Contemporaneity and Chronology of Mahavira and Buddha

Author(s): Nagrajmuni, Mahendramuni
Publisher: Today and Tomorrows Book Agency

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Mahāvīra and Buddha
these incriptions; but I ask, “Who could have written these inscriptions, if not Asoka ? and, how if written by Aśoka, can the date which they contain mean anything but 256 years after Buddha's Nirvāṇa ? These points, however, have been argued in so masterly a manner by Dr. Bühler in his "Second Notice that I should be afraid of weakening his case by adding anything of my own, and must refer my readers to his ‘Second Notice',
Now, the remarkable and important thing regarding this matter is that the "number 256 years” of the above inscriptions becomes quite consistence, with the date 502 B.C., which we have proved in this book to be the date of Buddha's Nirvāņa. It has already been made clear that the above inscriptions were written by Aśoka a little more than a year since he joined the Order", and he "joined the Order” 20 years after his consecration. Here, we reach a definite point regarding the chronology which is unanimous and certain. It is the date of Aśoka's consecration 269 B.C. Thus, Aśoka's consecration
269 B.C. Asoka "joined the Order” in
248 B.C.1
1. Dr. Radha Kumud Mukherjee has observed that since Asoka's
association with the order, he exerted himself with unflagging zeal for the propagation of Buddhism, and it was Asoka's zeal for his new faith that led him to preach it in a foreign colony by sending up a net-work of missions. The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 76 ; also, Asoka by Radha Kumud Mukherjee, p. 257. Accordingly and also because the historians accept 246 B.C. as the date of introduction of Buddhism into Ceylon by Mahendra (the son of Asoka) (cf. Dr. L.D. Barnatt, "The Early History of Ceylon in Cambridge History of India, Vol. I, p. 547). 248 B.C. our date of Asoka's "joining the Order" is proved to be correct.