________________
EARLY MAGADHAN CHRONOLÓGY
227
years, and the next king Bindusāra, the father and immediate predecessor of Asoka, ruled for at least 25 years. 326 B.C.—49 = 277 B.C. Aśokas coronation, therefore, took place between 277 and 261 B.C., and as the event happened, according to the old Gatha recorded by the Ceylonese chroniclers, 218 years after the parinirvāṇa of the Buddha, the date of the Great Decease should be placed between 495 and 479 B.C. The result accords not with the Ceylonese date 544 B.C., but with the Cantonese date 486 B.C., and Geiger's date 483 B.C., for the parinirvāṇa. The Chinese account of embassies which King Meghavarņa sent to Samudra Gupta, and King Kia-Che (Kassapa) sent to China in 527 A.D., also speaks in favour of the date 486 B.C. or 483 B.C., for the Great Decease. Geiger's date, however, is not explicitly recognised by tradition. The same remark applies to the date (Tuesday, 1 April, 478 B.C.) preferred by L. D. Swami Kannu Pillai. The Cantonese date may, therefore, be accepted as a working hypothesis for the determination of the chronology of the early dynasties of Magadha. The date of Bimbisāra's accession, according to this reckoning, would fall in or about 486 + 59 = 545 B.C., which is very near to the starting point of the traditional Ceylonese Nirvāṇa era of 544 B.C. "The current name of an era is no proof of origins.' It is not altogether improbable that the Buddhist reckoning of Ceylon originally started from the coronation of Bimbisāra and was later on confounded with the era of the Great Decease.
In the time of Bimbisāra Gandhāra was an independent kingdom ruled by a king named Paushkarasārin (Pukkusāti). By B.G.-519 at the latest it had lost its independence and had become subject to Persia, as we
1 An Indian Ephemeris, 1, Pt. 1, 1922, pp. 471 ff.
