Buddhist tradition holds that Siddhartha Gautama, who would become the Buddha, was born at Lumbini, in present day Nepal, to Queen Maya, wife of King Suddhodana of the Shakya clan, while Maya was traveling to her own family's home to give birth, as was customary. Later biographical texts, composed centuries after the events they describe, elaborate the birth with extensive miraculous detail: Maya is said to have conceived after dreaming of a white elephant entering her side, to have given birth standing and holding the branch of a tree, and the infant is described as immediately taking seven steps and declaring that this would be his final birth.
Maya is said to have died seven days after the birth, and Siddhartha was raised by her sister, who became his father's second wife. A sage is said to have examined the infant and predicted he would become either a great king or a great spiritual teacher, a prediction his father, hoping for the former, tried to ensure by shielding the young prince from exposure to suffering, old age, sickness and death for many years, a strategy the tradition holds ultimately failed and set in motion the chain of events leading to Siddhartha's eventual renunciation of royal life.
Lumbini remains an active Buddhist pilgrimage site today, marked by the Ashoka pillar the Mauryan emperor erected there in the third century BCE, itself among the earliest surviving physical evidence connecting the traditional birth narrative to a specific archaeologically confirmed location.