Indian Epigraphy c15.s2.t3.13

c15.s2.t3.13

Some scholars have accepted the Śvetāmbara tradition giving the difference between the Vīra-nirvāṇa era on the one hand and the Vikrama and Śaka eras on the other as 470 years and 605 and 5 months respectively and suggesting the beginning of the era in 527 or 528 B.C. But this is untenable since, as now accepted by most historians, Mahāvīra, who was a contemporary of the Buddha, must have died in the first half of the 5th century B.C.³