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The province's most populous city is Vancouver, which is at the confluence of the Fraser River and Georgia Strait, in the mainland's southwest corner (an area often called the Lower Mainland). By land area, Abbotsford is the largest city. Vanderhoof is near the geographic centre of the province.
The Coast Mountains and the Inside Passage's many inlets provide some of British Columbia's renowned and spectacular scenery, which forms the backdrop and context for a growing outdoor adventure and ecotourism industry. 75 percent of the province is mountainous (more than above sea level); 60 percent is forested; and only about 5 percent is arable.
The province's mainland away from the coastal regions is somewhat moderated by the Pacific Ocean. Terrain ranges from dry inland forests and semi-arid valleys, to the range and canyon districts of the Central and Southern Interior, to boreal forest and subarctic prairie in the Northern Interior. High mountain regions both north and south have subalpine flora and subalpine climate.
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The Okanagan wine area, extending from Vernon to Osoyoos at the Oroville–Osoyoos Border Crossing, is one of several wine and cider-producing regions in Canada. Other wine regions in British Columbia include the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island and the Fraser Valley.
The Southern Interior cities of Kamloops and Penticton have some of the warmest and longest summer climates in Canada (while higher elevations are cold and snowy), although their temperatures are often exceeded north of the Fraser Canyon, close to the confluence of the Fraser and Thompson rivers, where the terrain is rugged and covered with desert-type flora. Semi-desert grassland is found in large areas of the Interior Plateau, with land uses ranging from ranching at lower altitudes to forestry at higher ones.
The northern, mostly mountainous, two-thirds of the province is largely unpopulated and undeveloped, except for the area east of the Rockies, where the Peace River Country contains BC's portion of the Canadian Prairies, centred at the city of Dawson Creek.
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British Columbia is considered part of the Pacific Northwest and the Cascadia bioregion, along with the American states of Alaska, Idaho, (western) Montana, Oregon, Washington, and (northern) California.
Climate.
Because of the many mountain ranges and rugged coastline, British Columbia's climate varies dramatically across the province.
Coastal southern British Columbia has a mild and rainy climate influenced by the North Pacific Current. Most of the region is classified as oceanic, though pockets of warm-summer Mediterranean climate also exist in the far-southern parts of the coast. Precipitation averages above in almost all of the coastal region, and Hucuktlis Lake on Vancouver Island receives an average of of rain annually.
Due to the blocking presence of successive mountain ranges, the climate of some of the interior valleys of the province (such as the Thompson, parts of the Fraser Canyon, the southern Cariboo and parts of the Okanagan) is semi-arid with certain locations receiving less than in annual precipitation. The annual mean temperature in the most populated areas of the province is up to , the mildest anywhere in Canada.
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The valleys of the Southern Interior have short winters with only brief bouts of cold or infrequent heavy snow, while those in the Cariboo, in the Central Interior, are colder because of increased altitude and latitude, but without the intensity or duration experienced at similar latitudes elsewhere in Canada. Outside of the driest valleys, the Southern and Central Interior generally have a humid continental climate with widely variable precipitation. For example, the average daily low in Prince George (roughly in the middle of the province) in January is . Small towns in the southern interior with high elevation such as Princeton are typically colder and snowier than cities in the valleys.
Heavy snowfall occurs in all elevated mountainous terrain providing bases for skiers in both south and central British Columbia. Annual snowfall on highway mountain passes in the southern interior rivals some of the snowiest cities in Canada, and freezing rain and fog are sometimes present on such roads as well. This can result in hazardous driving conditions, as people are usually travelling between warmer areas such as Vancouver or Kamloops, and may be unaware that the conditions may be slippery and cold.
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Winters are generally severe in the Northern Interior which is generally in the subarctic climate zone, but even there, milder air can penetrate far inland. The coldest temperature in British Columbia was recorded in Smith River, where it dropped to on January 31, 1947, one of the coldest readings recorded anywhere in North America. Atlin in the province's far northwest, along with the adjoining Southern Lakes region of Yukon, get midwinter thaws caused by the Chinook effect, which is also common (and much warmer) in more southerly parts of the Interior.
During winter on the coast, rainfall, sometimes relentless heavy rain, dominates because of consistent barrages of cyclonic low-pressure systems from the North Pacific. Average snowfall on the coast during a normal winter is between , but on occasion (and not every winter) heavy snowfalls with more than and well below freezing temperatures arrive when modified arctic air reaches coastal areas, typically for short periods, and can take temperatures below , even at sea level. Arctic outflow winds can occasionally result in wind chill temperatures at or even below . While winters are very wet, coastal areas are generally milder and dry during summer under the influence of stable anti-cyclonic high pressure.
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Southern Interior valleys are hot in summer; for example, in Osoyoos, the July maximum temperature averages , making it the hottest month of any location in Canada; this hot weather sometimes spreads towards the coast or to the far north of the province. Temperatures often exceed in the lower elevations of valleys in the Interior during mid-summer, with the record high of being held in Lytton on June 29, 2021, during a record-breaking heat wave that year.
The extended summer dryness often creates conditions that spark forest fires, from dry-lightning or man-made causes. Many areas of the province are often covered by a blanket of heavy cloud and low fog during the winter months, in contrast to abundant summer sunshine. Annual sunshine hours vary from 2200 near Cranbrook and Victoria to less than 1300 in Prince Rupert, on the North Coast just south of Southeast Alaska.
The exception to British Columbia's wet and cloudy winters is during the El Niño phase. During El Niño events, the jet stream is much farther south across North America, making the province's winters milder and drier than normal. Winters are much wetter and cooler during the opposite phase, La Niña.
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Parks and protected areas.
There are 14 designations of parks and protected areas in the province that reflect the different administration and creation of these areas in a modern context. There are 141 ecological reserves, 35 provincial marine parks, 7 provincial heritage sites, 6 National Historic Sites of Canada, 4 national parks and 3 national park reserves. 12.5 percent of the province's area () is considered protected under one of the 14 different designations that includes over 800 distinct areas.
British Columbia contains seven of Canada's national parks and National Park Reserves:
British Columbia contains a large number of provincial parks, run by BC Parks under the aegis of the Ministry of Environment. British Columbia's provincial parks system is the second largest parks system in Canada, the largest being Canada's National Parks system.
Another tier of parks in British Columbia are regional parks, which are maintained and run by the province's regional districts. The Ministry of Forests operates forest recreation sites.
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In addition to these areas, over of arable land are protected by the Agricultural Land Reserve.
Fauna.
Much of the province is undeveloped, so populations of many mammalian species that have become rare in much of the United States still flourish in British Columbia. Watching animals of various sorts, including a very wide range of birds, has long been popular. Bears (grizzly, black—including the Kermode bear or spirit bear) live here, as do deer, elk, moose, caribou, big-horn sheep, mountain goats, marmots, beavers, muskrats, coyotes, wolves, mustelids (such as wolverines, badgers and fishers), cougars, eagles, ospreys, herons, Canada geese, swans, loons, hawks, owls, ravens, harlequin ducks, and many other sorts of ducks. Smaller birds (robins, jays, grosbeaks, chickadees, and so on) also abound. Murrelets are known from Frederick Island, a small island off the coast of Haida Gwaii.
Many healthy populations of fish are present, including salmonids such as several species of salmon, trout, steelhead, and char. Besides salmon and trout, sport-fishers in BC also catch halibut, bass, and sturgeon. On the coast, harbour seals and river otters are common. Cetacean species native to the coast include the orca, humpback whale, grey whale, harbour porpoise, Dall's porpoise, Pacific white-sided dolphin and minke whale.
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Some endangered species in British Columbia are: Vancouver Island marmot, spotted owl, American white pelican, and badgers.
Forests.
White spruce or Engelmann spruce and their hybrids occur in 12 of the 14 biogeoclimatic zones of British Columbia. Common types of trees present in BC's forests include western redcedar, yellow-cedar, Rocky Mountain juniper, lodgepole pine, ponderosa or yellow pine, whitebark pine, limber pine, western white pine, western larch, tamarack, alpine larch, white spruce, Engelmann spruce, Sitka spruce, black spruce, grand fir, Amabilis fir, subalpine fir, western hemlock, mountain hemlock, Douglas-fir, western yew, Pacific dogwood, bigleaf maple, Douglas maple, vine maple, arbutus, black hawthorn, cascara, Garry oak, Pacific crab apple, choke cherry, pin cherry, bitter cherry, red alder, mountain alder, paper birch, water birch, black cottonwood, balsam poplar, trembling aspen.
Traditional plant foods.
First Nations peoples of British Columbia used plants for food, and to produce material goods like fuel and building products. Plant foods included berries, and roots like camas.
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Ecozones.
Environment Canada subdivides British Columbia into six ecozones:
History.
Indigenous societies.
The area now known as British Columbia is home to First Nations groups that have a deep history with a significant number of indigenous languages. There are more than 200 First Nations in BC. Prior to contact (with non-Aboriginal people), human history is known from oral histories, archaeological investigations, and from early records from explorers encountering societies early in the period.
The arrival of Paleoindians from Beringia took place between 20,000 and 12,000 years ago. Hunter-gatherer families were the main social structure from 10,000 to 5,000 years ago. The nomadic population lived in non-permanent structures foraging for nuts, berries and edible roots while hunting and trapping larger and small game for food and furs. Around 5,000 years ago individual groups started to focus on resources available to them locally. Coast Salish peoples had complex land management practices linked to ecosystem health and resilience. Forest gardens on Canada's northwest coast included crabapple, hazelnut, cranberry, wild plum, and wild cherry species. Thus with the passage of time there is a pattern of increasing regional generalization with a more sedentary lifestyle. These indigenous populations evolved over the next 5,000 years across a large area into many groups with shared traditions and customs.
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To the northwest of the province are the peoples of the Na-Dene languages, which include the Athapaskan-speaking peoples and the Tlingit, who live on the islands of southern Alaska and northern British Columbia. The Na-Dene language group is believed to be linked to the Yeniseian languages of Siberia: the Dene of the western Arctic may represent a distinct wave of migration from Asia to North America. The Interior of British Columbia is home to the Salishan language groups such as the Shuswap (Secwepemc), Okanagan and Athabaskan language groups, primarily the Dakelh (Carrier) and the Tsilhqotʼin. The inlets and valleys of the British Columbia coast shelter large, distinctive populations, such as the Haida, Kwakwakaʼwakw and Nuu-chah-nulth, sustained by the region's abundant salmon and shellfish. These peoples developed complex cultures dependent on the western red cedar that included wooden houses, seagoing whaling and war canoes and elaborately carved potlatch items and totem poles.
Contact with Europeans brought a series of devastating epidemics of diseases the people had no immunity to. The population dramatically collapsed, culminating in the 1862 smallpox outbreak in Victoria that spread throughout the coast. European settlement did not bode well for the remaining native population of British Columbia. Colonial officials deemed colonists could make better use of the land than the First Nations people, and thus the land should be owned by the colonists. To ensure colonists would be able to settle properly and make use of the land, First Nations were forcibly relocated onto reserves, which were often too small to support their way of life. By the 1930s, British Columbia had over 1500 reserves.
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Fur trade and colonial era.
Lands now known as British Columbia were added to the British Empire during the 19th century. Colonies originally begun with the support of the Hudson's Bay Company (Vancouver Island, the mainland) were amalgamated, then entered Confederation as British Columbia in 1871 as part of the Dominion of Canada.
During the 1770s, smallpox killed at least 30 percent of the Pacific Northwest First Nations. This devastating epidemic was the first in a series; the 1862 Pacific Northwest smallpox epidemic killed about half to two-thirds of the native population of what became British Columbia.
The arrival of Europeans began around the mid-18th century, as fur traders entered the area to harvest sea otters. While it is thought Francis Drake may have explored the British Columbian coast in 1579, it was Juan Pérez who completed the first documented voyage, which took place in 1774. Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra explored the coast in 1775. In doing so, Pérez and Quadra reasserted the Spanish claim for the Pacific coast, first made by Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513.
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The explorations of James Cook in 1778 and George Vancouver in 1792 and 1793 established British jurisdiction over the coastal area north and west of the Columbia River. In 1793, Alexander Mackenzie was the first European to journey across North America overland to the Pacific Ocean, inscribing a stone marking his accomplishment on the shoreline of Dean Channel near Bella Coola. His expedition theoretically established British sovereignty inland, and a succession of other fur company explorers charted the maze of rivers and mountain ranges between the Canadian Prairies and the Pacific. Mackenzie and other explorers—notably John Finlay, Simon Fraser, Samuel Black, and David Thompson—were primarily concerned with extending the fur trade, rather than political considerations. In 1794, by the third of a series of agreements known as the Nootka Conventions, Spain conceded its claims of exclusivity in the Pacific. This opened the way for formal claims and colonization by other powers, including Britain, but because of the Napoleonic Wars, there was little British action on its claims in the region until later.
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The establishment of trading posts by the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), effectively established a permanent British presence in the region. The Columbia District was broadly defined as being south of 54°40′ north latitude, (the southern limit of Russian America), north of Mexican-controlled California, and west of the Rocky Mountains. It was, by the Anglo-American Convention of 1818, under the "joint occupancy and use" of citizens of the United States and subjects of Britain. This co-occupancy was ended with the Oregon Treaty of 1846.
