..續本文上一頁cognised name of the king.

　　4. Mr. Rhys Davids accepts 315 B.C. as the date when, after the murder of king Nanda, Kandragupta stept into the vacant throne, though he had begun to count his reign seven or eight years before. Buddhism, p. 22O.]

　　p. xxxvii of Kandragupta”s reign. Westergaard prefers 320 as a more likely date for Kandragupta, and therefore places the death of the last Nanda and the beginning of Asoka”s royal pretensions 268. Here there is a difference between him and me of five years, which depends chiefly on the view we take as to the time when Seleucus really laid what Justinus calls the foundation of his future greatness. Secondly, Westergaard actually adopts the idea, at which I only hinted as possible, that the southern Buddhists made two Asokas out of one, and two Councils out of one. Trusting in the tradition that 118 years elapsed between Buddha”s death and the Council under Asoka (at Pâtaliputra), and that the Council took place in the king”s tenth year (as was the case with the imaginary Kâlâsoka”s Council), he gets 268 - 10 = 258 as the date of the Council, and 368 or 370 as the date of Buddha”s death^[1].

　　 The two points on which Westergaard differs from me, seem to me questions which should be kept before our mind in dealing with early Buddhist history, but which, for the present at least, admit of no definite solution.

　　 The same remark seems to me to apply to the calculations of another eminent Sanskrit scholar, Professor Kern^[2]. He lays great stress on the general untrustworthiness of Indian chronology, and I am the last to differ from him on that point. He then places the beginning of Kandragupta”s reign in 322 B.C. Allowing twenty-four years to him and twenty-eight to his son Bindusâra, he places the beginning of Asoka”s reign in 270. Asoka”s inscriptions would fall about 258. As Asoka reigned thirty-six or thirty-seven years, his death would fall in 234 or 233 B.C. Like Westergaard, Professor Kern too eliminates Kâlâsoka, as a kind of chronological Asoka, and the Council of Vaisâlî, and therefore places Buddha”s death, according to the northern tradition, 100 or 110 years before Dharmâsoka, i.e. 270 + 100 or + 110 = 370 or 380^[3]; while, according to the southern

　　[1. Westergaard. loc. cit. p. 128.

　　2. Jaartelling der Zuidelijke Buddhisten, 1873.

　　3. See Professor Kern”s remark in Indian Antiquary, 1874, p. 79.]

　　p. xxxviii tradition, that 118 years elapsed between Asoka”s accession and Buddha”s death, the Ceylonese monks would seem originally to have retained 270 + 118^[1] = 388 B.C. as Buddha”s Nirvâna, a date which, as Professor Kern holds, happens to coincide with the date assigned to the death of Mahâvira, the founder of the Gaina religion.

　　 Here we see again that the moot point is the beginning of Kandragupta”s reign in accordance with the information supplied by Greek historians. Professor Kern places it in 322, Westergaard in 320, I myself in 315. That difference once granted, Dr. Kern”s reasoning is the same as my own. According to the traditions which we follow, Buddha”s death took place 100, 110, 118, or 228 years before Asoka. Hence Professor Westergaard arrives at 368 or 370 B.C., Professor Kern at 370 (380) or 388 B.C., I myself at 477 B.C. Every one of these dates is liable to certain objections, and if I prefer my own date, 477 B. C., it is simply because it seems to me liable to neither more nor less reservations than those of Professor Westergaard and Professor Kern, and because, so long as we always remember…

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