________________
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE,
ix
Ceylonese date of the death of Buddha is B.C. 543, and the death of the Tirthankura having taken place in B.c. 569, we obtain the reasonable period of twenty-six years, for the demise of the preceptor before his pupil. The Kalpa Sútra, according to a date embodied in the work itself, was composed 980 years after the demise of Mahávíra, that is to say, A.1). 411. The public reading of the work took place twelve years afterwards, as narrated in the Introduction. The author's name was Bhadra Báhu, and the sovereign who then reigned in Gujarath, was Dhruva Sena. The four commentators who, between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, have commented on the work, are Yasovijaya, whose Sanskrit work, called Sakhábadha, has been used in making the annexed translation, Devichandra, the Gujarathi translator chiefly fol. lowed, and Jnanavimala, and Sámayasundara.
There is so little of Eastern extravagance exhibited in the age and date of the death of Mahávíra, that one is glad for once to escape exposure to the spirit of scepticism which so generally haunts the European in his antiquarian researches in India, and to grant the author all he demands. The name