The major supply route was the York Factory Express between Hudson Bay and Fort Vancouver. Some of the early outposts grew into settlements, communities and cities. Among the places in British Columbia that began as fur trading posts are Fort St. John (established 1794); Hudson's Hope (1805); Fort Nelson (1805); Fort St. James (1806); Prince George (1807); Kamloops (1812); Fort Langley (1827); Fort Victoria (1843); Yale (1848); and Nanaimo (1853). Fur company posts that became cities in what is now the United States include Vancouver, Washington (Fort Vancouver), formerly the "capital" of Hudson's Bay operations in the Columbia District, Colville and Walla Walla (old Fort Nez Percés).
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With the amalgamation of the two fur trading companies in 1821, modern-day British Columbia existed in three fur-trading departments. The bulk of the central and northern interior was organized into the New Caledonia district, administered from Fort St. James. The interior south of the Thompson River watershed and north of the Columbia was organized into the Columbia District, administered from Fort Vancouver on the lower Columbia River. The northeast corner of the province east of the Rockies, known as the Peace River Block, was attached to the much larger Athabasca District, headquartered in Fort Chipewyan, in present-day Alberta.
Until 1849, these districts were a wholly unorganized area of British North America under the de facto jurisdiction of HBC administrators; however, unlike Rupert's Land to the north and east, the territory was not a concession to the company. Rather, it was simply granted a monopoly to trade with the First Nations inhabitants. All that was changed with the westward extension of American exploration and the concomitant overlapping claims of territorial sovereignty, especially in the southern Columbia Basin (within present day Washington and Oregon). In 1846, the Oregon Treaty divided the territory along the 49th parallel to the Strait of Georgia, with the area south of this boundary (excluding Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands) transferred to sole American sovereignty. The Colony of Vancouver Island was created in 1849, with Victoria designated as the capital. New Caledonia, as the whole of the mainland rather than just its north-central Interior came to be called, continued to be an unorganized territory of British North America, "administered" by individual HBC trading post managers.
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Colony of British Columbia (1858–1866).
With the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush in 1858, an influx of Americans into New Caledonia prompted the colonial office to designate the mainland as the Colony of British Columbia. When news of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush reached London, Richard Clement Moody was hand-picked by the Colonial Office, under Edward Bulwer-Lytton, to establish British order and to transform the newly established Colony of British Columbia into the British Empire's "bulwark in the farthest west" and "found a second England on the shores of the Pacific". Lytton desired to send to the colony "representatives of the best of British culture, not just a police force": he sought men who possessed "courtesy, high breeding and urbane knowledge of the world" and he decided to send Moody, whom the government considered to be the "English gentleman and British Officer" to lead the Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment.
Moody and his family arrived in British Columbia in December 1858, commanding the Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment. He was sworn in as the first lieutenant governor of British Columbia and appointed Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works for British Columbia. On the advice of Lytton, Moody hired Robert Burnaby as his personal secretary.
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In British Columbia, Moody "wanted to build a city of beauty in the wilderness" and planned his city as an iconic visual metaphor for British dominance, "styled and located with the objective of reinforcing the authority of the crown and of the robe". Subsequent to the enactment of the "Pre-emption Act" of 1860, Moody settled the Lower Mainland. He selected the site and founded the new capital, New Westminster. He selected the site due to the strategic excellence of its position and the quality of its port. He was also struck by the majestic beauty of the site, writing in his letter to Blackwood,
Lord Lytton "forgot the practicalities of paying for clearing and developing the site and the town" and the efforts of Moody's engineers were continuously hampered by insufficient funds, which, together with the continuous opposition of Governor James Douglas, whom Thomas Frederick Elliot described as "like any other fraud", "made it impossible for [Moody's] design to be fulfilled".
Moody and the Royal Engineers also built an extensive road network, including what would become Kingsway, connecting New Westminster to False Creek, the North Road between Port Moody and New Westminster, and the Cariboo Road and Stanley Park. He named Burnaby Lake after his private secretary Robert Burnaby and named Port Coquitlam's 400-foot "Mary Hill" after his wife. As part of the surveying effort, several tracts were designated "government reserves", which included Stanley Park as a military reserve (a strategic location in case of an American invasion). The "Pre-emption Act" did not specify conditions for distributing the land, so large parcels were snapped up by speculators, including by Moody himself. For this he was criticized by local newspapermen for land grabbing. Moody designed the first coat of arms of British Columbia. Port Moody is named after him. It was established at the end of a trail that connected New Westminster with Burrard Inlet to defend New Westminster from potential attack from the US.
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By 1862, the Cariboo Gold Rush, attracting an additional 5000 miners, was underway, and Douglas hastened construction of the Great North Road (commonly known now as the Cariboo Wagon Road) up the Fraser Canyon to the prospecting region around Barkerville. By the time of this gold rush, the character of the colony was changing, as a more stable population of British colonists settled in the region, establishing businesses, opening sawmills, and engaging in fishing and agriculture. With this increased stability, objections to the colony's absentee governor and the lack of responsible government began to be vocalized, led by the influential editor of the New Westminster "British Columbian" and future premier, John Robson. A series of petitions requesting an assembly were ignored by Douglas and the colonial office until Douglas was eased out of office in 1864. Finally, the colony would have both an assembly and a resident governor.
Later gold rushes.
A series of gold rushes in various parts of the province followed, the largest being the Cariboo Gold Rush in 1862, forcing the colonial administration into deeper debt as it struggled to meet the extensive infrastructure needs of far-flung boom communities like Barkerville and Lillooet, which sprang up overnight. The Vancouver Island colony was facing financial crises of its own, and pressure to merge the two eventually succeeded in 1866, when the colony of British Columbia was amalgamated with the Colony of Vancouver Island to form the Colony of British Columbia (1866–1871), which was, in turn, succeeded by the present day province of British Columbia following the Canadian Confederation of 1871.
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Rapid growth and development (1860s to 1910s).
The Confederation League led the chorus pressing for the colony to join Canada, which had been created out of three British North American colonies in 1867 (the Province of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick). With the agreement by the Canadian government to extend the Canadian Pacific Railway to British Columbia and assume the colony's debt, British Columbia became the sixth province to join Confederation on July 20, 1871. The Treaty of Washington sent the Pig War San Juan Islands Border dispute to arbitration in 1871 and in 1903, the province's territory shrank again after the Alaska boundary dispute settled the vague boundary of the Alaska Panhandle.
Population in British Columbia continued to expand as the mining, forestry, agriculture, and fishing sectors were developed. Mining activity was notable throughout the Mainland, that a common epithet it, even after provincehood, was "the Gold Colony". Agriculture attracted settlers to the fertile Fraser Valley. Cattle ranchers and later fruit growers came to the drier grasslands of the Thompson Rivers, the Cariboo, the Chilcotin, and the Okanagan. Forestry drew workers to the temperate rainforests of the coast, which was also the locus of a growing fishery.
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The completion of the railway in 1885 contributed to the economy, facilitating the transportation of the region's considerable resources to the east. The milltown of Granville, also known as Gastown was selected as the terminus. This prompted the incorporation of the city of Vancouver in 1886. The completion of the Port of Vancouver spurred rapid growth, and in less than fifty years the city surpassed Winnipeg, Manitoba, as the largest in Western Canada. The early decades of the province were ones in which issues of land use—specifically, its settlement and development—were paramount. This included expropriation from First Nations people of their land, control over its resources, as well as the ability to trade in some resources, such as fishing.
Establishing a labour force to develop the province was problematic, and British Columbia was a destination of immigration from Europe, China, Japan and India. The influx of a non-European population stimulated resentment from the dominant ethnic groups, resulting in agitation and an attempt to restrict the ability of Asian people to immigrate to British Columbia through the imposition of the Chinese head tax. This resentment culminated in mob attacks against Chinese and Japanese immigrants in Vancouver in 1887 and 1907.
20th century.
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In World War I, the province responded strongly to the call to assist the British Empire against its German foes in French and Belgian battlefields. About 55,570 of the province's 400,000 residents, the highest per-capita rate in Canada, responded to the military's need. About 6,225 men from the province died in combat.
In 1914, a second transcontinental rail line, the Grand Trunk Pacific, was completed. This opened up the North Coast and Bulkley Valley region to new economic opportunities. What had previously been an almost exclusively fur-trading and subsistence economy soon became an area for forestry, farming, and mining. This sector attracted workers from Asia and Europe, leading to a diverse but conflict-ridden society. The early 20th century saw significant interaction between immigrants, First Nations, and economic forces. There was a rise in the labour movement, marked by strikes and conflicts such as the 1935 docker's strike at Ballantyne Pier and the On-to-Ottawa Trek. These events underscored tensions between workers and big business, often mediated by the Communist Party. Racial and ethnic relations were strained, with legislation reflecting the era's racial prejudices, notably against Asian immigrants and First Nations. The early and mid-20th century was marred by incidents like the Komagata Maru incident, highlighting anti-Asian sentiment.
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The interwar period and World War II introduced significant changes, including prohibition and its eventual repeal, and the internment of Japanese Canadians. The post-war era saw coalition governments and a booming economy, spearheaded by infrastructure projects and industrial expansion. The Social Credit Party, under W.A.C. Bennett, dominated BC politics, initiating major projects and laying the groundwork for future economic growth. The 1970s and 1980s brought economic challenges and political shifts, culminating in the Expo 86 world's fair and the end of Social Credit dominance. This period also saw significant social movements, such as Operation Solidarity. There was a transition to New Democratic Party governance in the 1990s, focusing on environmental conservation and economic struggles. In its second term especially, the NDP government faced political scandals, such as the fast ferry scandal, that ultimately contributed to its downfall.
21st century.
In the 2001 provincial election, Gordon Campbell's Liberals defeated the NDP, gaining 77 out of 79 total seats in the provincial legislature. Campbell instituted reforms and removed some of the NDP's policies, along with selling off the previous government's "fast ferries", lowering income taxes, and instituting the controversial long-term lease of BC Rail to Canadian National Railway. Campbell led his party to victory in the 2005 provincial election against a substantially strengthened NDP opposition and won a third term in the 2009 provincial election.
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The province won a bid to host the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and Whistler. In 2003, Vancouver's residents had voted in a referendum accepting the responsibilities of the host city should it win its bid. 64 percent of residents voted in favour of hosting. After the Olympic joy faded, Campbell's popularity fell. His management style, implementation of the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) despite election promises not to introduce it, and cancellation of the BC Rail corruption trial led to low approval ratings and loss of caucus support: he resigned in November 2010. In early 2011, former deputy premier Christy Clark became leader of the Liberals. Early Clark government actions included raising the minimum wage, creating a new statutory holiday in February called "Family Day", and pushing the development of BC's liquefied natural gas industry. In the lead-up to the 2013 election, the Liberals lagged behind the NDP by a double-digit gap in the polls but were able to achieve a surprise victory, winning a majority and making Clark the first woman to lead a party to victory in BC. Her government went on to balance the budget, implement changes to liquor laws and continue with the question of the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines. In the 2017 election, the NDP formed a minority government with the support of the Green Party through a confidence and supply agreement. In July 2017, NDP leader John Horgan was sworn in as a premier. Clark resigned and Andrew Wilkinson became leader of the BC Liberals. In the 2020 British Columbia general election, the NDP won 57 seats and formed a majority government. Wilkinson resigned as the leader of the BC Liberals.
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British Columbia has been significantly affected by demographic changes within Canada and around the world. Vancouver was a major destination for many immigrants from Hong Kong who left the former UK colony prior to its handover to China. Trends of urbanization mean the Greater Vancouver area now includes 51 percent of the province's population, followed by Greater Victoria with 8 percent. These two metropolitan regions have dominated the demographics of BC.
By 2018, housing prices in Vancouver were the second-least affordable in the world. Many experts point to evidence of money-laundering from China as a contributing factor. The high price of residential real estate has led to the implementation of an empty homes tax, a housing speculation and vacancy tax, and a foreign buyers' tax on housing. The net number of people coming to BC from other provinces in 2016 was almost four times larger than in 2012 and BC was the largest net recipient of interprovincial migrants in Canada. In 2023, British Columbia experienced a net population loss of 8,624; a substantial percentage of which were people who moved to Alberta.
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By 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic had had a major effect on the province, with over 2,000 deaths and 250,000 confirmed cases. However, the COVID-19 vaccine reduced the spread, with 78 percent of people in BC over the age of five having been fully vaccinated. Also in 2021 but unrelated to COVID-19, the unmarked gravesites of hundreds of Indigenous children were discovered at three former Indian residential schools (Kamloops, St. Eugene's Mission, Kuper Island).
Demographics.
Population.
Statistics Canada's 2021 Canadian census recorded a population of 5,000,879 — making British Columbia Canada's third-most populous province after Ontario and Quebec.
Cities.
Half of all British Columbians live in the Metro Vancouver Regional District, which includes Vancouver, Surrey, Burnaby, Richmond, Coquitlam, Langley (district municipality), Delta, North Vancouver (district municipality), Maple Ridge, New Westminster, Port Coquitlam, North Vancouver (city), West Vancouver, Port Moody, Langley (city), White Rock, Pitt Meadows, Bowen Island, Anmore, Lions Bay, and Belcarra, with adjacent unincorporated areas (including the University Endowment Lands) represented in the regional district as the electoral area known as Greater Vancouver Electoral Area A. The metropolitan area has seventeen Indian reserves, but they are outside of the regional district's jurisdiction and are not represented in its government.
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The second largest concentration of British Columbia population is at the southern tip of Vancouver Island, which is made up of the 13 municipalities of Greater Victoria, Victoria, Saanich, Esquimalt, Oak Bay, View Royal, Highlands, Colwood, Langford, Central Saanich/Saanichton, North Saanich, Sidney, Metchosin, Sooke, which are part of the Capital Regional District. The metropolitan area also includes several Indian reserves (the governments of which are not part of the regional district). Almost half of the Vancouver Island population is in Greater Victoria.
