Siddhartha Gautama was born around 563 B.C., the son of a king called Shuddhodana who ruled the lands of the Shakya clan at the foot of the Himalayas, along what is today the border between India and Nepal. Though not monarch of an empire like the neighboring kings of Kosala and Maghada, Shuddhodana was well-to-do, and his capital, Kapilavastu, had prospered from its location near the trade routes into the Ganges valley. Apparently his power was not absolute, but shared with a voting assembly called the sangha – the same name the Buddha would later give to his monastic order, one of the
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