Contemporaneity and Chronology of Mahavira and Buddha

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

Page 79

Historians' View
59
not his accession and as this event, according to the Jains, does not coincide with the foundation of era of 58 B.C. attributed to Vikrama the date 528 B.C. for Mahāvīra's death can hardly be accepted as representing unanimous tradition. Certain Jain writers assume an interval of 18 years between the birth of Vikrama and the foundation of the era attributed to him and thereby seek to reconcile the Jain tradition about the date of Mahāvīra's Nirvāņa (58+18 +470=546 B.C.) with the Ceylonese date of the great dicease of Buddha (544 B.C.). But the suggestion can hardly be said to rest on any reliable tradition. Merutunga places the death of the last Jina or Tirthankara 470 years before the end of Saka rule and the victory, and not the birth of the traditional Vikrama. The date 528 B.C. for the Nirvana of the Jñātrika teacher can to a certain extent be reconciled with the Cantonese date of the death of Buddha 486 B.C. But then we shall have to assume that Mahāvīra died shortly after Buddha's enlightenment, forty-five years before the Parinivvāna, when the latter could hardly have become a renowned religious teacher of long standing as the Buddhist (canonical) texts would lead us to belief. Certain Jaina Sūtras seem to suggest that Mahāvīra died about sixteen years after the accession of Ajātaśatru and the commencement of this war with his hostile neighbours. This would place the Nirvāņa of the Jain teacher eight years after Buddha's death, as according to the Ceylonese chronicles, Buddha died 8 years after the enthronment of Ajātaśatru. The Nirvāņa of the Tīrthankara would, according to this view, fall in 478 B.C., if we accept the Cantonese reckoning (486 B.C.)
1. Here, instead of 'forty-five years' it should be 'forty-two years'. It seems that it is printed through a mistake (for 528-486=42; by taking 45, Buddha could not achieve enlightenment at that time.