Cultural origins.
British Columbia is the most diverse province in Canada; as of 2021, the province had the highest proportion of visible minorities in the country. The five largest pan-ethnic groups in the province are Europeans (60 percent), East Asians (14 percent), South Asians (10 percent), Indigenous (6 percent) and Southeast Asians (5 percent).
Visible minorities and Indigenous peoples.
In 2021, 34.4 percent of the population consisted of visible minorities and 5.9 percent of the population was Indigenous, mostly of First Nations and Métis descent.
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Religion.
According to the 2021 census, religious groups in British Columbia included:
Language.
As of the 2021 Canadian Census, the ten most spoken languages in the province included English (4,753,280 or 96.69%), French (327,350 or 6.66%), Punjabi (315,000 or 6.41%), Mandarin (312,625 or 6.36%), Cantonese (246,045 or 5.01%), Spanish (143,900 or 2.93%), Hindi (134,950 or 2.75%), Tagalog (133,780 or 2.72%), German (84,325 or 1.72%), and Korean (69,935 or 1.42%). The question on knowledge of languages allows for multiple responses.
Of the 4,648,055 population counted by the 2016 census, 4,598,415 people completed the section about language. Of these, 4,494,995 gave singular responses to the question regarding their first language. The languages most commonly reported were the following:
While these languages all reflect the last centuries of colonialism and recent immigration, British Columbia is home to 34 Indigenous languages. They are spoken by about 6000 people in total, with 4000 people fluent in their Indigenous languages.
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Economy.
BC's economy is diverse, with service-producing industries accounting for the largest portion of the province's GDP. It is the terminus of two transcontinental railways, and the site of 27 major marine cargo and passenger terminals. Though less than 5 percent of its vast land is arable, the province is agriculturally rich (particularly in the Fraser and Okanagan valleys), because of milder weather near the coast and in certain sheltered southern valleys. Its climate encourages outdoor recreation and tourism, though its economic mainstay has long been resource extraction, principally logging, farming, and mining. Vancouver, the province's largest city, serves as the headquarters of many western-based natural resource companies. It also benefits from a strong housing market and a per capita income well above the national average. While the coast of British Columbia and some valleys in the south-central part of the province have mild weather, the majority of its land mass experiences a cold-winter-temperate climate similar to the rest of Canada. The Northern Interior region has a subarctic climate with very cold winters. The climate of Vancouver is by far the mildest winter climate of the major Canadian cities, with nighttime January temperatures averaging above the freezing point.
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British Columbia has a history of being a resource dominated economy, centred on the forestry industry but also with fluctuating importance in mining. Employment in the resource sector has fallen steadily as a percentage of employment, and new jobs are mostly in the construction and retail/service sectors. It now has the highest percentage of service industry jobs in the west, constituting 72 percent of industry (compared to 60 percent Western Canadian average). The largest section of this employment is in finance, insurance, real estate and corporate management; however, many areas outside of metropolitan areas are still heavily reliant on resource extraction. With its film industry known as Hollywood North, the Vancouver region is the third-largest feature film production location in North America, after Los Angeles and New York City.
The economic history of British Columbia is replete with tales of dramatic upswings and downswings, and this boom and bust pattern has influenced the politics, culture and business climate of the province. Economic activity related to mining in particular has widely fluctuated with changes in commodity prices over time, with documented costs to community health.
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In 2020, British Columbia had the third-largest GDP in Canada, with a GDP of $309 billion and a GDP per capita of $60,090. British Columbia's debt-to-GDP ratio is edging up to 15.0 percent in fiscal year 2019–20, and it is expected to reach 16.1 percent by 2021–22. British Columbia's economy experienced strong growth in recent years with a total growth rate of 9.6% from 2017 to 2021, a growth rate that was second in the country.
Government and politics.
The lieutenant governor, Wendy Lisogar-Cocchia, is the Crown's representative in the province. During the absence of the lieutenant governor, the Governor in Council (federal Cabinet) may appoint an administrator to execute the duties of the office. This is usually the chief justice of British Columbia. British Columbia is divided into "regional districts" as a means to better enable municipalities and rural areas to work together at a regional level.
British Columbia has an 87-member elected Legislative Assembly, elected by the plurality voting system, though from 2003 to 2009 there was significant debate about switching to a single transferable vote system called BC-STV. The government of the day appoints ministers for various portfolios, what are officially part of the Executive Council, of whom the premier is chair.
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The province is currently governed by the British Columbia New Democratic Party (BC NDP) under Premier David Eby. The 2017 provincial election saw the Liberal Party take 43 seats, the NDP take 41, and the British Columbia Green Party take 3. No party met the minimum of 44 seats for a majority, therefore leading to the first minority government since 1953. Following the election, the Greens entered into negotiations with both the Liberals and NDP, eventually announcing they would support an NDP minority government. Previously, the right-of-centre British Columbia Liberal Party governed the province for 16 years between 2001 and 2017, and won the largest landslide election in British Columbia history in 2001, with 77 of 79 seats. The legislature became more evenly divided between the Liberals and NDP following the 2005 (46 Liberal seats of 79) and 2009 (49 Liberal seats of 85) provincial elections. The NDP and its predecessor the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) have been the main opposition force to right-wing parties since the 1930s and have governed with majority governments in 1972–1975, 1991–2001 and since 2020 (with a minority government from 2017 to 2020). The Green Party plays a larger role in the politics of British Columbia than Green parties do in most other jurisdictions in Canada. After a breakthrough election in 2001 (12.39 percent), the party's vote share declined (2005 – 9.17 percent, 2009 – 8.09 percent, 2013 – 8.13 percent) before increasing again to a record high of 16.84 percent at the 2017 election.
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The British Columbia Liberal Party is not related to the federal Liberal Party and does not share the same ideology. Instead, the BC Liberal party is a rather diverse coalition, made up of the remnants of the Social Credit Party, many federal Liberals, federal Conservatives, and those who would otherwise support right-of-centre or free enterprise parties. In 2022, Kevin Falcon was elected leader of the BC Liberals, promising to rename the party in an effort to distance themselves from their federal counterparts. In 2023, the party rebranded as BC United. Historically, there have commonly been third parties present in the legislature (including the Liberals themselves from 1952 to 1975); the BC Green Party is the current third party in British Columbia, with three seats in the legislature.
Prior to the rise of the Liberal Party, British Columbia's main political party was the BC Social Credit Party, which governed the province for 20 years. While sharing some ideology with the subsequent Liberal government, they were more right-wing, although they undertook nationalization of various important monopolies, notably BC Hydro and BC Ferries.
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British Columbia is known for having politically active labour unions who have traditionally supported the NDP or its predecessor, the CCF.
British Columbia's political history is typified by scandal and a cast of colourful characters, beginning with various colonial-era land scandals and abuses of power by early officials (such as those that led to McGowan's War in 1858–59). Notable scandals in Social Credit years included the Robert Bonner Affair and the Fantasy Gardens scandal which forced Premier Bill Vander Zalm to resign and ended the Social Credit era. NDP scandals included Bingogate, which brought down NDP Premier Mike Harcourt, and the alleged scandal named Casinogate which drove NDP Premier Glen Clark to resign. A variety of scandals plagued the 2001–2017 Liberal government, including Premier Gordon Campbell's arrest for drunk driving in Maui and the resignation of various cabinet ministers because of conflict-of-interest allegations. A raid on the Parliament Buildings on December 28, 2003, in Victoria, including the Premier's Office, resulted in charges only for ministerial aides, although key cabinet members from the time resigned. Campbell eventually resigned in late 2010 due to opposition to his government's plan to introduce a Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) and was replaced by Christy Clark as premier in the 2011 BC Liberal leadership election.
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British Columbia is underrepresented in the Senate of Canada, leading Premier Christy Clark to refuse to cooperate with the federal government's reforms for senate appointments to be made based on the recommendations of an advisory board that would use non-partisan criteria. Hours after that plan was unveiled in Ottawa on December 3, 2015, Clark issued a statement that it did "not address what's been wrong with the Senate since the beginning".
The imbalance in representation in that House is apparent when considering population size. The six senators from BC constitute only one for every 775,000 people vs. one for every 75,000 in Prince Edward Island, which has four senators. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have much smaller populations than BC, yet each has ten senators according to a Global News summary. Correcting this imbalance would require a constitutional amendment, but that is unlikely to be supported by the Atlantic provinces.
Official symbols.
The government of British Columbia has designated several official symbols:
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Transportation.
Transportation played a huge role in British Columbia's history. The Rocky Mountains and the ranges west of them constituted a significant obstacle to overland travel until the completion of the transcontinental railway in 1885. The Peace River Canyon through the Rocky Mountains was the route the earliest explorers and fur traders used. Fur trade routes were only marginally used for access to British Columbia through the mountains. Travel from the rest of Canada before 1885 meant the difficulty of overland travel via the United States, around Cape Horn or overseas from Asia. Nearly all travel and freight to and from the region occurred via the Pacific Ocean, primarily through the ports of Victoria and New Westminster.
Until the 1930s, rail was the only means of overland travel to and from the rest of Canada; travellers using motor vehicles needed to journey through the United States. With the construction of the Inter-Provincial Highway in 1932 (now known as the Crowsnest Pass Highway), and later the Trans-Canada Highway, road transportation evolved into the preferred mode of overland travel to and from the rest of the country.
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, the number of electric vehicles sold in British Columbia (as a percentage of total vehicle sales) was the highest of any Canadian province or U.S. state.
Roads and highways.
Because of its size and rugged, varying topography, British Columbia requires thousands of kilometres of provincial highways to connect its communities. British Columbia's roads systems were notoriously poorly maintained and dangerous until a concentrated program of improvement was initiated in the 1950s and 1960s. There are now freeways in Greater Victoria, the Lower Mainland, and Central Interior of the province. Much of the rest of the province, where traffic volumes are generally low, is accessible by well-maintained generally high-mobility two-lane arterial highways with additional passing lanes in mountainous areas and usually only a few stop-controlled intersections outside the main urban areas.
A couple of busy intercity corridors outside Greater Vancouver feature more heavily signalized limited-mobility arterial highways that are mostly four-lane and often divided by portable median traffic barriers. Highway 1 on Vancouver Island and Highway 97 through the Okanagan Valley are medium- to high-volume roadways with variable posted speeds that range from to maximums just slightly lower than the principal grade-separated highways. Numerous traffic lights operate in place of interchanges on both arterials as long-term cost-cutting measures. Signalization along both these highways is heaviest through urban areas and along inter-urban sections where traffic volumes are similar to and sometimes higher than the freeways, but where funding is not available for upgrades to interchanges or construction of high-mobility alternative routes or bypasses. The building and maintenance of provincial highways is the responsibility of the British Columbia Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure.
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There are only five major routes to the rest of Canada. From south to north they are: BC Highway 3 through the Crowsnest Pass, the Vermilion Pass (Highway 93 in both British Columbia and Alberta), the Kicking Horse Pass, the latter being used by the Trans-Canada Highway entering Alberta through Banff National Park, the Yellowhead Highway (16) through Jasper National Park, and Highway 2 through Dawson Creek. There are also several highway crossings to the adjoining American states of Washington, Idaho, and Montana. The longest highway is Highway 97, running from the British Columbia-Washington border at Osoyoos north to Watson Lake, Yukon and which includes the British Columbia portion of the Alaska Highway.
Public transit.
Prior to 1979, surface public transit in the Vancouver and Victoria metropolitan areas was administered by BC Hydro, the provincially owned electricity utility. Subsequently, the province established BC Transit to oversee and operate all municipal transportation systems. In 1998, the Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority, now TransLink, a separate authority for routes within the Greater Vancouver Regional District, was established. Some smaller island communities, such as Gabriola Island and, formerly, Pender Island operate routes independent of BC Transit or TransLink. BC Transit has recently expanded to provide intercity routes, particularly in the Northern region of British Columbia. Other intercity routes were introduced connecting southern communities in preparation of the cancellation of Greyhound Canada's pullout from Western Canada, though options for intercity bus travel are still extremely limited.
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Public transit in British Columbia consists mainly of diesel buses, although Vancouver is also serviced by a fleet of trolley buses. Several experimental buses are being tested such as hybrid buses that have both gasoline and electric engines. Additionally, there are CNG-fuelled buses being tested and used in Nanaimo and Kamloops systems. British Columbia also tested a fleet of Hydrogen-fuelled buses for the Vancouver-Whistler Winter Olympics in 2010. TransLink operates SkyTrain, an automated metro system serving the cities of Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster, Surrey, Richmond, Coquitlam, and Port Moody. In 2009, the Canada Line SkyTrain was completed, linking Vancouver International Airport and the city of Richmond to downtown Vancouver bringing the total to three operating metro lines.
A new extension to Coquitlam and Port Moody (the Evergreen Extension of the Millennium Line) was completed in December 2016. Construction of an extension of the Millennium Line westwards through Vancouver to Arbutus Street began in February 2021, with future plans to extend the line farther west from Arbutus station to the University of British Columbia. Fare gates have been added to all existing stations, though in the past, SkyTrain used a proof of payment honour system. In the capital city of Victoria, BC Transit and the provincial government's infrastructure ministry are working together to create a bus rapid transit from the Westshore communities to downtown Victoria. In Kamloops, there is a bus rapid transit GPS trial underway to see how bus rapid transit affects smaller cities, rather than larger ones, like Victoria and Vancouver.
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Rail.
