Gautama Buddha in Hinduism

Gautama Buddha is viewed as an avatar of the god Vishnu in Vaishnava Hinduism. Buddhist teachings do not rely on the Vedas, are non-theistic and deny the reality of the self or Ātman; consequently, Hindu philosophers classified Buddhism as nāstika or heterodoxy within the scheme of Hinduism.

The Buddha is described in important Hindu scriptures, including almost all the major puranas. However, "not all of them refer to the same person: some of them refer to other persons, and some occurrences of 'buddha' simply mean 'a person possessing buddhi'; most of them, however, refer specifically to the founder of Buddhism." They portray him with two roles: preaching non-theistic Vedic views in order to restore the Dharma and criticizing animal sacrifice. A partial list of major Puranic references of the Buddha is as follows:

In the Puranic texts, he is mentioned as one of the ten Avatars of Vishnu, usually as the ninth one. Another important scripture that mentions him as an avatar is Parashara's Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra (2:1-5/7).

Buddha is often described as a yogi or yogācārya and as a sannyāsi. His father is usually called Śuddhodhana, which is consistent with the Buddhist tradition, while in a few places the Buddha's father is named Añjana or Jina. He is described as beautiful (devasundararūpa), of yellow skin, and wearing brown-red or red robes.

Only a few statements mention the worship of Buddha, e.g. the Varahapurana states that one desirous of beauty should worship him. In some of the puranas, he is described as having taken birth to "mislead the demons":

mohanārthaṃ dānavānāṃ bālarūpī pathi-sthitaḥ । putraṃ taṃ kalpayām āsa mūḍha-buddhir jinaḥ svayam ॥ tataḥ saṃmohayām āsa jinādyān asurāṃśakān । bhagavān vāgbhir ugrābhir ahiṃsā-vācibhir hariḥ ॥

...
Wikipedia