishnu (seen in the illustration above) . The most common reason given is that the Buddha/Vishnu came to argue against animal sacrifice (which has a very ancient history in the Vedas.)
Hindus often talk about their religion being very tolerant. But that tolerance can take the form of saying “No matter what you think, we consider you part of our religion. And because you’re part of our religion, we’re in charge of you.” For example, for a long time, Hindus have claimed ownership over the Buddhist holy site of Bodh Gaya. After all, Buddhism was “part of Hinduism.” Recently, Buddhist monks have been on hunger strike to protest the Indian law that gives control of a Buddhist site to Hindus.
A court case forced Hindus to give Buddhists a minority say in the running of Bodh Gaya, but still gave Hindus ultimate control over the site. Just to be clear, it is one hundred percent a Buddhist site with no historical connection with Hinduism or its predecessor religions. And it’s controlled by Hindus.
The myth of the Buddha having been born a Hindu feeds the myth of him having been a “Hindu reformer.” And this provides fuel for Hindus who want to appropriate Buddhist holy places.
Hinduism’s tendency to “tolerantly” absorb and exert dominance over Buddhism and other religious traditions has evolved into what’s called the “Hindutva” movement, which is a blend of Hinduism with ideas borrowed from European fascism. Hindutva is a “political ideology encompassing the cultural justification of Hindu nationalism and the belief in establishing Hindu hegemony within India,” according to Wikipedia.
Claims that the Buddha was born a Hindu are propaganda, feeding that unhealthy political trend. Such claims are not just inaccurate, but are politically harmful in a way that is damaging to Buddhism itself.
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Hinduism is a term/name that came later but the religion is primarily based on Vedas which predate Buddha. To say that Buddhism is older is horribly inaccurate.
I think you need to read what I wrote more carefully. Just because Hinduism is based on the Vedas, and the Vedas predate Buddhism, does not mean that Hinduism is older than Buddhism. By way of an analogy, Methodism is based on the Hebrew bible, or Tanakh, which predates Buddhism. But that doesn't mean that Methodism is older than Buddhism. The German language is based on Proto-Indo-European, which is older than Buddhism, but that doesn't mean that the German language predates Buddhism.
Yes it definitely means Budhhism is a later practice
If you want to follow “India’s original faith” then practice Vedic orthodoxy, but modern Hinduism is not that. I myself was born Hindu and even I know, from reading the Vedas that what we practice today is a counterculture of Buddhism alongside many different cultures.
Buddha was born Siddharth Gautam and was a Hindu Prince. He did not preach new religion but the exist g religion called Sanatana Dharma. Colonial scholars have butchered and misspread information to attain a a piece pf paper calling them experts and nowadays with many practising Sanatana Dharma by way of Buddha, they are unwilling to admit they workshop a Hindu Prince. Hinduism was coined by colonial scholars. Colonial scholars called Sanatana Dharma a polytheistic religion when it is monathietic. An Indian monk travelled China to spread Sanatan Dharma and when all was learned the Chinese murdered him and changed the face of. Buddha to appease the masses. Stop culturally appropriating and spreading misinformation. It is taught in universities in India, UK Canada, and Australia that Siddarth Gautam was a Hindu Prince for decades until the last 15 years as Buddhism has become popular with caucasians.
Simply repeating these things doesn't make them true, Gil. I'd suggest reading the original Buddhist scriptures in order to appreciate the actual historical context of the Buddha's life.
Vedas predates Buddha . It means Hinduism predates Buddhism . Vedas are the authority scriptures of Sanatan Vedic Dharma that transformed into Hinduism later by assimilation of many different practices .
That's addressed in the article Vaibhav. Hinduism is a much more recent development than the Vedas. Yes, Hindus hold the Vedas to be sacred texts, just as Methodists hold the Old Testament to be a sacred text. That doesn't mean that the people who wrote the Old Testament were Methodists. Similarly, those who wrote the Vedas were not Hindu.
Hi really enjoyed your article but you stated that Shakya didnot practiced brahminishm then why would brhamins gave goutama gotra to buddha?? curious!
That's a really good question, Rei. The short answer is: no one knows. This naming convention seems to have been quite common, because some other khattiya clans had brahminical names, such as the Mallians, who were referred to as Vāseṭṭhas. It does seem that there were rituals that kings went through where they became Brahmins temporarily so that they could perform sacrifices. At the end of the ceremony they reverted to being a Khattiya, but the king and his descendants retained the name of the Brahmin who performed the ritual. Although Sakya was a republic, they claimed descent from a king (Okkāka/Ikṣvāku), so something like this may have happened in the distant past. Perhaps a neighboring, more powerful king treated the Sakyans (and other tribes) as vassals and forced them to undergo initiation. It's just impossible to say.