Rail development expanded greatly in the decades after the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed, in 1885, and was the chief mode of long-distance surface transportation until the expansion and improvement of the provincial highways system began in the 1950s. Two major routes through the Yellowhead Pass competed with the Canadian Pacific Railway – the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, terminating at Prince Rupert, and the Canadian Northern Railway, terminating at Vancouver.
The British Columbia Electric Railway provided rail services in Victoria and Vancouver between the nineteenth century and mid twentieth century.
The Pacific Great Eastern line supplemented this service, providing a north–south route between interior resource communities and the coast. The Pacific Great Eastern (later known as British Columbia Railway and now owned by Canadian National Railway) connects Fort St James, Fort Nelson, and Tumbler Ridge with North Vancouver. The E&N Railway, rebranded as the Island Rail Corridor, formerly served the commercial and passenger train markets of Vancouver Island. Service along the route is now minimal. Vancouver Island was also host to the last logging railway in North America until its closure in 2017.
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Current passenger services in British Columbia are limited. Via Rail operates 10 long-distance trains per week on two lines. Local services are limited to two regions, with TransLink providing rapid transit and commuter services in the Lower Mainland and by the Seton Lake Indian Band South of Lillooet with the Kaoham Shuttle. Amtrak runs international passenger service between Vancouver, Seattle, and intermediate points.
Several heritage railways operate within the province, including the White Pass and Yukon Route that runs between Alaska and the Yukon via British Columbia.
Water.
BC Ferries was established as a provincial crown corporation in 1960 to provide passenger and vehicle ferry service between Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland as a cheaper and more reliable alternative to the service operated by the Canadian Pacific Railway and other private operators. It now operates 25 routes among the islands of British Columbia, as well as between the islands and the mainland. Ferry service to Washington is offered by the Washington State Ferries (between Sidney and Anacortes) and Black Ball Transport (between Victoria and Port Angeles, Washington). Ferry service over inland lakes and rivers is provided by the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure. Various other coastal ferries are operated privately.
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Commercial ocean transport is of vital importance. Major ports are at Vancouver, Roberts Bank (near Tsawwassen), Prince Rupert, and Victoria.
Vancouver, Victoria, and Prince Rupert are also major ports of call for cruise ships. In 2007, a large maritime container port was opened in Prince Rupert with an inland sorting port in Prince George.
Air.
There are over 200 airports throughout British Columbia, the major ones being the Vancouver International Airport, the Victoria International Airport, the Kelowna International Airport, and the Abbotsford International Airport, the first three of which each served over 1,000,000 passengers in 2005. , Vancouver International Airport is the 2nd busiest airport in the country and the second biggest International Gateway on the west coast (after Los Angeles) with an estimated 26.4 million travellers passing through in 2019.
Arts and culture.
Visual arts.
The earliest known visual art produced in the Pacific Northwest, and what would become British Columbia, was by First Nations such as the Coast Salish, Haida, Heiltsuk, and Tsimshian, among others. Such Indigenous work comes particularly in the form of woodcarving, as seen in totem poles, transformation masks, and canoes, as well as textile arts like Chilkat weaving and button blankets. Traditional Indigenous art of the Pacific Northwest is typically distinguished by the formline style, which is defined as "continuous, flowing, curvilinear lines that turn, swell and diminish in a prescribed manner. They are used for figure outlines, internal design elements and in abstract compositions."
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Western styles and forms were introduced to the region through the establishment of British North American settlements in the late 18th century. Notable English-Canadian artists of 19th and early 20th century British Columbia include architect Francis Rattenbury, designer James Blomfield, and painter Emily Carr.
Vancouver's art scene was dominated by lyrical abstraction and surrealist landscape painting in the mid-20th century through such artists as B. C. Binning, Jack Shadbolt, Gordon A. Smith, Takao Tanabe, Don Jarvis, and Toni Onley. In the following decades, the city would undergo more artistic diversification with the emergence of conceptual art, communication art, video art, and performance art.
The Vancouver School of conceptual photography encompasses a cohort of Vancouver-based artists who gained notoriety in the 1980s. This school is generally considered to include artists Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace, Ken Lum, Roy Arden, Stan Douglas, and Rodney Graham.
Vancouver maintains roughly 350 works of outdoor public art. Some notable works include "A-maze-ing Laughter", "Digital Orca", "Girl in a Wetsuit", "Angel of Victory", "The Birds", and the Brockton Point totem poles.
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Performing arts.
British Columbia is home to the Vancouver Opera, the City Opera of Vancouver, Ballet BC, contemporary dance companies Holy Body Tattoo, Kidd Pivot, Mascall Dance Society, and butoh dance troupe Kokoro Dance. It is also the home province for a plethora of independent theatre companies, including the Arts Club Theatre Company, the Shakespearean Bard on the Beach, and Theatre Under the Stars. Performing arts venues include the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, the Orpheum Theatre, and the Royal Theatre, among others.
Music.
British Columbia is the third largest music-producing province in Canada and the local music industry generates an estimated yearly revenue of $265million. The province is home to the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the Okanagan Symphony Orchestra, the Vancouver Metropolitan Orchestra, the Vancouver Youth Symphony Orchestra, the Richmond Delta Youth Orchestra, and the Victoria Symphony. Some important popular music acts include bands such as Spirit of the West, Theory of a Deadman, Trooper, Gob, and The New Pornographers, and solo artists such as Bryan Adams, Carly Rae Jepsen, Mac DeMarco, Michael Bublé, Nelly Furtado, and Diana Krall. Music festivals in BC have included the Squamish Valley Music Festival, Shambhala Music Festival, and Pemberton Music Festival.
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Cuisine.
British Columbian cuisine is commonly associated with healthy living, fusion, fresh local ingredients, and innovation. It can be divided into two broadly-defined traditions: cuisine associated with the west coast, which incorporates a variety of seafood elements, and cuisine associated with the interior of the province, which embraces local game meat, farm-to-table produce, and methods of curing and smoking. Seafood is an important staple of the province's local food culture due to its proximity to the Pacific Ocean, as well as the region's numerous rivers and lakes. BC is known for several unique dishes and is a producer of fruit, wine, and cheese.<ref name="/ 2022 o454"></ref>
Seafoods of British Columbia include sushi (BC roll, dynamite roll, California roll), dungeness crab (boiled, tacos), spot prawns, wild pacific salmon (smoked, candied, teriyaki, chowder, sandwich), and halibut (baked, lemon ginger), as well as delicacies like white sturgeon caviar and geoduck
British Columbia is also home to numerous unique non-seafood culinary staples. Some dishes include Doukhobour borscht, Salt Spring Island lamb, Japadog street food, and Butter chicken pizza. Some unique pastries include apple cranberry cinnamon buns, Nanaimo bars, and Victoria creams. British Columbia also produces several distinct local cheeses, such as kabritt, Castle Blue, and Comox Brie. The London Fog tea latte was invented in Vancouver and remains a popular beverage among coffee shops in the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada; it is referred to as a "Vancouver Fog" in Scotland.
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The Okanagan produces many unique fruits originating from the region, including Ambrosia and Spartan apples, Stella and Skeena cherries, and Corontation grapes. Other fruits grown in the province include peaches, pears, plums, apricots, strawberries, blackberries, cranberries, and loganberries.
British Columbia is renowned for its wine production. The primary wine-producing regions include the Okanagan, the Similkameen Valley, Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands, and the Fraser Valley. As of November 2014, there are 280 licensed grape wineries and 929 vineyards.
Outdoor life and athletics.
Given its varied mountainous terrain and its coasts, lakes, rivers, and forests, British Columbia has long been enjoyed for pursuits like hiking and camping, rock climbing and mountaineering, hunting and fishing.
Water sports, both motorized and non-motorized, are enjoyed in many places. Sea kayaking opportunities abound on the British Columbia coast with its fjords. Whitewater rafting and kayaking are popular on many inland rivers. Sailing and sailboarding are widely enjoyed.
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In winter, cross-country and telemark skiing are much enjoyed, and in recent decades high-quality downhill skiing has been developed in the Coast Mountain range and the Rockies, as well as in the southern areas of the Shuswap Highlands and the Columbia Mountains. Snowboarding has mushroomed in popularity since the early 1990s. The 2010 Winter Olympics downhill events were held in the Whistler Blackcomb area of the province, while the indoor events were conducted in the Vancouver area.
In Vancouver and Victoria (as well as some other cities), opportunities for joggers and bicyclists have been developed. Cross-country bike touring has been popular since the ten-speed bike became available many years ago. Since the advent of the more robust mountain bike, trails in more rugged and wild places have been developed for them. A 2016 poll on global biking website Pinkbike rated BC as the top destination mountain bikers would like to ride. Some of the province's retired rail beds have been converted and maintained for hiking, biking, and cross-country skiing. Longboarding is also a popular activity because of the hilly geography of the region.
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Horseback riding is enjoyed by many British Columbians. Opportunities for trail riding, often into especially scenic areas, have been established for tourists in numerous areas of the province.
British Columbia also has strong participation levels in many other sports, including golf, tennis, soccer, hockey, Canadian football, rugby union, lacrosse, baseball, softball, basketball, curling, disc golf, Ultimate and figure skating. British Columbia has produced many outstanding athletes, especially in aquatic and winter sports.
Consistent with both increased tourism and increased participation in diverse recreations by British Columbians has been the proliferation of lodges, chalets, bed and breakfasts, motels, hotels, fishing camps, and park-camping facilities in recent decades.
In certain areas, there are businesses, non-profit societies, or municipal governments dedicated to promoting ecotourism in their region. A number of British Columbia farmers offer visitors to combine tourism with farm work, for example, through the WWOOF Canada program.
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Education.
K-12 education.
British Columbia is home to a comprehensive education system consisting of public schools and independent schools that is overseen by the provincial Ministry of Education. The public school system is divided in 59 anglophone school districts and one francophone school district, the "Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie-Britannique," which operates French-language public schools throughout the province. The anglophone school districts are governed by school board trustees who are directly elected by the school district's residents. Although 86 percent of students are enrolled in the public school system, British Columbia has one of the highest shares of independent school enrolment among Canadian province, at 14 percent of the student population, due to its relatively generous funding model; most independent schools receive 50 percent of the operating funding that their public counterparts receive from the government. A very small percentage (less than 1 percent) of students are home schooled.
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Like most other provinces in Canada, education is compulsory from ages 6 to 16 (grades 1–10), although the vast majority of students remain in school until they graduate from high school (grade 12) at the age of 18. In order to graduate with a graduation certificate, known as a Dogwood Diploma in BC, students must take a minimum of 80 course credits during grades 10 to 12. These credits include a variety of required courses (e.g. in language arts, social studies, mathematics, and science), as well as elective courses.
Academic achievement in British Columbia is relatively good, although it has been slipping in recent years by some measures. In 2020, 86 percent of students in British Columbia graduated from high school within six years of entering grade 8. According to the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores, students in British Columbia scored the second highest in reading ability, fourth highest in mathematic prowess, and fourth highest in science knowledge of the 10 Canadian provinces, although these scores have declined significantly since the 2000 and 2015 assessments.
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International students.
In September 2014, there were 11,000 international students in BC public K-12 schools and about 3,000 international students in other BC K-12 schools.
Higher education.
British Columbia has a diverse array of higher educational institutions, ranging from publicly funded universities, colleges, and institutes, to private universities, colleges, seminaries, and career institutes. Public institutions receive approximately half of their funding from grants from the provincial government, with the remaining revenue stemming from tuition charges and philanthropic donations. Each post-secondary institution sets its own admission requirements, although the standard requirement is the completion of high school.
Public universities and colleges include:
British Columbia is also home to 11 private colleges and universities located throughout the province, including:
Two American universities (Fairleigh Dickinson University and Northeastern University) also have degree-granting campuses in Vancouver. |
The Buddha
Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha (), was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist legends, he was born in Lumbini, in what is now Nepal, to royal parents of the Shakya clan, but renounced his home life to live as a wandering ascetic. After leading a life of mendicancy, asceticism, and meditation, he attained nirvana at Bodh Gaya in what is now India. The Buddha then wandered through the lower Indo-Gangetic Plain, teaching and building a monastic order. Buddhist tradition holds he died in Kushinagar and reached "parinirvana" ("final release from conditioned existence").
According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha taught a Middle Way between sensual indulgence and severe asceticism, leading to freedom from ignorance, craving, rebirth, and suffering. His core teachings are summarized in the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, a training of the mind that includes ethical training and kindness toward others, and meditative practices such as sense restraint, mindfulness, dhyana (meditation proper). Another key element of his teachings are the concepts of the five skandhas and dependent origination, describing how all "dharmas" (both mental states and concrete 'things') come into being, and cease to be, depending on other "dharmas", lacking an existence on their own "svabhava").
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While in the Nikayas he frequently refers to himself as the Tathāgata, the earliest attestation of the title Buddha is from the 3rd century BCE, meaning 'Awakened One' or 'Enlightened One'. His teachings were compiled by the Buddhist community in the Vinaya, his codes for monastic practice, and the Sutta Piṭaka, a compilation of teachings based on his discourses. These were passed down in Middle Indo-Aryan dialects through an oral tradition. Later generations composed additional texts, such as systematic treatises known as "Abhidharma", biographies of the Buddha, collections of stories about his past lives known as "Jataka tales", and additional discourses, i.e., the Mahayana sutras.
Buddhism evolved into a variety of traditions and practices, represented by Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana, and spread beyond the Indian subcontinent. While Buddhism declined in India, and mostly disappeared after the 8th century CE due to a lack of popular and economic support, Buddhism is more prominent in Southeast and East Asia.
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Etymology, names and titles.
Siddhārtha Gautama and Buddha Shakyamuni.
