Indian Antiquary Vol 03

Author(s): Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 93

MARCH, 1874.]
ERA OF BUDDHA AND ASOKA INSCRIPTION.
79
language to which I shall return), and other matters (pp. 12 ff.,). Dr. Kern returns (in p. 25) to the question of the Cingalese chronology, and combats Mr. Turnour's arguments in favour of the correctness of the date assumed by the Southern Buddhists as that of their great teacher's death. He urges-in reply to Turnour's assertion that "there is a chain of uninterrupted evidence in the historical annals of Ceylon from B.c. 161 to the present day, all tending to the confirmation of the date assigned" to the Nirvana-that even if a book written 460-470 A.D. could be good evidence of what occurred in the interval between 161 B.C. and 460 A.D., as Turnour assumes, it could afford no proof regarding events which occurred before 161 B.C., and then proceeds to remark that Mr. Turnour's reasoning in favour of the date 543, if he understands it rightly, appears to resolve itself into this: the chronology of the Cingalese, in almost all the points where we are able to control it, is faulty and falsified; but we cannot show that the date assigned to the Nirvana is false : therefore it is true. Dr. Kern himself prefers to reason otherwise, and say that our inability to disprove this date is a result of the want under which we labour, of contemporary dates; that the date of the Nirvána is inseparably connected with those which follow, and must stand or fall therewith. And further that the upholders of the date 543 must at the same time show, or make it probable, that the Nirvana is not to be placed 218 years before Asoka, but 260 years or more. As we cannot, Dr. Kern proceeds, accept any date on the ground of tradition alone, we must choose between the divergent suppositions, and must hold that to be the most probable which is least in conflict with facts and dates that are historically ascertained. It must, at the same time, be admitted that the most probable date may some time or other be disproved by thediscovery of sources of information at present inaccessible.
Prof. Kern proceeds as follows to determine the date of the Nirvana which, in the present state of our knowledge, appears to him to be the most probable. He places the beginning of Chandragupta's reign in 322 B.c. He reigned
If Asoka began to reign in 270 B.C. and the Nirvana took place only 100 years before that, we only obtain 370 88 the date of the latter. This miscalculation, as I learn from & communication of Prof. Kern himself, must have arisen from his having had in his thoughts the number 110, which according to the Northern Buddhists represented the
24 years, and his son 28, making together 52 years. Thus Asoka, who came next, became Emperor in 270 B.C. From the names of the Grecian kings who are mentioned in Asoka's inscriptions, and from the dates when they ruled, as well as from the date assigned for Asoka's conversion to Buddhism, it is to be concluded that these inscriptions must date from 258 B.c., or not long after. And as it is independently established that Asoka began to reign in 270 B.C., we may, from the concurrence of the two calculations, safely infer that Chandragupta's reign commenced in 322 B.C., and his grandson Aśoka's in 270 B.C., and that Lassen's calculation or conjecture is wrong. According to the Váyu Purána Asoka reigned 36 years, and 37 according to the Mahávngo. His death is consequently to be placed in 234 or 233 B.C. If we assume, with the Asoka-avadana (see Burnouf's Introduction, &c. p. 370) that Buddha's Nirvana took place 100 years before Asoka's accession, we obtain 380 B.C. as the date of the former event. This date, Dr. Kern remarks, approaches so near to the year in which the Jina Vardhamana, or Mahî vîra, is said to have died, that it is difficult to think that the coincidence can be accidental. The Buddhists and Jains seem originally to have formed one sect. Notwithstanding the notable difference between the legends of Jina Bakya mu ni and Jina Mahî vîra, there are also, as others have pointed out, striking points of resemblance. The Jina Mahavira is said to have died in 388 B.C. As, further, it appears, for the reasons stated above, that the assumption of the Southern Buddhists regarding a council of which the Northern Buddhists know nothing, and which is stated to have been held by the chronological Asoka, rests on a mistake, or on invention, we must deduct 100 years, on account of the period between the Nirvana and this supposed additional council, from the 218 years, which are said by the Cingalese to have elapsed between the Nirvana and Asoka. According, therefore, to the oldest, uncorrupted Cingalese tradition, the Nirvana must have taken place only 118 (not 218) years before Asoka's period between the Nirvana and the second council in the reign of Asoka. The error, however, he remarks, does not affect his conclusion, as he has not assumed, nor does he suppose the Southern Buddhists meant, that the rough number 100 denoted the exact number of years between the Nirvana and Asoka.-J. M.]