The Eight Great Events of the Buddha's Life

The eight great events of the Buddha's life are a group of narrations which relate to eight distinguished Indian sacred sites. The map displays the depiction of the eight great events of the Buddha's life and their corresponding sacred sites in India.

These eight events can be separated into the four major ones, which include the birth of the Buddha at Lumbini, his enlightenment at Bodh Gaya, his first sermon at Sarnath and his death and Parinirvāṇa at Kushinagar, and the so-called minor events of his life, which are the miracle of multiplication at Shravasti, the taming of the elephant Nalagiri at Rajigir, the gift of honey from a monkey at Vaishali, and the Buddha's descent from Tāvatiṃsa heaven at Sankissa.

These places are connected with a specific narrative from the life of the Buddha, which not only shows the attributes of the Buddha and his teachings, but also worked as a kind of map for Buddhist pilgrimage.