Political History Of Ancient India

SR No.: 032292
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Hemchandra Raychaudhari
Publisher: University of Calcutta
Publication Year: 1950
Total Pages: 714
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 17 MB

Page 255

226 POLITICAL HISTORY OF ANCIENT INDIA synchronisms led Geiger and a few other scholars to think that the era of 544 B.C. is a comparatively modern fabrication and that the true date of the death of the Buddha is 483 B.C.—a result closely approaching that to which the Cantonese tradition leads us. The Chola synchronisms referred to by these scholars are, however, not free from difficulties, and it has been pointed out by Geiger himself that the account in Chinese annals of an embassy which Mahānāman, king of Ceylon, sent to the emperor of China in 428 A.D., does not speak in favour of his revised Chronology. The traditional date of Menander which is 500 A.B., works out more satisfactorily with a Nirvāna era of 544 B.C., than with an era of 483 or 486 B.C. In regard to the Maurya period, however, calculations based on the traditional Ceylonese reckoning will place the accession of Chandragupta Maurya in 544—162 = 382 B.C., and the coronation of Asoka Maurya in 544—218= 326 B.C. These results are at variance with the evidence of Greek writers and the testimony of the inscriptions of Asoka himself. Classical writers represent Chandragupta as a contemporary of Alexander (326 B.C.) and of Seleukos (312 B.C.). Ašoka in his thirteenth Rock Edict speaks of certain Hellenistic kings as alive. As one at least of these rulers died not later than 258 B.C. (250 B.C. according to some authorities) and as rescripts on morality began to be written when Aśoka was anointed twelve years, his consecration could not have taken place after 269 B.C. (261 B.C. according to some). The date cannot be pushed back beyond 277 B.C., because his grandfather Chandragupta must have ascended the throne after 326 B.C., as he met Alexander in that year as an ordinary individual and died after a reign of 24
1 Ibid, Geiger, trans. p. xxviii; JRAS, 1909, pp. 1-34.