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CHITTARANJAN PAL:WERE THE MONKS EXPELLEDFROM THE BUDDHIST
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During the first twelve years of his pontificate three successive schisms seriously weakened the Jaina church.24
Such was the sad plight of the order of the Nirgranthas (Jainas) when king Asoka was on the throne of Magadha. Under the circumstar.ces, ordinary monks belonging to Jaina church might go astray and swell the rank of the Buddhist recluses of Magadha in the hope of getting alms, cloths, shelters and medicine which were in abundance in the Buddhist Church, consequent upon the conversion of Asoka to Buddhism.
A peep into the chronology of the events, narrated above, may be helpful for the solution of the problem or question under discussion. Historians of India and abroad are unanimous that Asoka's coronation took place in circa B.C. 269 and his reign terminated with his death in circa B.C. 232. According to the Svetāmbara Jaina chronology Bhadrabāhu, the last srutakevalin's patriarchate started in circa B.C. 317 and terminated in circa B.C.297 and that of Sthūlabhadra began in the year circa B.C. 297 and terminated in circa B.C. 252 and that of Mahagiri started in circa B.C. 252. According to the Buddhist tradition (Mahāvagga) the third samgīti of the Buddhists was convoked 236 years after the Parinirvāņa of the Buddha at Pataliputra - i.e. circa B.C. 251-250 in the Eighteenth the year of Asoka's reign. The date of Sāranāth, Sāñchi and Kausāmbi inscription is circa B.C. 251.
It is quite evident from the chronology discussed above that Sthūlabhadra was a senior contemporary of Asoka and Mahāgiri a junior contemporary of the monarch and the Jaina church in Magadha was in the most deplorable plight at the end of the Sthūlabhadra's pontificate and at the beginning of the patriarchate of Mahāgiri and the convocation of the “Third Samgiti (council)" of the Buddhists took place at about the same time.
Concurrance of the external and internal evidence and the synchronization of the chronology to it lead us to conclude that the
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