Sramana 2016 04

Author(s): Shreeprakash Pandey, Rahulkumar Singh, Omprakash Singh
Publisher: Parshvanath Vidhyashram Varanasi

Page 62

Reconsidering the Date of the Nirvāṇa of Lord Mahāvira : 55
If we accept the date of the Vira Nirvāṇa as 467 B.C., then the period of his Yuga Pradhānaship extends between 154 and 223 A.D. According to the inscriptions he had a disciple in 132 A.D. yet one can be contented by assuming that he must have initiated someone 22 years before being a Yuga Pradhāna. If we accept his life-span to be 100 years, he must have been 11 years old when he is supposed to have initiated Māghahasti. It seems almost impossible to believe that he was able to initiate somebody by his sermons at the age of 11 and that such an underage disciple was able to perform the MūrtiPratişthā. But if, on the basis of the traditional concept, we accept the Vira Nirvāņa year to be before 605 of the Saka Era or 52 B.C., then the references made in the Patļāvalīs tally with the inscriptional evidences. On this basis his tenure of Yuga Pradhānaship extends from 16 to 85 of the Saka Era, Māghahasti, one of his disciples was able to perform the Mürti-Pratisthā by his sermons. Although common sense would hardly accept it as logical that his Yuga Pradhānaship extended for 69 years, yet because of the fact that it considers the information given in the Pattāvalīs to be correct, this inscriptional evidence about Nāgahasti supports the date of Vira Nirvāņa as 527 B.C.
Again, in one of the inscriptional sketches of Mathura, Ārya Krşņa with that Arya Krsna mentioned after Sivabhūti in Kalpasūtra Sthavirāvali (last part 4:1), then his period on the basis of the Pattāvalis and Viseșāvasyakabhäşya,23 could be established around 609. V.N.S., because as a result of the dispute over clothes between the same Ārya Krsna and Sivabhūti the Botika, Nihnava came into extistence. The period of this dispute is fixed as 609 V.N.S. If we accept the Vīra Nirvāņa year to be 467, then the period of Arya Krsna is supposed to be as 609-467=142 A.D. This inscriptional sketch belongs to 95+78=173 A.D. Since Ārya Krşņa has been figured as a deity, it is natural that 20-25 years after his death, in 173 A.D., this sketch must have been made by some Arya Arha, one of his follower disciples. In this way, this inscriptional evidence can maintain compatibility with other literary reference only when 467