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MAY, 1903.]
HINDU VIEW OF BUDDHIST CHRONOLOGY.
227
by him, a javolin-banner. Professor Kielhorn has alreadly quoted, in the same place, from the Kápadwanaj plates of A. D. 910-11, the proper name Sellavidyadhara, and the corrupt expression, in the verse which presents it and offers to account for it, selulldlitapanitapanina, which he has explained as standing for sella-lalita-panind, -. "Sellavidyadhara, whose hand is fondled by the javelin." And he has cited, from the Sangamner plates of A. D. 1000, the biruda, applied to the Yadava prince Bhillama II. of the Sêuņa country, Sellavidega, which, I should say, means "he who throws, or wields, the javelin." To this I may add that an inscription of A. D. 1189, at Muttagi in the Bâgewadi taluka, Bijapur district, describes the Dêvagiri-Yâdava king Bhillama as ahita-rayaurah-sellani, which may be appropriately rendered by "& javelin to (pierce) the breasts of hostile kings." It remains to be added that, while the prasasti of the Uttarapurana certainly presents the words Chelladhvaja and Chellakếtana as proper names, and perhaps also presents Chellapataka as a second proper name of Lôkaditya, rather than as an adjective qualifying his name, the Konnûr inscription presents the form Sellaketana in such a way that, though it may certainly be taken as a second name of Bankêya, it might also be rendered as an adjective meaning "he who has the sellakétana or javelin-banner." But, in line 4 f. of the Nidagundi inscription, the word chellakétana is plainly used to denote the banner itself.
AN INDEPENDENT HINDU VIEW OF BUDDHIST CHRONOLOGY.
BY P. C. MUKHARJI,
Late Assistant to the Director-General of Archwulogy. SOME Orientalists, from Sir William Jones in the XVIIth century to the late Professor Max Müller, have assumed that the Sandracottus, who defeated Seleucus Nicator in about 310 B. C., was the same Chandragupta, who, according to the Buddbistic and Jaina chronicles, founded the Maurya dynasty in 163 A. B. and 155 A. V. (380 and 372 B. C.). But since this assumption involves a difficulty of about 16 years, they have, - I should say rather arbitrarily, reduced the date of the Buddha's Parinirvana (death) from 543 to 477 B.C. Other Orientalists, however, do not agree with them; - each arriving at results, varying with all others. Thus Professor Westergaard says 368; Professor Kern, 380; Professor Rhys Davids, 412; Mr. A. F. Carter, 483 B. C. And 80 & sea of confusion has been created by the rejection of the simple and traditional era of Sikya Simba. I was therefore bewildered, and met with a great deal of difficulty in arranging and reconciling the historical facts I gathered, while writing the final Report on my excavations on the sites of the ancient Pataliputra in 1897-98.
This difficulty induced me to study on my own lines and to find out for myself who really was the Sandracottus of the Greeks. First I checked the Buddhistic chronology of Burmah with that of Ceylon, – and the dynastic with that of the patriarchs; - and then again I compared these with the Jains dates of the three kings, Nanda, Chandragupta, and Samprati, and the Jaina patriarchs. In this way, I found a remarkable agreement between all of them. Taking for granted the year 543 B. C. as the starting date of the Parinirvana, I noted 214 A. B. (Anno Buddha) from the Southern (Singhalese), and 234 from the Northern (Tibetan) source, as the year when Bindusara died, and Aboka usurped the throne of Pâtalipatra. Since this difference of 20 years is explained away by noting the fact that the Northern Buddhists calculate from Buddha's Nirvana and not Parinirraņa, which occurred 20 or rather 21 years afterwards, I came to know that there is no actual differonce between the Northern and the Southern dates as regards the death of the Buddha,
1 Rockhill's Life of Buddha, p. 133.
