The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c19.s1.4

v1.c19.s1.4

This statement was followed by an analysis of the details of the lists of kings and teachers, the length of whose reigns or lives, added together, amount to this period of 218 years. The analysis shows how little the list can be relied on. The fact is that all such calculations are of very doubtful validity when they have to be made backwards for any lengthened period. Sinologists, Assyriologists, Egyptologists have not been able to agree on results sought by this method; and, though Archbishop Usher’s attempt to discover in this way, from the Hebrew records, the correct date of the creation was long accepted, it is now mere matter for derision. As is well known, even the Christian chronologists, though the interval they had to cover was very short, were wrong in their calculation of our Christian era. The Ceylon chroniclers may have been as much more wrong as the interval they had to account for was longer. We must admit that they tried their best, and were not so utterly at sea as the Irish church-dignitary. But we do not even know who made the calculation. We first hear of it in the fourth century A.D., and are only entitled to conclude that at that date the belief in the 218 years was accepted by most of those Buddhists who continued in possession of the ancient traditions¹.