By H.W Schumann

Left: Lumbini - Centre Left: Mahabodhi Temple Centre Right: Sarnath - Right: Kushinara

The majority of western historians of India consider the year 563 BC as being the birth-year of the Buddha and also the earliest assured date in Indian history. How is it calculated, and how great is the possibility of error?

(a) Since the records of ancient India give only the intervals between events but do not, like later records, date the events themselves, it is necessary in order to establish dates in Indian history to call on Greek historians. Indo-Greek relations developed as a result of the Indian campaign of Alexander the Great (327 BC). About 303 BCthe Indian Emperor Candragupta Maurya (P Candagutta Moriya) came to a territorial agreement and entered into diplomatic relations with Seleukos Nikator, Alexander's former general who ruled over Babylonia. Through the reports of the Greek ambassador Megasthenes, who was accredived to the imperial court of Pataliputta (Patna), Candragupta (Gk Sandrokottos ) became known to Greek historians, and through them we are able to date his accession to 321 BC.

This date further enables us to give precise dates to the sequence of events listed in the Singhalese chronicles Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa (fourth to sixth centuries AD). According to these (Dv. 5.100; Mhv. 5.18), Candragupta reigned for twenty-four years (until 297) his son and successor Bindusara twenty-eight years (until 269) , after which it took four years before Bindusara's son Asoka succeded in eliminating his brothers and anointing himself ruler (Dv. 6.21 ; Mhv 5.22). This event would therefore have occurred in 265 BC.

The leap back to the birth of the Buddha is made possible by the statement made in both chronicles (Dv. 6.1: Mhv 5..21) that Asoka became the ruler two hundred and eighteen years after the Parinibbana (the final passing) of the Buddha. This event is therefore dated at 483 BC. Since the 'feather lived to be eighty, his date of birth comes out at 563 BC.

Although the figure of' two hundred and eighteen years between the Buddha's passing and Asoka's coronation is regarded as depend­able, this reckoning has its weaknesses. On the one hand it is possible that the regnal years of the kings were rounded up to full years, and on the other it should not be overlooked that in the PuranasBindusarra is only supposed to have reigned for twenty-five years. So the reckoning based on the chronicles needs to be checked from other sources.

(b) One source of information is provided by the edicts which the Emperor Asoka (Devananpiya Piyadasi) caused to he carved on rocks and specially erected pillars throughout his vast empire. Rock Edict No. XIII, which dates Asoka's bloody conquest of' Kalinga (Orissa) eight years after his coronation, and which was probably issued twelve wars after that event, names five non-Indian rulers with whom the Emperor was in contact: Antiochus II of Syria, Ptolemy  II of Egypt, Antigonius of Macedonia, Magas of Cyrene and Alexander of Epirus. The dates of alI these are known, and the latest year in which they were all alive is 258, which is thus the latest possible date of the edict. Counting back twelve years to Asoka's coronation, together with the two hundred and eighteen  years mentioned by the chronicles, we arrive at 488 BC for the death-year, and 568 for the birth-year of the Buddha. One possible source of error here is in the length of time that elapsed between Asoka's coronation and the issue of the edict. which may have been slightly less than twelve years.

(c) Chinese historians also provide some help through the ‘Dotted Chronicle’of Canton  which shows one dot for every year alter the Buddha's death. Down to the year AD 489 it presents 975 dots which would place the Buddha's parinibbana in the year 486 and his birth in 566 BC. With all respect for the historical accuracy of the Chinese, errors are not impossible here, too, especially since Buddhism reached China fairly late and the Chinese chroniclers did not start their chronicle immediately after the Indian master’s death.          

(d) We should also consider the Jain tradition. The founder of the Jain religion, the Jina (‘Victor’) or Mahavira(‘Great Hero;), was a contemporary of the Buddha who lived to the age of seventy-two and is referred to in Buddhist sources as Nigantha Nataputta.

European scholars usually date Mahavira's death at 476 BC, follow­ing the statement of the ]ain monk Hemacandra (twelfth century AD) that the accession of Candragupta Maurya (321 BC) occurred 155 years after the Nirvana of Mahavira. But Jain authors dispute the correctness of this figure and point to an alleged error of Hemacandra and to other passages in the Jain canon, which put 215 years between Candragupta's conquest of the kingdom of Avanti (312 BC) and Mahavira's death. This calculation would date Mahavira's Nirvana at 527 BC,. This is taken as the starting-point of Jain chronology (which was only introduced during the Christian era).

The attempt to deduce the Buddha's death-date from that of Mahavira is made more difficult because we have no unambiguous statements about the relative chronology of these two events. Despite, the statement in one Jain Sutra that Mahavira survived the Buddha by seven years (which, if we date Mahavira's death at 476, would confirm 483 BC for the Buddha's death-year), many Jains agree with the Buddhists that Mahavira died before the Buddha. Three times in the Pali Canon ( DN 29.2; DN 33. 1:MN 104.1) the scene is described in which the Buddha is told of Mahavira's death, and the texts repeatedly indicate that Gotama was the youngest among the great religious teachers of his time.
Western biographers of the Buddha assume that the Teacher died two years after Mahavira, but the evidence for this is light. If we were to accept the two years as a working hypothesis, we should arrive at either 474 according to western scholars or 525 BC, (according to Jain tradition) , for the Buddha's Pariinibbana, his birth-rate being in each case eighty years previously.

(e) Still less credibility attaches to the chronology generally accepted in Asia today, according to which the Buddha died in 544 and was born in 624 BC. The Buddhist era (BE) only came into existence in the eleventh century AD. Either the date subsequently worked out for the Teacher's death came to be mistaken for that of his birth, or else the monks, who presumably used a sixty-year cycle in their calculations, miscalculated by one whole cycle. This would give the Buddha's dates as 564 - 484 BC. But the hypothesis of such all error is naturally no proof.

Which of the dates calculated by these various methods can be regarded as historically the most probable? We can dismiss the dates based on either Jain or Buddhist tradition. They were calculated very late, and cannot stand up to historical criticism.

On the other hand, the dates deduced from the Singhalese and Chinese chronicles, and Asoka's edicts, are well based and differ only minimally, so that according to them the Buddha's birth-date must lie between 568 and 544 BC The date 563, which is supported by the Ceylon chronicles, is significant not merely as being in the middle but as being supported by two further, somewhat complicated calculations, based on South Indian and Singhalese king-lists, the date of the conversion of Ceylon, and also on scattered references to a veryancient system of dating, only fragmentarily preserved, which is based on 483 as the year of the Parinibbana. We are thus justified in dating the Buddha's birth with the chronicles in 563 BC, admitting, however, on the basis of other historical evidence, the possibility of error of from plus five to minus nine years. The probability -of an earlier date is slightly higher since it is supported by two methods (b and c}, while a later date is supported by only one (d).