Kalpasutra

Author(s): J Stevenson
Publisher: Oriental Translation Fund London

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TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
allotted to the Kalpa Sútra, the first of the works here presented to the English reader. It commences, and is chiefly occupied, with the legendary history of Mahávíra, the last of those deified spiritual legislators, called by the Jains, Tirthankaras. To this are appended the lives of other four sages of the same class, and in some copies those of the whole twenty-four, though it is nearly certain that all of these are by a later hand, and that none except the first, or at any rate the five to whom the precedence is given, are genuine productions of the reputed author. Mahávíra, by the Jains of the Carnatic, is said to have died B.C. 663, by those of Bengal, according to Mr. Colebrooke, in B.C. 637, by those in Gujaráth, in B.C. 527, or as they state it, 470 years before the commencement of the era of Vikrama. Mr. Prinsep in his Useful Tables, Part II., p. 33, makes this event to have happened in B.C. 569, at the age of seventy. This I am inclined to believe is the correct date, not only on account of Mr. Prinsep's great accuracy and tact in all these matters, but also because it agrees best with the statement of the Jains, that Mahávíra was the preceptor of the great Gautama Buddha. The