date of the Buddha. The Pāli Canon records that the Buddha died at the age of 80, but the dates of his life are not known with certainty. The lack of systematic dating in Indian sources and the problems in correlating Indian and Western calendars pose major obstacles to chronological research in this area. Different dates for his life have become established in different parts of the Buddhist world. In Sri Lanka and south-east Asia it is not uncommon to see the life of the Buddha dated from 624-544 bce. In east Asia, the later dates of 448-368 bce are accepted. The conventional dates for the Buddha given in most secondary literature based on Western scholarhip are 566-466 bce, or 563-463 bce. More recent research, however, suggests that the Buddha lived some 50 years or more closer to our own time, and the current consensus among Western scholars is that he died some time between 410 and 400 bce.

A Dictionary of Buddhism, Oxford University Press, 2003, 2004 (which is available in electronic version from answer.com)