According to traditional Buddhist biographies, the infant Buddha took seven steps immediately after birth.
The story places his birth at Lumbini, where Queen Māyā gave birth while holding a branch of a sal tree. The newborn Siddhartha is said to have stood and walked, with a lotus appearing beneath each foot. In some versions, he moved in the four cardinal directions and made a declaration expressing his unique spiritual destiny.
This is a religious and symbolic birth narrative rather than a claim about an ordinary historical event. The seven steps are often interpreted as signaling that the child would become a Buddha and would not undergo another ordinary rebirth. Buddhist traditions differ in details: some accounts emphasize seven total steps, while others describe seven steps in each direction.
The episode became a major subject in Buddhist art. Images frequently show the newborn standing on a lotus, and annual Buddha-birth celebrations in parts of Asia reenact the bathing of the infant figure.