________________
84
believe that the Buddhist Pitakas were compiled two or three centuries after Buddha's Nirvana. Then, how could the above misunderstanding could have continued to exist for such a long time, even though both Mahavira and Buddha had lived contemporarily, preaching in the same limited area and both were the leaders of the same srama - nic tradition ?
Arguments ought to have been taken one by one and refuted authentically.
There is also a self-contradiction in the view of Sri Vijayendra Suri, On one the hand he writes (119) 'Buddha, in fact, should have received the news of Gos ala's death in the form of Mahāvira's death". While on the other hand he states (120), both Buddha and Gos alaka had died sixteen years before Mahāvira's Nirvana. But the Buddhist texts indicate that Buddha had heard about Mahavira's death long before he (Buddha) died, then how is it possible that he would have really received the news of Gosala's death? If one accepts the veracity of the Pitakas' evidence that the above event had really taken place, it is not reasonable to believe another testimony of the Pițakas that the event had happened years before Buddha's death?
Dr. Shanti Lal Shah
A valuable work, title 'Chronological Problems', written by Dr. Shanti Lal Shah, has been published in 1934 from Bonn (Germany) (121). The object of this book, in the words of the author himself, is (122): Not alone to fix the death-years of Buddha or Mahāvira or the coronation date of Candragupta and Asoka, nor to authenticate the Jain traditional account, but also to reconstruct the chronology of the whole history of Northern India from Ajātasatru to Kaniska is the aim of the book". The author has strived much to reconstruct the chronology of the kings from Ajātasatru to Kanis ka to fulfil his object. He has also succeded in giving historical form to some beliefs, but his effort to authorticate the Jain traditional belief here and there, shows rather his opinionated tendencies.
Also, he has accepted some beliefs of the later Buddhist works, without having considered their veracity.
