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patriarch for the time being, our knowledge of them and their succession as exhibited in the Therävalt entirely rests on tradition A comparison of the dates in the Therävalt with those of other writings will enable us to gauge the value of the former Such a means of checking somehow the tradition of the Therāvalt is furnished by the record of schisms (nihnavas), which is epitomised in the usual form in the Avasyaka Niryukn, VIII, 56-1004, and fully narrated by Haribhadra in the Tika on the Avasyaka Sutra, and by Santi Suri in the Tika 'Sışyahita' on the Uttaradhyayana Sutra (III, 9) Our inquiry will be concerned with the four schisms 4-5, of which the relevant details, viz , name of the here. siarch, his date and scholastic pedigree, may be stated as follows.
4th schism
5th schism
7th schism
229 AV, Asamitta, disciple of Kodima, discipic of Mahagiri 228 A V, Ganga, disciple of Dhanagutta, disciple of Mahagiri 584 A V, Gotthamahıla, disciple of Aya-Rakkhiya (Raksita was not the then patriarch, but Vajra who had instructed him in the pūrvas The schism arose after the death of Raksita, and, a fortiori, of his teacher Vajra The date of Vajra's death is not recorded, yet being required for the chronological calculation below, I provisionally place it in 575 AV, which cannot be far wrong)
As the Niryuktı had been written between 584 and 609 AV, its author was no doubt well-informed of the events connected with the two last schisms which had occurred not long before his own time Now Rohagutt., the author of the 6th schism, being a prafuşya of Suhastin, the eighth patriarch, lived in the second generation after the latter, ie, probably under the tenth patriarch Accordingly between him and Bhadrabahu (6th patriarch), there intervened four patriarchates And as Bhadrabahu died in 170 AV, and Rohagupta was living in 544 AV, the intermediate four patriarchates should have lasted 374 years! This interval yields an average length of each patriarchate, in this period, of about 94 years! This is quite absurd On the other hand, the interval of 40 years between the last two schisms covers, in the Therāvali, four patriarchates, each of an average duration of no more than ten years, a result which errs in an opposite sense from the preceding one
Die alten Berichte von den Schismen der Jainas by Prof Leumann, in Indische Studien, vol 1F, P 91 ff