Certainly the Buddha's family seemed proud of their Gautama heritage, but at the same time the orthodox Brahmin tradition doesn't seem to have been their religion (hence Brahmins complaining that they weren't respected in Sakya, and the Sakyans believing that Khattiyas were superior to Brahmins). Perhaps in the centuries between the king's initiation and the Buddha's time, the Sakyans had developed their own traditions. Or perhaps they were holding onto traditions (probably animistic) they'd had for a long time.
Again, no one knows. These are educated guesses that people smarter than me have made.
Having the Gautama gotra doesn’t necessarily mean that the Sakyans were practitioners of orthodox Brahminism. In early northern India, lineage names (gotras) were not always markers of a community’s current religious life; they often reflected an older ancestral, ritual, or prestige connection with a Brahmin lineage. So it’s quite possible for a Khattiya clan to retain a Brahminical gotra while not following Brahminical social or religious norms.
The early Buddhist texts actually show that the Sakyans were very proud of their Khattiya identity and did not place Brahmins at the top of their social order — in some cases Brahmins are even described as feeling that they were not properly honoured in Sakya. That suggests that, by the Buddha’s time, their clan traditions and worldview were not shaped by orthodox Brahminism, even though they preserved the ancient Gautama lineage name.
So the most likely explanation is that the Gautama gotra points to a much earlier historical connection — perhaps a royal consecration performed by a Brahmin, an ancestral affiliation, or the adoption of a prestigious lineage name — while the Sakyans’ actual religious culture evolved in a different direction over the centuries.
In short: the gotra reflects lineage and status, not necessarily the religion they practiced in the Buddha’s lifetime.
Absolutely. If I didn't include that information in the article, I should have. (It sounds like you might spend some time in the discussion forums on Sutta Central: you've said very much the same kind of thing Bhikkhu Sujato has written there.)
This argument is largely built on a semantic trick redefining “Hinduism” so narrowly that it disappears in the Buddha’s time, and then concluding the Buddha “was not Hindu.”
A more historically grounded view is that the Buddha lived in a 5th–4th century BCE North Indian Vedic cultural world, where Upanishadic ideas, karma, rebirth, yajna traditions, and Brahmanical social categories were already present. Whether you call that “early Hinduism,” “Vedic religion,” or “Sanatana Dharma in formation,” it is not something separate from the broader continuum that later becomes Hindu traditions. So saying “Hinduism didn’t exist, therefore Buddha wasn’t Hindu” is more a modern classification debate than a historical fact.
Also, the claim that Sakya was “non-Brahmanical” is overstated. The Buddha constantly engages Brahmins, uses their categories (karma, rebirth, moksha-like liberation), and debates within their intellectual ecosystem. He was not outside that world, he was a reformer within the broader Śramaṇa–Vedic milieu, alongside Jain and other movements, not in a completely separate civilization.
Finally, “Buddha was not Hindu” is anachronistic both ways: the term Hindu itself is much later, so applying it as a strict yes/no identity to the Buddha is misleading. A more accurate statement is: the Buddha emerged from the same early Indic religious and philosophical environment that later developed into what we now call Hinduism and Buddhism—distinct paths, shared soil.
Hi, Gen.
I can't get my head around your statement, "the term Hindu itself is much later, so applying it as a strict yes/no identity to the Buddha is misleading." The very thing I'm addressing is that this much later term is regularly applied to the Buddha, and that because it's anachronistic it's misleading. Your statement seems to be saying that any attempt to debunk the anachronistic use of the word "Hindu" to describe the Buddha is itself somehow anachronistic. I really can't see how that perspective holds water, logically.
By analogy: "Was Christ a Christian?" No, he wasn't. He saw himself as a Jew, reforming Judaism, and the term "Christian" (denoting a separate religion centering on Jesus' divinity) didn't arise until after his death. It's anachronistic to say "Christ was a Christian" but not to say "Christ was not a Christian."
Your closing words — "the Buddha emerged from the same early Indic religious and philosophical environment that later developed into what we now call Hinduism and Buddhism—distinct paths, shared soil" – encapsulates perfectly what I was saying in the article. We don't seem to be in disagreement.
Brave words , brave for speaking something which was so obvious and yet so behind, and thanks for mentioning this big problem about these people repeating something again n again rather than looking into the real source, also brave because this is such things which can get u in trouble for saying and people come after you , just like in the comments how they are doing exactly what u pointed out, soo sinked into their hollow belief. i dont usually comment on articles, but reading this and seeing u active in comments is what made me wanna appreciate the work. Thank You.
Thanks for your kind and supportive comment, Maha 🙏🏼