According to Donald Lopez Jr., "... he tended to be known as either Buddha or Sakyamuni in China, Korea, Japan, and Tibet, and as either Gotama Buddha or Samana Gotama ('the ascetic Gotama') in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia."
"Buddha", "Awakened One" or "Enlightened One", is the masculine form of "budh" (बुध् ), "to wake, be awake, observe, heed, attend, learn, become aware of, to know, be conscious again", "to awaken" to open up' (as does a flower)", "one who has awakened from the deep sleep of ignorance and opened his consciousness to encompass all objects of knowledge". It is not a personal name, but a title for those who have attained bodhi (awakening, enlightenment). "Buddhi", the power to "form and retain concepts, reason, discern, judge, comprehend, understand", is the faculty which discerns truth ("satya") from falsehood.
The name of his clan was Gautama (Pali: Gotama). His given name, "Siddhārtha" (the Sanskrit form; the Pali rendering is "Siddhattha"; in Tibetan it is "Don grub"; in Chinese "Xidaduo"; in Japanese "Shiddatta/Shittatta"; in Korean "Siltalta") means "He Who Achieves His Goal". The clan name of Gautama means "descendant of Gotama", "Gotama" meaning "one who has the most light", and comes from the fact that Kshatriya clans adopted the names of their house priests.
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While the term "Buddha" is used in the Agamas and the Pali Canon, the oldest surviving written records of the term "Buddha" is from the middle of the 3rd century BCE, when several Edicts of Ashoka (reigned –232 BCE) mention the Buddha and Buddhism. Ashoka's Lumbini pillar inscription commemorates the Emperor's pilgrimage to Lumbini as the Buddha's birthplace, calling him the "Buddha Shakyamuni" (Brahmi script: 𑀩𑀼𑀥 𑀲𑀓𑁆𑀬𑀫𑀼𑀦𑀻 "Bu-dha Sa-kya-mu-nī", "Buddha, Sage of the Shakyas").
Śākyamuni, Sakyamuni, or Shakyamuni (, ) means "Sage of the Shakyas".
Tathāgata.
"Tathāgata" (Pali; ) is a term the Buddha commonly used when referring to himself or other Buddhas in the Pāli Canon. The exact meaning of the term is unknown, but it is often thought to mean either "one who has thus gone" ("tathā-gata"), "one who has thus come" ("tathā-āgata"), or sometimes "one who has thus not gone" ("tathā-agata"). This is interpreted as signifying that the Tathāgata is beyond all coming and going—beyond all transitory phenomena. A "tathāgata" is "immeasurable", "inscrutable", "hard to fathom", and "not apprehended".
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Other epithets.
A list of other epithets is commonly seen together in canonical texts and depicts some of his perfected qualities:
The Pali Canon also contains numerous other titles and epithets for the Buddha, including: All-seeing, All-transcending sage, Bull among men, The Caravan leader, Dispeller of darkness, The Eye, Foremost of charioteers, Foremost of those who can cross, King of the Dharma ("Dharmaraja"), Kinsman of the Sun, Helper of the World ("Lokanatha"), Lion ("Siha"), Lord of the Dhamma, Of excellent wisdom ("Varapañña"), Radiant One, Torchbearer of mankind, Unsurpassed doctor and surgeon, Victor in battle, and Wielder of power. Another epithet, used at inscriptions throughout South and Southeast Asia, is "Maha sramana", "great "sramana"" (ascetic, renunciate).
Sources.
Historical sources.
Pali suttas.
On the basis of philological evidence, Indologist and Pāli expert Oskar von Hinüber says that some of the Pāli suttas have retained very archaic place-names, syntax, and historical data from close to the Buddha's lifetime, including the "Mahāparinibbāṇa Sutta" which contains a detailed account of the Buddha's final days. Hinüber proposes a composition date of no later than 350–320 BCE for this text, which would allow for a "true historical memory" of the events approximately 60 years prior if the Short Chronology for the Buddha's lifetime is accepted (but he also points out that such a text was originally intended more as hagiography than as an exact historical record of events).
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John S. Strong sees certain biographical fragments in the canonical texts preserved in Pāli, as well as Chinese, Tibetan and Sanskrit as the earliest material. These include texts such as the "Discourse on the Noble Quest" ("Ariyapariyesanā-sutta") and its parallels in other languages.
Pillar and rock inscriptions.
No written records about Gautama were found from his lifetime or from the one or two centuries thereafter. But from the middle of the 3rd century BCE, several Edicts of Ashoka (reigned c. 268 to 232 BCE) mention the Buddha and Buddhism. Particularly, Ashoka's Lumbini pillar inscription commemorates the Emperor's pilgrimage to Lumbini as the Buddha's birthplace, calling him the "Buddha Shakyamuni" (Brahmi script: 𑀩𑀼𑀥 𑀲𑀓𑁆𑀬𑀫𑀼𑀦𑀻 "Bu-dha Sa-kya-mu-nī", "Buddha, Sage of the Shakyas"). Another one of his edicts (Minor Rock Edict No. 3) mentions the titles of several "Dhamma" texts (in Buddhism, "dhamma" is another word for "dharma"), establishing the existence of a written Buddhist tradition at least by the time of the Maurya era. These texts may be the precursor of the Pāli Canon.
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"Sakamuni" is also mentioned of Bharhut, dated to , in relation with his illumination and the Bodhi tree, with the inscription "Bhagavato Sakamunino Bodho" ("The illumination of the Blessed Sakamuni").
Oldest surviving manuscripts.
The oldest surviving Buddhist manuscripts are the Gandhāran Buddhist texts, found in Gandhara (corresponding to modern northwestern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan) and written in Gāndhārī, they date from the first century BCE to the third century CE.
Biographical sources.
Early canonical sources include the "Ariyapariyesana Sutta" (MN 26), the "Mahāparinibbāṇa Sutta" (DN 16), the "Mahāsaccaka-sutta" (MN 36), the "Mahapadana Sutta" (DN 14), and the "Achariyabhuta Sutta" (MN 123), which include selective accounts that may be older, but are not full biographies. The Jātaka tales retell previous lives of Gautama as a bodhisattva, and the first collection of these can be dated among the earliest Buddhist texts. The "Mahāpadāna Sutta" and "Achariyabhuta Sutta" both recount miraculous events surrounding Gautama's birth, such as the bodhisattva's descent from the Tuṣita Heaven into his mother's womb.
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The sources which present a complete picture of the life of Siddhārtha Gautama are a variety of different, and sometimes conflicting, traditional biographies from a later date. These include the "Buddhacarita", "Lalitavistara Sūtra", "Mahāvastu", and the "Nidānakathā". Of these, the "Buddhacarita" is the earliest full biography, an epic poem written by the poet Aśvaghoṣa in the first century CE. The "Lalitavistara Sūtra" is the next oldest biography, a Mahāyāna/Sarvāstivāda biography dating to the 3rd century CE.
The "Mahāvastu" from the Mahāsāṃghika Lokottaravāda tradition is another major biography, composed incrementally until perhaps the 4th century CE. The Dharmaguptaka biography of the Buddha is the most exhaustive, and is entitled the "Abhiniṣkramaṇa Sūtra", and various Chinese translations of this date between the 3rd and 6th century CE. The "Nidānakathā" is from the Theravada tradition in Sri Lanka and was composed in the 5th century by Buddhaghoṣa.
Historical person.
Understanding the historical person.
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Scholars are hesitant to make claims about the historical facts of the Buddha's life. Most of them accept that the Buddha lived, taught, and founded a monastic order during the Mahajanapada period, specifically during the reign of Bimbisara, ruler of Magadha, and died during the reign of Bimbisara's successor Ajatashatru, thus also making him a contemporary of Mahavira, the Jain tirthankara.
There is less consensus on the veracity of many details contained in traditional biographies, as "Buddhist scholars [...] have mostly given up trying to understand the historical person." The earliest versions of Buddhist biographical texts that we have already contain many supernatural, mythical, or legendary elements. In the 19th century, some scholars simply omitted these from their accounts of the life, so that "the image projected was of a Buddha who was a rational, socratic teacher—a great person perhaps, but a more or less ordinary human being". More recent scholars tend to see such demythologisers as remythologisers, "creating a Buddha that appealed to them, by eliding one that did not".
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Dating.
The dates of Gautama's birth and death are uncertain. Within the Eastern Buddhist tradition of China, Vietnam, Korea and Japan, the traditional date for Buddha's death was 949 BCE, but according to the Ka-tan system of the Kalachakra tradition, Buddha's death was about 833 BCE.
Buddhist texts present two chronologies which have been used to date the lifetime of the Buddha. The "long chronology", from Sri Lankese chronicles, states the Buddha had a lifespan of 80 years and died 218 years before Asoka's coronation, thus from which it is inferred that he was born about 298 years before the coronation. According to these chronicles, Asoka was crowned in 326 BCE, which gives Buddha's lifespan as 624–544 BCE, and are the accepted dates in Sri Lanka and South-East Asia. Alternatively, most scholars who also accept the long chronology but date Asoka's coronation around 268 BCE (based on Greek evidence) put the Buddha's lifespan later at 566–486 BCE.
However, the "short chronology", from Indian sources and their Chinese and Tibetan translations, while also giving a lifespan of 80 years, place the Buddha's death 100 years before Asoka's coronation, from which his birth is inferred at about 180 years before the coronation. Following the Greek sources of Asoka's coronation as 268 BCE, this dates the Buddha's lifespan even later as 448–368 BCE.
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Most historians in the early 20th century use the earlier dates of 563–483 BCE, differing from the long chronology based on Greek evidence by just three years. More recently, there are attempts to put his death midway between the long chronology's 480s BCE and the short chronology's 360s BCE, so circa 410 BCE. At a symposium on this question held in 1988, the majority of those who presented gave dates within 20 years either side of 400 BCE for the Buddha's death. These alternative chronologies, however, have not been accepted by all historians.
The dating of Bimbisara and Ajatashatru also depends on the long or short chronology. In the long chrononology, Bimbisara reigned , and died 492 BCE, while Ajatashatru reigned . In the short chronology Bimbisara reigned , while Ajatashatru died between and 330 BCE. According to historian K. T. S. Sarao, a proponent of the Short Chronology wherein the Buddha's lifespan was , it can be estimated that Bimbisara was reigning , and Ajatashatru was reigning .
Historical context.
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Shakyas.
According to the Buddhist tradition, Shakyamuni Buddha was a Shakya, a sub-Himalayan ethnicity and clan of north-eastern region of the Indian subcontinent. The Shakya community was on the periphery, both geographically and culturally, of the eastern Indian subcontinent in the 5th century BCE. The community, though describable as a small republic, was probably an oligarchy, with his father as the elected chieftain or oligarch. The Shakyas were widely considered to be non-Vedic (and, hence impure) in Brahminic texts; their origins remain speculative and debated. Bronkhorst terms this culture, which grew alongside Aryavarta without being affected by the flourish of Brahminism, as Greater Magadha.
The Buddha's tribe of origin, the Shakyas, seems to have had non-Vedic religious practices which persist in Buddhism, such as the veneration of trees and sacred groves, and the worship of tree spirits (yakkhas) and serpent beings (nagas). They also seem to have built burial mounds called stupas. Tree veneration remains important in Buddhism today, particularly in the practice of venerating Bodhi trees. Likewise, yakkas and nagas have remained important figures in Buddhist religious practices and mythology.
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Shramanas.
The Buddha's lifetime coincided with the flourishing of influential śramaṇa schools of thought like Ājīvika, Cārvāka, Jainism, and Ajñana. The "Brahmajala Sutta" records sixty-two such schools of thought. In this context, a śramaṇa refers to one who labours, toils or exerts themselves (for some higher or religious purpose). It was also the age of influential thinkers like Mahavira, Pūraṇa Kassapa, Makkhali Gosāla, Ajita Kesakambalī, Pakudha Kaccāyana, and Sañjaya Belaṭṭhaputta, as recorded in Samaññaphala Sutta, with whose viewpoints the Buddha must have been acquainted.
Śāriputra and Moggallāna, two of the foremost disciples of the Buddha, were formerly the foremost disciples of Sañjaya Belaṭṭhaputta, the sceptic. The Pāli canon frequently depicts Buddha engaging in debate with the adherents of rival schools of thought. There is philological evidence to suggest that the two masters, Alara Kalama and Uddaka Rāmaputta, were historical figures and they most probably taught Buddha two different forms of meditative techniques. Thus, Buddha was just one of the many śramaṇa philosophers of that time. In an era where holiness of person was judged by their level of asceticism, Buddha was a reformist within the śramaṇa movement, rather than a reactionary against Vedic Brahminism.
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Coningham and Young note that both Jains and Buddhists used stupas, while tree shrines can be found in both Buddhism and Hinduism.
Urban environment and egalitarianism.
The rise of Buddhism coincided with the Second Urbanisation, in which the Ganges Basin was settled and cities grew, in which egalitarianism prevailed. According to Thapar, the Buddha's teachings were "also a response to the historical changes of the time, among which were the emergence of the state and the growth of urban centres". While the Buddhist mendicants renounced society, they lived close to the villages and cities, depending for alms-givings on lay supporters.
According to Dyson, the Ganges basin was settled from the north-west and the south-east, as well as from within, "[coming] together in what is now Bihar (the location of Pataliputra)". The Ganges basin was densely forested, and the population grew when new areas were deforestated and cultivated. The society of the middle Ganges basin lay on "the outer fringe of Aryan cultural influence", and differed significantly from the Aryan society of the western Ganges basin. According to Stein and Burton, "[t]he gods of the brahmanical sacrificial cult were not rejected so much as ignored by Buddhists and their contemporaries." Jainism and Buddhism opposed the social stratification of Brahmanism, and their egalitarism prevailed in the cities of the middle Ganges basin. This "allowed Jains and Buddhists to engage in trade more easily than Brahmans, who were forced to follow strict caste prohibitions."
