Introduction
Maya Devi was the chief queen of Suddhodana and mother of Siddhartha Gautama, remembered in Buddhist tradition for the auspicious dream that preceded his conception.
Family
- Spouse: Suddhodana (married)
- Children: Siddhartha Gautama
Birth at Lumbini
Traditional accounts describe Maya Devi conceiving after dreaming of a white elephant entering her side, and giving birth to Siddhartha while traveling to her parental home, stopping along the way in the Lumbini grove — a site that remains one of Buddhism's most important pilgrimage locations. She died seven days after his birth, and the infant was thereafter raised by her sister, Mahapajapati Gotami, who became Suddhodana's second wife.
This article follows the Pali Canon and its commentarial tradition as the primary early Buddhist textual source; where sources genuinely disagree on a detail (such as an exact parentage), that disagreement is noted rather than resolved into a single invented certainty.