Indian Epigraphy c15.s2.t4.2

c15.s2.t4.2

The Cantonese dotted record suggests that the Buddhist Clergy had a record in which each past year after the Buddha’s death was represented by a dot and that the said event took place in 486 B.C.⁵ But that there was no genuine, continuous and universally accepted tradition on the subject is clear from the different epochs of the Buddha-nirvāṇa era prevalent in different parts of the Buddhist world. Thus, according to the Ceylonese tradition, now also accepted in Burma and Siam, the era starts from 544 B.C. while the Chinese tradition places it in 638 B.C.⁶ The Chinese traveller Fa-hien, who came to India in 399 A.D., speaks of 1497 years having passed after the Buddha’s death, thus placing the beginning of the era about 1097 B.C.¹