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Lord Mahâvîra
somewhat earlier in Bhadrecvara's Kahavali, ascribes 155 years as the period between the death of Mahâvîra and Candragupta's accession to the throne of Magadha, which gives 477 B.C. as the probable date of Mahâvîra's death. Here again we are on utterly uncertain ground.
We are obliged to treat the earlier Jain tradition as of minimal value and there seems every ground for so doing; but the tradition accepted by Hemacandra rests equally on no assured foundation. The only possible conclusion regarding it is that it cannot be trusted to be accurate within a few years, and it seems wholly impossible to base on two dates so acquired the view that we must believe that the Buddha predeceased Mahâvîra. Nor is it irrelevant to note that Professor Jacobi5 himself has adopted slightly different dates, namely 477 and 467 B.C. in other contributions; but what is more important is that the Jaina tradition contains one certain error which, if rectified, destroys the value of its testimony for 477 B.C. By that tradition, apparently accepted by Hemacandra as well as the rest of Jain opinion, the date of the accession of Candragupta is placed at 255 years before the Vikrama era, i.e., in 313 or 312 B.C. This date is obviously too late; if we take 322, as does Professor Jacobi, as a probable date, then we must admit a clear error in the Jain tradition of about ten years in respect of this interval; admitting a like error regarding the earlier interval, that between the accession of Candragutpa and the death of Mahâvîra, we would arrive at 487 B.C. for the death of the latter, and this would place that event before the death of the Buddha, and confirm the Buddhist tradition. This shows clearly with what inadequate data we have to reckon, and leaves the conviction that the supposed dates of the deaths of the two great teachers are of too uncertain character to afford any conclusion as to the priority of these
6
events.
On the other hand, we have the clear and distinct tradition of the Buddhist Canon which asserts that Mahâvîra died before the Buddha and does so, not incidentally, but as giving rise to allocutions of the Master regarding the tenets of his teaching, recorded in the Pasadika Suttanta of the Digha Nikaya and the Samgana Suttanta of the Majjhima Nikaya and of Sariputta, at