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Semi-legendary biography.
Nature of traditional depictions.
In the earliest Buddhist texts, the nikāyas and āgamas, the Buddha is not depicted as possessing omniscience ("sabbaññu") nor is he depicted as being an eternal transcendent ("lokottara") being. According to Bhikkhu Analayo, ideas of the Buddha's omniscience (along with an increasing tendency to deify him and his biography) are found only later, in the Mahayana sutras and later Pali commentaries or texts such as the "Mahāvastu". In the "Sandaka Sutta", the Buddha's disciple Ananda outlines an argument against the claims of teachers who say they are all knowing while in the "Tevijjavacchagotta Sutta" the Buddha himself states that he has never made a claim to being omniscient, instead he claimed to have the "higher knowledges" (abhijñā). The earliest biographical material from the Pali Nikayas focuses on the Buddha's life as a śramaṇa, his search for enlightenment under various teachers such as Alara Kalama and his forty-five-year career as a teacher.
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Traditional biographies of Gautama often include numerous miracles, omens, and supernatural events. The character of the Buddha in these traditional biographies is often that of a fully transcendent (Skt. "lokottara") and perfected being who is unencumbered by the mundane world. In the "Mahāvastu", over the course of many lives, Gautama is said to have developed supramundane abilities including: a painless birth conceived without intercourse; no need for sleep, food, medicine, or bathing, although engaging in such "in conformity with the world"; omniscience, and the ability to "suppress karma". As noted by Andrew Skilton, the Buddha was often described as being superhuman, including descriptions of him having the 32 major and 80 minor marks of a "great man", and the idea that the Buddha could live for as long as an aeon if he wished (see DN 16).
The ancient Indians were generally unconcerned with chronologies, being more focused on philosophy. Buddhist texts reflect this tendency, providing a clearer picture of what Gautama may have taught than of the dates of the events in his life. These texts contain descriptions of the culture and daily life of ancient India which can be corroborated from the Jain scriptures, and make the Buddha's time the earliest period in Indian history for which significant accounts exist. British author Karen Armstrong writes that although there is very little information that can be considered historically sound, we can be reasonably confident that Siddhārtha Gautama did exist as a historical figure. Michael Carrithers goes further, stating that the most general outline of "birth, maturity, renunciation, search, awakening and liberation, teaching, death" must be true.
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Previous lives.
Legendary biographies like the Pali "Buddhavaṃsa" and the Sanskrit "Jātakamālā" depict the Buddha's (referred to as "bodhisattva" before his awakening) career as spanning hundreds of lifetimes before his last birth as Gautama. Many of these previous lives are narrated in the Jatakas, which consists of 547 stories. The format of a Jataka typically begins by telling a story in the present which is then explained by a story of someone's previous life.
Besides imbuing the pre-Buddhist past with a deep karmic history, the Jatakas also serve to explain the bodhisattva's (the Buddha-to-be) path to Buddhahood. In biographies like the "Buddhavaṃsa", this path is described as long and arduous, taking "four incalculable ages" ("asamkheyyas").
In these legendary biographies, the bodhisattva goes through many different births (animal and human), is inspired by his meeting of past Buddhas, and then makes a series of resolves or vows ("pranidhana") to become a Buddha himself. Then he begins to receive predictions by past Buddhas. One of the most popular of these stories is his meeting with Dipankara Buddha, who gives the bodhisattva a prediction of future Buddhahood.
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Another theme found in the Pali Jataka Commentary ("Jātakaṭṭhakathā") and the Sanskrit "Jātakamālā" is how the Buddha-to-be had to practice several "perfections" ("pāramitā") to reach Buddhahood. The Jatakas also sometimes depict negative actions done in previous lives by the bodhisattva, which explain difficulties he experienced in his final life as Gautama.
Birth and early life.
According to the Buddhist tradition, Gautama was born in Lumbini, now in modern-day Nepal, and raised in Kapilavastu. The exact site of ancient Kapilavastu is unknown. It may have been either Piprahwa, Uttar Pradesh, in present-day India, or Tilaurakot, in present-day Nepal. Both places belonged to the Sakya territory, and are located only apart.
In the mid-3rd century BCE the Emperor Ashoka determined that Lumbini was Gautama's birthplace and thus installed a pillar there with the inscription: "...this is where the Buddha, sage of the Śākyas ("Śākyamuni"), was born."
According to later biographies such as the "Mahavastu" and the "Lalitavistara", his mother, Maya (Māyādevī), Suddhodana's wife, was a princess from Devdaha, the ancient capital of the Koliya Kingdom (what is now the Rupandehi District of Nepal). Legend has it that, on the night Siddhartha was conceived, Queen Maya dreamt that a white elephant with six white tusks entered her right side, and ten months later Siddhartha was born. As was the Shakya tradition, when his mother Queen Maya became pregnant, she left Kapilavastu for her father's kingdom to give birth.
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Her son is said to have been born on the way, at Lumbini, in a garden beneath a sal tree. The earliest Buddhist sources state that the Buddha was born to an aristocratic Kshatriya (Pali: "khattiya") family called Gotama (Sanskrit: Gautama), who were part of the Shakyas, a tribe of rice-farmers living near the modern border of India and Nepal. His father Śuddhodana was "an elected chief of the Shakya clan", whose capital was Kapilavastu, and who were later annexed by the growing Kingdom of Kosala during the Buddha's lifetime.
The early Buddhist texts contain very little information about the birth and youth of Gotama Buddha. Later biographies developed a dramatic narrative about the life of the young Gotama as a prince and his existential troubles. They depict his father Śuddhodana as a hereditary monarch of the Suryavansha (Solar dynasty) of (Pāli: Okkāka). This is unlikely, as many scholars think that Śuddhodana was merely a Shakya aristocrat ("khattiya"), and that the Shakya republic was not a hereditary monarchy. The more egalitarian form of government, as a political alternative to Indian monarchies, may have influenced the development of the śramanic Jain and Buddhist sanghas, where monarchies tended toward Vedic Brahmanism.
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The day of the Buddha's birth, enlightenment and death is widely celebrated in Theravada countries as Vesak and the day he got conceived as Poson. Buddha's Birthday is called "Buddha Purnima" in Nepal, Bangladesh, and India as he is believed to have been born on a full moon day.
According to later biographical legends, during the birth celebrations, the hermit seer Asita journeyed from his mountain abode, analyzed the child for the "32 marks of a great man" and then announced that he would either become a great king ("chakravartin") or a great religious leader. Suddhodana held a naming ceremony on the fifth day and invited eight Brahmin scholars to read the future. All gave similar predictions. Kondañña, the youngest, and later to be the first arhat other than the Buddha, was reputed to be the only one who unequivocally predicted that Siddhartha would become a Buddha.
Early texts suggest that Gautama was not familiar with the dominant religious teachings of his time until he left on his religious quest, which is said to have been motivated by existential concern for the human condition. According to the early Buddhist Texts of several schools, and numerous post-canonical accounts, Gotama had a wife, Yasodhara, and a son, named Rāhula. Besides this, the Buddha in the early texts reports that "I lived a spoilt, a very spoilt life, monks (in my parents' home)."
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The legendary biographies like the "Lalitavistara" also tell stories of young Gotama's great martial skill, which was put to the test in various contests against other Shakyan youths.
Renunciation.
While the earliest sources merely depict Gotama seeking a higher spiritual goal and becoming an ascetic or "śramaṇa" after being disillusioned with lay life, the later legendary biographies tell a more elaborate dramatic story about how he became a mendicant.
The earliest accounts of the Buddha's spiritual quest is found in texts such as the Pali "Ariyapariyesanā-sutta" ("The discourse on the noble quest", MN 26) and its Chinese parallel at MĀ 204. These texts report that what led to Gautama's renunciation was the thought that his life was subject to old age, disease and death and that there might be something better. The early texts also depict the Buddha's explanation for becoming a sramana as follows: "The household life, this place of impurity, is narrow—the "samana" life is the free open air. It is not easy for a householder to lead the perfected, utterly pure and perfect holy life." MN 26, MĀ 204, the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya and the Mahāvastu all agree that his mother and father opposed his decision and "wept with tearful faces" when he decided to leave.
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Legendary biographies also tell the story of how Gautama left his palace to see the outside world for the first time and how he was shocked by his encounter with human suffering. These depict Gautama's father as shielding him from religious teachings and from knowledge of human suffering, so that he would become a great king instead of a great religious leader. In the "Nidanakatha" (5th century CE), Gautama is said to have seen an old man. When his charioteer Chandaka explained to him that all people grew old, the prince went on further trips beyond the palace. On these he encountered a diseased man, a decaying corpse, and an ascetic that inspired him. This story of the "four sights" seems to be adapted from an earlier account in the "Digha Nikaya" (DN 14.2) which instead depicts the young life of a previous Buddha, Vipassi.
The legendary biographies depict Gautama's departure from his palace as follows. Shortly after seeing the four sights, Gautama woke up at night and saw his female servants lying in unattractive, corpse-like poses, which shocked him. Therefore, he discovered what he would later understand more deeply during his enlightenment: "dukkha" ("standing unstable", "dissatisfaction") and the end of "dukkha". Moved by all the things he had experienced, he decided to leave the palace in the middle of the night against the will of his father, to live the life of a wandering ascetic.
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Accompanied by Chandaka and riding his horse Kanthaka, Gautama leaves the palace, leaving behind his son Rahula and Yaśodhara. He travelled to the river Anomiya, and cut off his hair. Leaving his servant and horse behind, he journeyed into the woods and changed into monk's robes there, though in some other versions of the story, he received the robes from a "Brahma" deity at Anomiya.
According to the legendary biographies, when the ascetic Gautama first went to Rajagaha (present-day Rajgir) to beg for alms in the streets, King Bimbisara of Magadha learned of his quest, and offered him a share of his kingdom. Gautama rejected the offer but promised to visit his kingdom first, upon attaining enlightenment.
Ascetic life and awakening.
Majjhima Nikaya 4 mentions that Gautama lived in "remote jungle thickets" during his years of spiritual striving and had to overcome the fear that he felt while living in the forests. The Nikaya-texts narrate that the ascetic Gautama practised under two teachers of yogic meditation. According to the "Ariyapariyesanā-sutta" (MN 26) and its Chinese parallel at MĀ 204, after having mastered the teaching of Ārāḍa Kālāma (), who taught a meditation attainment called "the sphere of nothingness", he was asked by Ārāḍa to become an equal leader of their spiritual community.
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Gautama felt unsatisfied by the practice because it "does not lead to revulsion, to dispassion, to cessation, to calm, to knowledge, to awakening, to Nibbana", and moved on to become a student of Udraka Rāmaputra (). With him, he achieved high levels of meditative consciousness (called "The Sphere of Neither Perception nor Non-Perception") and was again asked to join his teacher. But, once more, he was not satisfied for the same reasons as before, and moved on.
According to some sutras, after leaving his meditation teachers, Gotama then practiced ascetic techniques. The ascetic techniques described in the early texts include very minimal food intake, different forms of breath control, and forceful mind control. The texts report that he became so emaciated that his bones became visible through his skin. The "Mahāsaccaka-sutta" and most of its parallels agree that after taking asceticism to its extremes, Gautama realized that this had not helped him attain nirvana, and that he needed to regain strength to pursue his goal. One popular story tells of how he accepted milk and rice pudding from a village girl named Sujata.
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According to the 身毛喜豎經, his break with asceticism led his five companions to abandon him, since they believed that he had abandoned his search and become undisciplined. At this point, Gautama remembered a previous experience of "dhyana" ("meditation") he had as a child sitting under a tree while his father worked. This memory leads him to understand that "dhyana" is the path to liberation, and the texts then depict the Buddha achieving all four dhyanas, followed by the "three higher knowledges" ("tevijja"), culminating in complete insight into the Four Noble Truths, thereby attaining liberation from "samsara", the endless cycle of rebirth.
According to the "Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta" (SN 56), the Tathagata, the term Gautama uses most often to refer to himself, realized "the Middle Way"—a path of moderation away from the extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification, or the Noble Eightfold Path. In later centuries, Gautama became known as the "Buddha" or "Awakened One". The title indicates that unlike most people who are "asleep", a Buddha is understood as having "woken up" to the true nature of reality and sees the world 'as it is' ("yatha-bhutam"). A Buddha has achieved liberation ("vimutti"), also called Nirvana, which is seen as the extinguishing of the "fires" of desire, hatred, and ignorance, that keep the cycle of suffering and rebirth going.
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Following his decision to leave his meditation teachers, MĀ 204 and other parallel early texts report that Gautama sat down with the determination not to get up until full awakening ("sammā-sambodhi") had been reached; the "Ariyapariyesanā-sutta" does not mention "full awakening", but only that he attained nirvana. In Buddhist tradition, this event was said to have occurred under a pipal tree—known as "the Bodhi tree"—in Bodh Gaya, Bihar.
As reported by various texts from the Pali Canon, the Buddha sat for seven days under the bodhi tree "feeling the bliss of deliverance". The Pali texts also report that he continued to meditate and contemplated various aspects of the Dharma while living by the River Nairañjanā, such as Dependent Origination, the Five Spiritual Faculties and suffering ("dukkha").
