Buddhism is said by most scholars to have originated in eastern India sometime in the late sixth century B.C.E., although the dates vary from scholar to scholar. The source of Buddhism was the teaching of Siddhartha Gautama, or Shakyamuni (of the royal Shaka family), the man now known as “the Buddha” (“The Enlightened One”), who by no means thought of himself as a deity, but who taught the way to spiritual enlightenment, or nirvana. Buddhism took many forms in the centuries that followed and has been widely practiced in the countries of south Asia other than India.