Gandhara Buddha, 1st or 2nd century CE, Museé Guimet, from Wikipedia Herman Hesse's novel Siddhartha, published in 1922, took many people around the world on "a journey to the East." The novel was first published in English in 1951, and was greatly admired by many in America, particularly those counterculture rebels who were skeptical of Cold War fears and a booming post-war materialism. They wanted to find a different path, a middle way--a way not unlike that of Siddhartha and Gautama--our protagonist and the Buddha he encounters on his spiritual journey. The Supreme Buddha is generally called Siddhartha Gautama--see this website for a description of him. Consider why Hesse includes a character named Siddhartha AND Gotama, who is clearly supposed to represent the historical Siddhartha Gautama.
The novel is filled with references to Hinduism and Buddhism, and to delineate the overlaps, distinctions, and historical relationship between the two religions is a much greater discussion than we have time for. This website includes interesting information on Buddhism. To understand the concepts of brahmin, atman, samsara, karma, and moksha, see this website.
In the section of the novel where Siddhartha converses with Gautama, they discuss what are known as The Four Noble Truths, one of the foundational tenets of Buddhist Wisdom.
Another interesting representation of the path to Enlightenment is the Ten Ox Herding Pictures. These visual and textual representations of the path to Enlightenment are mainly associated with Zen Buddhism, a school of Buddhism that focuses on meditation as the path to liberation.
One question to consider: how is Candide's grappling with Pangloss' optimism similar to and different from Siddhartha's grappling with Hindu and Buddhist belief? How does the sufficient reason of Leibniz compare to the karma of Buddhism?
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