The legendary biographies like the "Mahavastu, Nidanakatha" and the "Lalitavistara" depict an attempt by Mara, the ruler of the desire realm, to prevent the Buddha's nirvana. He does so by sending his daughters to seduce the Buddha, by asserting his superiority and by assaulting him with armies of monsters. However the Buddha is unfazed and calls on the earth (or in some versions of the legend, the earth goddess) as witness to his superiority by touching the ground before entering meditation. Other miracles and magical events are also depicted.
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First sermon and formation of the saṅgha.
According to MN 26, immediately after his awakening, the Buddha hesitated on whether or not he should teach the "Dharma" to others. He was concerned that humans were overpowered by ignorance, greed, and hatred that it would be difficult for them to recognise the path, which is "subtle, deep and hard to grasp". However, the god Brahmā Sahampati convinced him, arguing that at least some "with little dust in their eyes" will understand it. The Buddha relented and agreed to teach. According to Anālayo, the Chinese parallel to MN 26, MĀ 204, does not contain this story, but this event does appear in other parallel texts, such as in an "Ekottarika-āgama" discourse, in the "Catusparisat-sūtra", and in the "Lalitavistara".
According to MN 26 and MĀ 204, after deciding to teach, the Buddha initially intended to visit his former teachers, Alara Kalama and Udaka Ramaputta, to teach them his insights, but they had already died, so he decided to visit his five former companions. MN 26 and MĀ 204 both report that on his way to Vārānasī (Benares), he met another wanderer, an Ājīvika ascetic named Upaka in MN 26. The Buddha proclaimed that he had achieved full awakening, but Upaka was not convinced and "took a different path".
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MN 26 and MĀ 204 continue with the Buddha reaching the Deer Park (Sarnath) ("Mrigadāva", also called "Rishipatana", "site where the ashes of the ascetics fell") near Vārānasī, where he met the group of five ascetics and was able to convince them that he had indeed reached full awakening. According to MĀ 204 (but not MN 26), as well as the Theravāda Vinaya, an "Ekottarika-āgama" text, the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya, the Mahīśāsaka Vinaya, and the "Mahāvastu", the Buddha then taught them the "first sermon", also known as the "Benares sermon", i.e., the teaching of "the noble eightfold path as the middle path aloof from the two extremes of sensual indulgence and self-mortification". The Pali text reports that after the first sermon, the ascetic Koṇḍañña (Kaundinya) became the first arahant (liberated being) and the first Buddhist bhikkhu or monastic. The Buddha then continued to teach the other ascetics and they formed the first , the company of Buddhist monks.
Various sources such as the "Mahāvastu," the "Mahākhandhaka" of the Theravāda Vinaya and the "Catusparisat-sūtra" also mention that the Buddha taught them his second discourse, about the characteristic of "not-self" ("Anātmalakṣaṇa Sūtra"), at this time or five days later. After hearing this second sermon the four remaining ascetics also reached the status of "arahant."
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The Theravāda Vinaya and the "Catusparisat-sūtra" also speak of the conversion of Yasa, a local guild master, and his friends and family, who were some of the first laypersons to be converted and to enter the Buddhist community. The conversion of three brothers named Kassapa followed, who brought with them five hundred converts who had previously been "matted hair ascetics", and whose spiritual practice was related to fire sacrifices. According to the Theravāda Vinaya, the Buddha then stopped at the Gayasisa hill near Gaya and delivered his third discourse, the "Ādittapariyāya Sutta" (The Discourse on Fire), in which he taught that everything in the world is inflamed by passions and only those who follow the Eightfold path can be liberated.
At the end of the rainy season, when the Buddha's community had grown to around sixty awakened monks, he instructed them to wander on their own, teach and ordain people into the community, for the "welfare and benefit" of the world.
Travels and growth of the saṅgha.
For the remaining 40 or 45 years of his life, the Buddha is said to have travelled in the Gangetic Plain, in what is now Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and southern Nepal, teaching a diverse range of people: from nobles to servants, ascetics and householders, murderers such as Angulimala, and cannibals such as Alavaka. According to Schumann, the Buddha's travels ranged from "Kosambi on the Yamuna (25 km south-west of Allahabad )", to Campa (40 km east of Bhagalpur)" and from "Kapilavatthu (95 km north-west of Gorakhpur) to Uruvela (south of Gaya)". This covers an area of 600 by 300 km. His sangha enjoyed the patronage of the kings of Kosala and Magadha and he thus spent a lot of time in their respective capitals, Savatthi and Rajagaha.
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Although the Buddha's language remains unknown, it is likely that he taught in one or more of a variety of closely related Middle Indo-Aryan dialects, of which Pali may be a standardisation.
The sangha wandered throughout the year, except during the four months of the Vassa rainy season when ascetics of all religions rarely travelled. One reason was that it was more difficult to do so without causing harm to flora and animal life. The health of the ascetics might have been a concern as well. At this time of year, the sangha would retreat to monasteries, public parks or forests, where people would come to them.
The first vassana was spent at Varanasi when the sangha was formed. According to the Pali texts, shortly after the formation of the sangha, the Buddha travelled to Rajagaha, capital of Magadha, and met with King Bimbisara, who gifted a bamboo grove park to the sangha.
The Buddha's sangha continued to grow during his initial travels in north India. The early texts tell the story of how the Buddha's chief disciples, Sāriputta and Mahāmoggallāna, who were both students of the skeptic sramana Sañjaya Belaṭṭhiputta, were converted by Assaji. They also tell of how the Buddha's son, Rahula, joined his father as a bhikkhu when the Buddha visited his old home, Kapilavastu. Over time, other Shakyans joined the order as bhikkhus, such as Buddha's cousin Ananda, Anuruddha, Upali the barber, the Buddha's half-brother Nanda and Devadatta. Meanwhile, the Buddha's father Suddhodana heard his son's teaching, converted to Buddhism and became a stream-enterer.
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The early texts also mention an important lay disciple, the merchant Anāthapiṇḍika, who became a strong lay supporter of the Buddha early on. He is said to have gifted Jeta's grove ("Jetavana") to the sangha at great expense (the Theravada Vinaya speaks of thousands of gold coins).
Formation of the bhikkhunī order.
The formation of a parallel order of female monastics (bhikkhunī) was another important part of the growth of the Buddha's community. As noted by Anālayo's comparative study of this topic, there are various versions of this event depicted in the different early Buddhist texts.
According to all the major versions surveyed by Anālayo, Mahāprajāpatī Gautamī, Buddha's step-mother, is initially turned down by the Buddha after requesting ordination for her and some other women. Mahāprajāpatī and her followers then shave their hair, don robes and begin following the Buddha on his travels. The Buddha is eventually convinced by Ānanda to grant ordination to Mahāprajāpatī on her acceptance of eight conditions called gurudharmas which focus on the relationship between the new order of nuns and the monks.
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According to Anālayo, the only argument common to all the versions that Ananda uses to convince the Buddha is that women have the same ability to reach all stages of awakening. Anālayo also notes that some modern scholars have questioned the authenticity of the eight gurudharmas in their present form due to various inconsistencies. He holds that the historicity of the current lists of eight is doubtful, but that they may have been based on earlier injunctions by the Buddha.
Anālayo notes that various passages indicate that the reason for the Buddha's hesitation to ordain women was the danger that the life of a wandering sramana posed for women that were not under the protection of their male family members, such as dangers of sexual assault and abduction. Due to this, the gurudharma injunctions may have been a way to place "the newly founded order of nuns in a relationship to its male counterparts that resembles as much as possible the protection a laywoman could expect from her male relatives".
Later years.
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According to J.S. Strong, after the first 20 years of his teaching career, the Buddha seems to have slowly settled in Sravasti, the capital of the Kingdom of Kosala, spending most of his later years in this city.
As the sangha grew in size, the need for a standardized set of monastic rules arose and the Buddha seems to have developed a set of regulations for the sangha. These are preserved in various texts called "Pratimoksa" which were recited by the community every fortnight. The Pratimoksa includes general ethical precepts, as well as rules regarding the essentials of monastic life, such as bowls and robes.
In his later years, the Buddha's fame grew and he was invited to important royal events, such as the inauguration of the new council hall of the Shakyans (as seen in MN 53) and the inauguration of a new palace by Prince Bodhi (as depicted in MN 85). The early texts also speak of how during the Buddha's old age, the kingdom of Magadha was usurped by a new king, Ajatashatru, who overthrew his father Bimbisara. According to the "Samaññaphala Sutta," the new king spoke with different ascetic teachers and eventually took refuge in the Buddha. However, Jain sources also claim his allegiance, and it is likely he supported various religious groups, not just the Buddha's sangha exclusively.
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As the Buddha continued to travel and teach, he also came into contact with members of other śrāmana sects. There is evidence from the early texts that the Buddha encountered some of these figures and critiqued their doctrines. The "Samaññaphala Sutta" identifies six such sects.
The early texts also depict the elderly Buddha as suffering from back pain. Several texts depict him delegating teachings to his chief disciples since his body now needed more rest. However, the Buddha continued teaching well into his old age.
One of the most troubling events during the Buddha's old age was Devadatta's schism. Early sources speak of how the Buddha's cousin, Devadatta, attempted to take over leadership of the order and then left the sangha with several Buddhist monks and formed a rival sect. This sect is said to have been supported by King Ajatashatru. The Pali texts depict Devadatta as plotting to kill the Buddha, but these plans all fail. They depict the Buddha as sending his two chief disciples (Sariputta and Moggallana) to this schismatic community in order to convince the monks who left with Devadatta to return.
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All the major early Buddhist Vinaya texts depict Devadatta as a divisive figure who attempted to split the Buddhist community, but they disagree on what issues he disagreed with the Buddha on. The Sthavira texts generally focus on "five points" which are seen as excessive ascetic practices, while the Mahāsaṅghika Vinaya speaks of a more comprehensive disagreement, which has Devadatta alter the discourses as well as monastic discipline.
At around the same time of Devadatta's schism, there was also war between Ajatashatru's Kingdom of Magadha, and Kosala, led by an elderly king Pasenadi. Ajatashatru seems to have been victorious, a turn of events the Buddha is reported to have regretted.
Last days and "parinirvana".
The main narrative of the Buddha's last days, death and the events following his death is contained in the "Mahaparinibbana Sutta" (DN 16) and its various parallels in Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan. According to Anālayo, these include the Chinese Dirgha Agama 2, "Sanskrit fragments of the "Mahaparinirvanasutra"", and "three discourses preserved as individual translations in Chinese".
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The "Mahaparinibbana sutta" depicts the Buddha's last year as a time of war. It begins with Ajatashatru's decision to make war on the Vajjika League, leading him to send a minister to ask the Buddha for advice. The Buddha responds by saying that the Vajjikas can be expected to prosper as long as they do seven things, and he then applies these seven principles to the Buddhist Sangha, showing that he is concerned about its future welfare.
The Buddha says that the Sangha will prosper as long as they "hold regular and frequent assemblies, meet in harmony, do not change the rules of training, honour their superiors who were ordained before them, do not fall prey to worldly desires, remain devoted to forest hermitages, and preserve their personal mindfulness". He then gives further lists of important virtues to be upheld by the Sangha.
The early texts depict how the Buddha's two chief disciples, Sariputta and Moggallana, died just before the Buddha's death. The "Mahaparinibbana" depicts the Buddha as experiencing illness during the last months of his life but initially recovering. It depicts him as stating that he cannot promote anyone to be his successor. When Ānanda requested this, the "Mahaparinibbana" records his response as follows:
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After travelling and teaching some more, the Buddha ate his last meal, which he had received as an offering from a blacksmith named Cunda. Falling violently ill, Buddha instructed his attendant Ānanda to convince Cunda that the meal eaten at his place had nothing to do with his death and that his meal would be a source of the greatest merit as it provided the last meal for a Buddha. Bhikkhu Mettanando and Oskar von Hinüber argue that the Buddha died of mesenteric infarction, a symptom of old age, rather than food poisoning.
The precise contents of the Buddha's final meal are not clear, due to variant scriptural traditions and ambiguity over the translation of certain significant terms. The Theravada tradition generally believes that the Buddha was offered some kind of pork, while the Mahayana tradition believes that the Buddha consumed some sort of truffle or other mushroom. These may reflect the different traditional views on Buddhist vegetarianism and the precepts for monks and nuns. Modern scholars also disagree on this topic, arguing both for pig's flesh or some kind of plant or mushroom that pigs like to eat. Whatever the case, none of the sources which mention the last meal attribute the Buddha's sickness to the meal itself.
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As per the "Mahaparinibbana sutta," after the meal with Cunda, the Buddha and his companions continued travelling until he was too weak to continue and had to stop at Kushinagar, where Ānanda had a resting place prepared in a grove of Sala trees. After announcing to the sangha at large that he would soon be passing away to final Nirvana, the Buddha ordained one last novice into the order personally. His name was Subhadda. He then repeated his final instructions to the sangha, which was that the Dhamma and Vinaya was to be their teacher after his death. Then he asked if anyone had any doubts about the teaching, but nobody did. The Buddha's final words are reported to have been: "All "saṅkhāras" decay. Strive for the goal with diligence ("appamāda")" (Pali: 'vayadhammā saṅkhārā appamādena sampādethā').
He then entered his final meditation and died, reaching what is known as "parinirvana" (final nirvana; instead of a person being reborn, "the five aggregates of physical and mental phenomena that constitute a being cease to occur"). The "Mahaparinibbana" reports that in his final meditation he entered the four dhyanas consecutively, then the four immaterial attainments and finally the meditative dwelling known as "nirodha-samāpatti," before returning to the fourth dhyana right at the moment of death.
