 There is very little historically reliable information available about the life of Śāntideva. The Tibetan historians Butön and Taranātha tell us that Śāntideva was a prince from Saurāṣṭra, a western coastal region that now forms part of the Indian state of Gujarat. But royal birth was a standard feature of Indian Buddhist hagiographies, possibly because the historical Buddha himself was the son of a rāja, so there is some reason to be skeptical of this aspect of his biography. 