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CHAPTER III.
Mahavira and Buddha contemporaries.
After having shown that Mahavira and Buddha were two distinct historical personages, we shall try to establish their important dates. There is not much controversy about Mahavira's date of birth and death. The concurrent testimony of the Jains in all parts of India has fixed the year 527 B. o. as the year of his death, and as he died at the age of 72, he must have been born in 579 B. O. The dates about the founder of Buddhism are not so definitely and easily determined. The great difficulty of determining the exact date of a founder of a philosophy and religion in ancient India can be easily understood by one who remembers that at that early period, the Indians never thought of writing a biography however short and dry. Ancient India gave the almost unique example of a country in which there is a detailed history of philosophy without having any
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
