Lord Mahavira and His Times

Author(s): Kailashchandra Jain
Publisher: Motilal Banarasidas

Page 99

Life of Lord Mahāvīra
79
· The Samaññaphala Sutta tells us how king Ajātaśatru of Magadha paid visits to one after another of the six heretical teachers to hear their doctrines, and at last discontented with them all, he took refuge with the Buddha. This visit of Ajātaśatru to the Buddha took place in 491 B.C. The rainy season of 491 B.C., which was his forty-second rainy season, was passed by the Buddha at Srāvasti. This Buddhist reference therefore means that sometime in the last month of the Chāturmāsya, the Buddha came to Rājagriha. Coming to Mahāvīra, it is known that he lived at Rājagriha in 491 B.C. during the rainy season of the forty-first year of his ascetic life. Thus it was possible for Ajātaśatru to meet the Buddha at Rājagʻiha after having met Mahāvīra. Mahāvīra passed his forty-second rainy season in 490 B.C. at Madhyamā Pāvā where he died.
Both from the Buddhist and the Jaina traditions, it is clear that both the Buddha and Mahāvīra were at Vaiśālī in 519 B.C. and that the conversion of Siha to Buddhism also took place at the same time. The Upālisutta is also important, because the event took place at Nälandā when both the teachers were there in 491 B.C.
So the year 490 B.C. as the year of Mahāvīra's death is able not only to show that Buddha survived Mahāvīra but also to make both the teachers spend the same rainy season at Rājagriha, Vaiśāli and Nālandā.
498 B.C.
B.C. Law advocated another theory when he postulated 498 B.C. as the date of Mahāvīra's Virtāna. According to him, 5:27 B.C. and 544 B.C. as the dates of the demise of Mahāvīra and Buddha respectively cannot hc harmonized with the historical facts connected with the lives of the two great teachers of India. Two things, he says, may be taken as certain: (1) that lahivira predeceased the Buddha by 5 or 6, 7 or S or even 14 or 15 years; and (2) that lahärra passed as a Jina bcfore the Buddha. The autheniicity of
1. LUIT, p. 53.