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Posthumous events.
According to the "Mahaparinibbana sutta," the Mallians of Kushinagar spent the days following the Buddha's death honouring his body with flowers, music and scents. The sangha waited until the eminent elder Mahākassapa arrived to pay his respects before cremating the body.
The Buddha's body was then cremated and the remains, including his bones, were kept as relics and they were distributed among various north Indian kingdoms like Magadha, Shakya and Koliya. These relics were placed in monuments or mounds called stupas, a common funerary practice at the time. Centuries later they would be exhumed and enshrined by Ashoka into many new stupas around the Mauryan realm. Many supernatural legends surround the history of alleged relics as they accompanied the spread of Buddhism and gave legitimacy to rulers.
According to various Buddhist sources, the First Buddhist Council was held shortly after the Buddha's death to collect, recite and memorize the teachings. Mahākassapa was chosen by the sangha to be the chairman of the council. However, the historicity of the traditional accounts of the first council is disputed by modern scholars.
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Teachings and views.
Historicity.
Scholarly views on the earliest teachings.
One method to obtain information on the oldest core of Buddhism is to compare the oldest versions of the Pali Canon and other texts, such as the surviving portions of Sarvastivada, Mulasarvastivada, Mahisasaka, Dharmaguptaka, and the Chinese Agamas. The reliability of these sources, and the possibility of drawing out a core of oldest teachings, is a matter of dispute. According to Lambert Schmithausen, there are three positions held by modern scholars of Buddhism with regard to the authenticity of the teachings contained in the Nikayas:
Scholars such as Richard Gombrich, Akira Hirakawa, Alexander Wynne and A.K. Warder hold that these Early Buddhist Texts contain material that could possibly be traced to the Buddha. Richard Gombrich argues that since the content of the earliest texts "presents such originality, intelligence, grandeur and—most relevantly—coherence...it is hard to see it as a composite work." Thus he concludes they are "the work of one genius". Peter Harvey also agrees that "much" of the Pali Canon "must derive from his [the Buddha's] teachings". Likewise, A. K. Warder has written that "there is no evidence to suggest that it [the shared teaching of the early schools] was formulated by anyone other than the Buddha and his immediate followers." According to Alexander Wynne, "the internal evidence of the early Buddhist literature proves its historical authenticity."
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Other scholars of Buddhist studies have disagreed with the mostly positive view that the early Buddhist texts reflect the teachings of the historical Buddha, arguing that some teachings contained in the early texts are the authentic teachings of the Buddha, but not others. Ainslie Embree writes that many sermons credited to the Buddha are the works of later teachers, so there is considerable doubt about his original message. According to Tilmann Vetter, inconsistencies remain, and other methods must be applied to resolve those inconsistencies. According to Tilmann Vetter, the earliest core of the Buddhist teachings is the meditative practice of "dhyāna", but "liberating insight" became an essential feature of the Buddhist tradition only at a later date.
He posits that the Fourth Noble Truths, the Eightfold path and Dependent Origination, which are commonly seen as essential to Buddhism, are later formulations which form part of the explanatory framework of this "liberating insight". Lambert Schmithausen similarly argues that the mention of the four noble truths as constituting "liberating insight", which is attained after mastering the four "dhyānas", is a later addition. Johannes Bronkhorst also argues that the four truths may not have been formulated in earliest Buddhism, and did not serve in earliest Buddhism as a description of "liberating insight".
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Edward Conze argued that the attempts of European scholars to reconstruct the original teachings of the Buddha were "all mere guesswork".
Core teachings.
A number of teachings and practices are deemed essential to Buddhism, including: the samyojana (fetters, chains or bounds), that is, the sankharas ("formations"), the kleshas (unwholesome mental states), including the three poisons, and the āsavas ("influx, canker"), that perpetuate sasāra, the repeated cycle of becoming; the six sense bases and the five aggregates, which describe the process from sense contact to consciousness which lead to this bondage to sasāra; dependent origination, which describes this process, and its reversal, in detail; and the Middle Way, summarized by the later tradition in the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, which prescribes how this bondage can be reversed.
According to N. Ross Reat, the Theravada Pali texts and the Mahasamghika school's "Śālistamba Sūtra" share
these basic teachings and practices. Bhikkhu Analayo concludes that the Theravada "Majjhima Nikaya" and Sarvastivada "Madhyama Agama" contain mostly the same major doctrines. Likewise, Richard Salomon has written that the doctrines found in the Gandharan Manuscripts are "consistent with non-Mahayana Buddhism, which survives today in the Theravada school of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, but which in ancient times was represented by eighteen separate schools".
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Samsara.
All beings have deeply entrenched samyojana (fetters, chains or bounds), that is, the sankharas ("formations"), kleshas (unwholesome mental states), including the three poisons, and āsavas ("influx, canker"), that perpetuate sasāra, the repeated cycle of becoming and rebirth. According to the Pali suttas, the Buddha stated that "this saṃsāra is without discoverable beginning. A first point is not discerned of beings roaming and wandering on hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving." In the "Dutiyalokadhammasutta sutta" (AN 8:6) the Buddha explains how "eight worldly winds" "keep the world turning around [...] Gain and loss, fame and disrepute, praise and blame, pleasure and pain". He then explains how the difference between a noble ("arya") person and an uninstructed worldling is that a noble person reflects on and understands the impermanence of these conditions.
This cycle of becoming is characterized by "dukkha", commonly referred to as "suffering", "dukkha" is more aptly rendered as "unsatisfactoriness" or "unease". It is the unsatisfactoriness and unease that comes with a life dictated by automatic responses and habituated selfishness, and the unsatifacories of expecting enduring happiness from things which are impermanent, unstable and thus unreliable. The ultimate noble goal should be liberation from this cycle.
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"Samsara" is dictated by karma, which is an impersonal natural law, similar to how certain seeds produce certain plants and fruits. "Karma" is not the only cause for one's conditions, as the Buddha listed various physical and environmental causes alongside karma. The Buddha's teaching of karma differed to that of the Jains and Brahmins, in that on his view, karma is primarily mental intention (as opposed to mainly physical action or ritual acts). The Buddha is reported to have said "By karma I mean intention." Richard Gombrich summarizes the Buddha's view of karma as follows: "all thoughts, words, and deeds derive their moral value, positive or negative, from the intention behind them".
The six sense bases and the five aggregates.
The āyatana (six sense bases) and the five skandhas (aggregates) describe how sensory contact leads to attachment and "dukkha". The six sense bases are eye and sight, ear and sound, nose and odour, tongue and taste, body and touch, and mind and thoughts. Together they create the input from which we create our world or reality, "the all". This process takes place through the five skandhas, "aggregates", "groups", "heaps", five groups of physical and mental processes, namely form (or material image, impression) (), sensations (or feelings, received from form) (), perceptions (), mental activity or formations (), consciousness (). They form part of other Buddhist teachings and lists, such as dependent origination, and explain how sensory input ultimately leads to bondage to samsara by the mental defilements.
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Dependent Origination.
In the early texts, the process of the arising of dukkha is explicated through the teaching of dependent origination, which says that everything that exists or occurs is dependent on conditioning factors. The most basic formulation of dependent origination is given in the early texts as: 'It being thus, this comes about' (Pali: "evam sati idam hoti"). This can be taken to mean that certain phenomena only arise when there are other phenomena present, thus their arising is "dependent" on other phenomena.
The philosopher Mark Siderits has outlined the basic idea of the Buddha's teaching of Dependent Origination of dukkha as follows:
In numerous early texts, this basic principle is expanded with a list of phenomena that are said to be conditionally dependent, as a result of later elaborations, including Vedic cosmogenies as the basis for the first four links. According to Boisvert, nidana 3-10 correlate with the five skandhas. According to Richard Gombrich, the twelve-fold list is a combination of two previous lists, the second list beginning with "tanha", "thirst", the cause of suffering as described in the second noble truth". According to Gombrich, the two lists were combined, resulting in contradictions in its reverse version.
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Anatta.
The Buddha saw his analysis of dependent origination as a "Middle Way" between "eternalism" ("sassatavada", the idea that some essence exists eternally) and "annihilationism" ("ucchedavada", the idea that we go completely out of existence at death). in this view, persons are just a causal series of impermanent psycho-physical elements, which are "anatta", without an independent or permanent self. The Buddha instead held that all things in the world of our experience are transient and that there is no unchanging part to a person. According to Richard Gombrich, the Buddha's position is simply that "everything is process".
The Buddha's arguments against an unchanging self rely on the scheme of the five skandhas, as can be seen in the Pali "Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta" (and its parallels in Gandhari and Chinese)"." In the early texts the Buddha teaches that all five aggregates, including consciousness ("viññana", which was held by Brahmins to be eternal), arise due to dependent origination. Since they are all impermanent, one cannot regard any of the psycho-physical processes as an unchanging self. Even mental processes such as consciousness and will ("cetana") are seen as being dependently originated and impermanent and thus do not qualify as a self ("atman").
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The Buddha saw the belief in a self as arising from our grasping at and identifying with the various changing phenomena, as well as from ignorance about how things really are. Furthermore, the Buddha held that we experience suffering because we hold on to erroneous self views. As Rupert Gethin explains, for the Buddha, a person is
Due to this view (termed ), the Buddha's teaching was opposed to all soul theories of his time, including the Jain theory of a "jiva" ("life monad") and the Brahmanical theories of atman (Pali: "atta") and purusha. All of these theories held that there was an eternal unchanging essence to a person, which was separate from all changing experiences, and which transmigrated from life to life. The Buddha's anti-essentialist view still includes an understanding of continuity through rebirth, it is just the rebirth of a process (karma), not an essence like the atman.
The path to liberation.
The Buddha taught a path ("marga") of training to undo the samyojana, kleshas and āsavas and attain "vimutti" (liberation). This path taught by the Buddha is depicted in the early texts (most famously in the Pali "Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta" and its numerous parallel texts) as a "Middle Way" between sensual indulgence on one hand and mortification of the body on the other.
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A common presentation of the core structure of Buddha's teaching found in the early texts is that of the Four Noble Truths, which refers to the Noble Eightfold Path. According to Gethin, another common summary of the path to awakening wisely used in the early texts is "abandoning the hindrances, practice of the four establishments of mindfulness and development of the awakening factors".
According to Rupert Gethin, in the Nikayas and Agamas, the Buddha's path is mainly presented in a cumulative and gradual "step by step" process, such as that outlined in the "Samaññaphala Sutta". Other early texts like the "Upanisa sutta" (SN 12.23), present the path as reversions of the process of Dependent Origination.
"Bhāvanā", cultivation of wholesome states, is central to the Buddha's path. Common practices to this goal, which are shared by most of these early presentations of the path, include "sila" (ethical training), restraint of the senses ("indriyasamvara"), "sati" (mindfulness) and "sampajañña" (clear awareness), and the practice of "dhyana", the cumulative development of wholesome states leading to a "state of perfect equanimity and awareness ("upekkhā-sati-parisuddhi")". Dhyana is preceded and supported by various aspects of the path such as sense restraint and mindfulness, which is elaborated in the "satipatthana"-scheme, as taught in the Pali "Satipatthana Sutta" and the sixteen elements of "Anapanasati", as taught in the "Anapanasati Sutta".
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Jain and Brahmanical influences.
In various texts, the Buddha is depicted as having studied under two named teachers, Āḷāra Kālāma and Uddaka Rāmaputta. According to Alexander Wynne, these were yogis who taught doctrines and practices similar to those in the Upanishads. According to Johannes Bronkhorst, the "meditation without breath and reduced intake of food" which the Buddha practiced before his awakening are forms of asceticism which are similar to Jain practices.
According to Richard Gombrich, the Buddha's teachings on Karma and Rebirth are a development of pre-Buddhist themes that can be found in Jain and Brahmanical sources, like the "Brihadaranyaka Upanishad". Likewise, "samsara", the idea that we are trapped in cycles of rebirth and that we should seek liberation from them through non-harming ("ahimsa") and spiritual practices, pre-dates the Buddha and was likely taught in early Jainism. According to K.R. Norman, the Buddhist teaching of the "three marks of existence" may also reflect Upanishadic or other influences . The Buddhist practice called "Brahma-vihara" may have also originated from a Brahmanic term; but its usage may have been common in the sramana traditions.
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Homeless life.
The early Buddhist texts depict the Buddha as promoting the life of a homeless and celibate "sramana", or mendicant, as the ideal way of life for the practice of the path. He taught that mendicants or "beggars" ("bhikkhus") were supposed to give up all possessions and to own just a begging bowl and three robes. As part of the Buddha's monastic discipline, they were also supposed to rely on the wider lay community for the basic necessities (mainly food, clothing, and lodging).
The Buddha's teachings on monastic discipline were preserved in the various Vinaya collections of the different early schools.
Buddhist monastics, which included both monks and nuns, were supposed to beg for their food, were not allowed to store up food or eat after noon and they were not allowed to use gold, silver or any valuables.
Society.
Critique of Brahmanism.
According to Bronkhorst, "the bearers of [the Brahmanical] tradition, the Brahmins, did not occupy a dominant position in the area in which the Buddha preached his message." Nevertheless, the Buddha was acquainted with Brahmanism, and in the early Buddhist Texts, the Buddha references Brahmanical devices. For example, in Samyutta Nikaya 111, Majjhima Nikaya 92 and Vinaya i 246 of the Pali Canon, the Buddha praises the Agnihotra as the foremost sacrifice and the Sāvitrī meter as the foremost meter. In general, the Buddha critiques the animal sacrifices and social system on certain key points.
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