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DECEMBER, 1908.]
THE DATE OF BUDDHA.
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been a monk, "the men who were all over India regarded as trae meaning thereby, Brahmans) have been with their gods shown to be untrue," a statement more worthy of an intolerant old bigot than of a wise statesman that he till then had been. It stands to reason, therefore, that it must bave emanated long after the Pillar Edicts of his twenty-eighth year.
Fifthly and lastly, the interpretation herein attempted also agrees with the chronological details of the Ceylonese Chronicles in a remarkable manner. As we have already seen, they declare that the King joined the Buddhist faith in the fourth year after his succession to the throne, and celebrated his coronation soon after in the same year, i. e., 218 years after the death of Buddha and that he died thirty-seven years after his coronation. The Sudarsana Vibhasha, which was translated into the Chinese in 489 4. D., also agrees in giving 218 A. B. for Asoka. From these statements we may draw the obvious inference that Asoka was a Buddhist 14 for about thirty-eight years and that he died in the year 256 after the death of Buddha. This result exactly tallies with the details of our Inscription, which was proolaimed in the year 256 after Buddha's death and according to which Aboks was a Buddhist for 32+ + 6 or 384 years.
We have already fixed the date of Asoka's death in 231 B.C. This inscription which may be fittingly styled as his last swan-song is, therefore, of that date. On the authority then of the available inscriptions and of the tradition as recorded in the Ceylonese Chronicles, the date of the Nirvans of Buddha is found to be 231 + 256 or 487 B. C.; and as tradition assigns eighty years as the period of his life, he may be cousidered to have been born in the year 567 B. C.
Curiously enough, the date we have arrived at is corroborated by testimony from an independent quarter. It appears that there is in China & Dotted Record "which was attached to the Vinaya Pitaka, and every year at the end of the passa ceremony, the presiding priest used to add a dot to it. This process is said to bave been kept up till 489 A. D., when Sanghabhadra added the last dot after his vassa residence at Canton in China." The Record is stated to have "indicated 975 dots (years) from the Nirvâna to 489 A. D."16 If this statement is found to be correct, then we have one more reason for considering the Nirvana to have occurred in 487 B. O.
We have lastly to consider how it is that the Ceylonese tradition, as recorded in the Chronicles, which, as we have seen, is not without its great value for historical and chronological parposes, has all along been that Buddha attained Nirvana in the year 548 B. C. I am aware that scholars like Max Müller and Mr. Smith ninceremoniously brush aside all the chronological particulars of these Chronicles prior to 160 B. C. as unreliable, while others go so far as to condemn them wholesale. But as Professor Rhys Davids says: “It jars upon the reader to hear the Chronicles called the mendacious fictions of unscrupulous monks. Such expressions are inaccurate; and they show a grave want of appreciation."16 Dr. Fleet goes even so far as to say that 543 B. O., the date according to the Choronioles an interpreted by the editors Turnour and Wijesinha, "is not asserted by or supported by anything contained in Dipavansa or the earlier part of the Muhávansa, but was simply invented, as far as I can see my way, in the 12th or 13th century A.D." 17 But this is certainly a mistake, for as Bishop Bigandet points out: "There is, perhaps, no
* Mr. V. A. Smith writon to me ander date 7th October 1908: "I am fully persuaded, with Separt, and against Dr. Fleet, that all the inscriptions (of Aboka) are Buddhist," I agree: but I venture to consider also as correct the statement of the Ceylonese Chronicles that Asoka was converted to Buddhism very shortly before his coronation.
# J. R. A. 8., July, 1896; Ind. Ant., 1884, p. 153; J. R. A. 8., January, 1905, p. 33. 26 Buddhist India, p. 274.
11 J. R. A.S., January, 1904.
