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Sec. 3. SOME PROBLEMS IN THE T. S.
Third Council was summoned in 453/466 A.D. (980/993 V.N.). We do not know in wbat way the Jainas kept the calender after the death of Mahāvīra and what kinds of efforts were made to maintain its accuracy. Neither do we know in what way the difference of 153 years between the Second and the Third Canonical Councils wis memorized. Unfortunately, these dates seem to be untraceable in the external sourcess. Also the Hindu purāvas and astronomical sources do not expressly record the dates of long famines occurred in the 4th and the 5th centuries, which are neither locatable in the inscriptions of this period.
The traditional date of Mahāvira's death comes into conflict with the widely accepted date of Buddha's death. Also not until the Guptas came into the stage fully supporting the Hindu revival movement, the Vaisnava movement would have become that mich intensive force to be able to drive the huge Jaina communities away from Mithurā. And the Jaina inscriptions and archaeological remains endorse this fact hy showing a sudden decline of their number with the entry in the Gupta period and by evincing their sudden appearance in the various places of the migration of the Jainas which began after the middle of the 4th century A.D. Candragupta I came to the throne in 320 AD, and Samudragupta in 330 A.D., Some Jainas might have migrated earlier than that time, but their number cannot be large. And since the Jainas must have been skilled in administering business matters and organizing business com munities they had likely enjoyed highly organized corporate systems at Mathurā, they could have embarked in their business enterprises (which they might have even well planned previously) immediately after their migration to the new place.3. Under the historical circumstances as such, both dates of the Second Canonical Councils in tradition are difficult to ascept, which must have taken place allegedly after 320 A.D. Then we can likewise doubt about the accuracy of the traditioul dite of th: Tari Valabhi council which must have occurred before c. 478 A.D.
Since Mrześavarnin's inscription evinces that it was made in the comparatively early stage of the schism, the traditional date of the Valabhi Convention as of 453 A.D. is too far away and improbable. We may at present propose here a wider possible range of the date of the Third Canonical council as of c. 466-478 A.D. until some other historical evidences are discovered in the future to determine it accurately. A long famine which Bhadrababu II predicted might have been a matter of a few to several years. Then Bhadrababu's date falls in sometime before c.460-472 A.D., which can be taken as the lower limit of the date of the T. S. From his reactions advanced to the T.S., a temporal distance between the T.S. and the Niryuktis is pretty short.
The upper limit of the date of the T.S. is to be determined by the dates of the Yozsūtrabris yi and the Abhidharmakosa. Vyāsa's date is not at all setttled down
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