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DECEMBER, 1908.)
THE DATE OF BUDDHA,
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THE DATE OF BUDDHA.!
BY V. GOPALA AIYER, B.A., B.L. TN the history of the world, there is no chapter of human thought and activity of greater effect on
1 modern civilisation than that relating to the life and work of Gautama Buddha. He was born in an age when the world was in great need of earoest teachers to divert its attention from traditional grooves of thought and religious beliefs to new spheres of ideas and moral convictions. The philosophy of the Upanishads and the Sankhya doctrines of Kapila bad already made the way clear for him; but the authority, example and influence of a born spiritual selfless leader of men was required to carry on the reformation against the conservative tenets of ritual-loving Brahman orthodoxy. Indeed, but for his propaganda, the Vedanta school in Indin could not have attained the pre-eminence it subseqnently acquired, and possibly the Western world might have been denied the privilege of the consoling gospels of the Sage of Galilee. The advent of Jesus in the West and of Sankara in the East was, in a large measure, rendered possible by the large-hearted sympathy and the sublime teachings of the highest and the most beneficent personality in the history of thought. He it was that zealously preached the benign counsel of Love and Service, a doctrine till then but imperfectly understood, but which, carried by a band of earnest missionaries to the extreme confines of the then known world, was destined, in the marcb of events, to have a far-reaching influence over the hide-bound dogmas of bygone civilisations. The torch of modern enlightenment was lit up from the lamp of Dharma, which, having been set alight nearly twenty-four centuries and-a-half ago, still illuinines the lowly bearts of over 500 millions in Northern and Eastern Asia. More than all, the missionary aspect of religion, which till then might be said to have been tribal and exclusiva, the enroost endeavour to carry to all, even to those outside the place of one's tribe, caste or persuasion, tidings of peace and goodwill among men was first inculcated to the world by Gautama, when he said, on sending out his disciples : “Let not two of you go the same way. Preach O Bhikkus, the doctrine, which is glorious"; and the world has since been influenced by the proselytizing zeal of one creed or another, of Jesus, Muhammad, Ramanuja or Nanak. In short, the history of the world woull have been a good deal different from what it is but for the event of Kapilavastu, alas, so soon forgotten in the land of its origin. How pregnant with world-wide effect and importance is the appearance of a single individual on the stage of history!
This period of Buddha's activities is interesting in more than one direction. At the time when the Tathagata was setting in motion the wheel of the New Dispensation, Mahavira was laying in India the foundations of the Jaina Religion. Then it was that Confucius awoke China with his code of morals, and Greece began to develop philosophy as a distinct branch of study, and was destined, soon after, in the Age of Pericles, to attain in many departments of human activity a state of progress, still an object of envy and admiration to the world. Rome always intent on civic advancement and political liberty was then transforming itself into a Republic, and the Persians, having overthrown the empire of the Medes, set up a monarchy of their own, and having subjugated Babylon and Egypt, turned their eyes towards India and Greece.
"In each of these widely separated centres of civilisation," says Professor Rhys Davids (Buddhist India, p. 289), " there is evidence, about the sixth century B. O., of a leap forward in speculative thought, of a new birth in ethics, of a religion of conscience threatening to take the place of the old religion of custom and magic," which circumstance may be said to constitute "the best dividing line, if there was any, between the ancient history and modern, between the old order and the new."
1 A looture delivered before the South Indian Association, Madras, on 1st March 1908, being the 3rd Chapter of the author's Chronology of Ancient India, 2nd Volume.
