barryevans wrote:Thanks everyone for your responses, much
appreciated. I meant no offense asking the question—I think some
responders may have thought I did. I guess I thought I'd just
have to google, "Historical Buddha" and the information would
jump out at me! But even his birth-death dates, for instance, is
all over the place. Kim says, “the Buddha lived c. 480 - 400 BCE
according to recent (sound, historical) research.” (can you pls.
reference, Kim?). On the other hand, “In Sri Lanka, 483 BC is
accepted as the date of his nirvana while in Burma 544 BC is
accepted. In Tibet it is believed to be 835 BC, while in China,
11th century BC is the accepted date. Buddha was an Indian and
the Indian Puranic tradition believes that the nirvana took
place in 1793 or 1807 BC.” (Bharateeya Historiography,
http://www.hindubooks.org/hist_ssathe/b ... /page4.htm). Kim
writes, “You compare Buddhism to 'every other religion [you]
know about' but I doubt that those include Taoism, Hinduism or
Mithraism...Can you cite contemp