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Life of Lord Mahavira
family, lived after Vikrama, and by taking 40 years out of 470, he considers 430 years to be the difference between the date of Mahavira's Nirvāṇa and the commencement of the Vikrama era. Against this, it may be suggested that Nahavana here means the Śaka rule in Ujjayini before Vikrama in the second or first century B.C. This Jaina tradition is supported even by numismatic evidence.1 Copper coins of five rulers, viz., Hamugama, Valāka, Mahu, Dãsa and Sauma, have been scooped out from Ujjain and from the neighbouring region. With the help of palaeography, the historian can place these rulers in the second and first century B.C. K.D. BAJPAI tried to prove that the rulers who issued the coins were Śakas, the predecessors of the two well known dynasties of Bhūmaka and Chashṭana. The names on the coins resemble those of the Saka chiefs already known from inscriptions and other coins. On the reverse, there are figures such as those of frog, moon on hill, tree within railing; or a double-orbed Ujjain symbol.
J. K. MUKHTAR2 attempts a refutation of the theory propounded by J. CHARPENTIER as also by K.P. JAYASWAL by trying to prove that Vikrama era started neither with the birth nor with the coronation of Vikrama but with his death, and that therefore no addition or reduction in the traditional interval of 170 years was needed.
Y. MISHRA came to the conclusion that the death of Mahavira occurred in 490 B.C. when he compared the details of the lives of the Buddha and Mahavira, especially the places where they spent their rainy seasons. For this, he consulted Buddhacarya (in Hindi) by R. SANKRITYAYANA and Śramaṇa Bhagvan Mahavira by RATNA PRABHA VIJAYA. In the very early Jaina and Buddhist scriptures, no chronological description of the rainy seasons spent by Lord Mahavira and the Buddha have been given. Both R. SANKRITYAYANA and Ratnaprabha VIJAYA have based the account of rainy seasons on very late works which cannot be relied upon.
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As regards S.V. VENKATESWARA's theory to the effect that Mahavira died in 437 B.C., there is absolutely no tradi
1. KмA, p. 156.
2. Jaina Sahitya Aura Itihasa Para Vilada Praküla, pp. 26 f
