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MISHRA: THE DATE OF MAHAVIRA
For several reasons it is very difficult to agree with Charpentier :
(a) The Jaina tradition was collected and reduced to writing much later and hence it is not as reliable as the Buddhist tradition.
(b) Even the Jaina tradition is not unanimous about the date of Mahavira's death. There are several traditions 13 about this, which rather shake our belief in them.
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(c) The insertion of Vikrama and the Sakas in the Jaina tradition strengthens our suspicion.
(d) The Buddhist tradition is more reliable as it was reduced to writing very early. Moreover due to its comparatively more reliability, it has been used in the reconstruction of ancient Indian history. Hence, there should be no valid objections to its use in determining the date of Mahavira.
2. Secondly, Charpentier's calculation is based on the assumption that the Buddha died in 477 B.C. This date has since been discarded and the date of the Buddha's death has been fixed at 487 B.C. as this is the date arrived at on the basis of the Cantonese tradition, the Mahāvansa and the inscriptions of Asoka14. In order to discredit the tradition of the Mahavansa that Asoka was formally crowned 218 years after the death of the Buddha, Charpentier had to take recourse to an utterly untenable argument saying that "the 218 years did not refer originally to the abhiseka, but to the completion of the conquest of Kalinga or to the first conversion, or to both these events." (I.A., 1914, p. 170).
There are some other theories as well about Mahavira's date which we may notice in passing.
(C) S.N. Pradhan 15 holds the date 480 B.C. (-325+155) or 477 B.C. (=322+155) for the death of Mahavira, accepting Hemacandra who says that Candragupta became king 155 years after the death of Mahavira.
(D) "Certain Jaina writers assume an interval of eighteen years between the birth of Vikrama and the foundation of the era attributed to him, and thereby seek to reconcile the Jaina tradition about the 13. Collected in Pradhan, Chronology of Ancient India (Calcutta, 1927), pp. 240-243.
14. This has been admirably pointed out by S.N. Pradhan (ibid.) and need not be repeated here.
15. Ibid., p. 243.
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