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AUGUST, 1914.]
THE DATE OF MAHAVIRA
173
If then 477 B.C., is the most credible date for the death of Buddha that seems to be available, he must have been born about 557 B.C., as he was 80 years old when he died. And as the Pâli texts our only source on this subject--inform us that he was 29 years old at the time of his renunciation, and 36 when he attained Buddhahood, this last event must have happened about 520 B.C. From these calculations, which cannot be very wrong, it is quite clear that if Mahâvîra had died 527 3.c., as one tradition asserts, he and his great rival would absolutely never have come into contact with each other, and all the statements of the Påli texts concerning Nâtaputta and his followers would be only fancy and invention from the beginning to the end, which seems a quite unjustifiable supposition.
Thus we have seen that if Buddha died 477 B.C., as he may really have done, there is no possibilliy of 527 B.., being the right date for Mahavira; and we have seen above that this date, based on the calculation that Mahávîra died 470 years before the commencement of the Vikrama era, rests on no solid ground. So there is no doubt that we must reject this date and try to obtain another, which fits better with the chronological calculations. As such a date has already long ago been suggested by Professor Jacobi,91 I have here merely to lay stress upon his arguments and try to confirm them by some new reasons.
III. The Jain tradition according to Hemaeandra and the real date of Mahavira. Hemacandra (A.D. 1088-1170), the greatest of all Jain writers, in his Sthaviravalicarita, usually called Parisi taparvan, has given a sort of history of the time between Bimbisara and Samprati, the granjson and successor of Acoka. This often very fanciful and legendary historical record is given as a sort of appendix to what is the real object of the poem, the history of the old Jain patriarchs or pontiffs. But I am rather convinced that, confused and legendary as the record may be, it contains here and there some hints of real historical value, which may be used for the calculation of Mahavira's date.
Srevika (=Bimbisára) and his son Kûnika (-Ajátalatru) are well-known to the Jains, but the dates of their reigns are, as far as I know, never given. In VI, 21 ff., Hemacandra tells us how Kûộika died in Campâ, and was succeeded by his son Udâyin, who founded the new capital, Pataliputra. This king was a stout Jaina, and became very powerful, but he met with a sad fate, for the son of a king, whom he had deposed, managed to get into his palace disguised as a Jain monk, and murdered him. Udâyin had no heirs and consequently the five royal appurtenances were sent out to find a successor to him. The choice was rather strange, for it fell upon a certain Nanda, the son of a courtesan by a barber (VI, 231 ff.), and he was consequently anointed king. This took place 60 years after the death of Mahavira, according to VI, 243:
anantaram Vardhamanasvâminirvar avâsaráti
gatâyâm sastivatsaryam esa Nando' bhavan nrpah II This first Nanda seems not to be very unfavourably judged by Hernacandra, and this may lead us to believe that he was thought to have been to some degree a protector of the Jain faith. Such a suggestion seems really to be confirmed by a document of great value, the inscription of Khâravela at Udayagiri. For there he speaks twice of a Na(m)daraja, who must, of course, have been a member of the Nanda dynasty; and although the first passage is by no means clear, and the second one badly mutilated, the latter seems to tell us that Khåravels made the king of Magadha bow down at the feet of the highest (or first Jina), brought away (5) by Nandarája' (páde va(m)dapayati Namdarájanitasa agajinasa); the agrajina may be Mahâvîra or Rsabha, it does not matter which, but so much seems clear, that a Nanda king had taken away an idol of a Jinao2 during a raid into Kalinga. And why should he have chosen so strange an object, if he had not been a believer in the Jina? Moreover,
91 Kalpas. p. 8 ff.
92 A curiously similar instance is told about Pradyota and Udayana in Jacobi's Ausgewählte Erzählungen, p. 31 sq.
