A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, so far as it illustrates the Primitive Religion of the Brahmans c8.s3.55

c8.s3.55

It is possible to discover in the decaying literature of Vedic Brahmanism the contemporaneous rise of a new religion, of Buddhism. Every attempt to go beyond, and to bring the chronology of the Buddhists and Brahmans into harmony has proved a failure. The reason, I believe, is obvious. The Brahmans had a kind of vague chronology in the different capitals of their country. They remembered the names of their kings, and they endeavoured to remember the years of their reigns. But to note the year in which an individual, such as Gautama Śâkyasinha, was born, however famous he may have been in his own neighbourhood or even in more distant Parishads, would have entered as little into their thoughts as the Romans, or even the Jews, thought of preserving the date of the birth of Jesus before he had become the founder of a religion. Buddha’s immediate followers may have recollected and handed down, by oral communication, the age at which Buddha died; the age of his disciples too may have been recollected, together with the names of some local Râjas who patronised Buddha and his friends; but never, until the adoption of Buddhism as the state religion by Aśoka, could there have been any object in connecting the lives of Buddha and his disciples with the chronology of the Solar or Lunar Dynasties of India. When, at the time of Aśoka, it became necessary to give an account of the previous history of Buddhism, the chronology then adopted for the early centuries of that faith was necessarily of a purely theoretical kind. We possess more than one system of Buddhist chronology, but none of them can be considered authentic with regard to the times previous to Aśoka, the second successor of Chandragupta. There is the system of the Southern Buddhists, framed in Ceylon; there are the various systems of the Northern Buddhists, prevalent in Nepal, Tibet, and China; and the system of the Purâṇas, if system it can be called, in which Śâkya is made the father of his father, and grandfather of his son. To try to find out which of these chronological systems is the most plausible seems useless, and it can only make confusion worse confounded if we attempt a combination of the three. It has been usual to prefer the chronology of Ceylon, which places Buddha’s death in 543 B.C. But the principal argument in favour of this date is extremely weak. It is said that the fact of the Ceylonese era being used as an era for practical purposes speaks in favour of its correctness. This may be true with regard to the times after the reign of Aśoka. In historical times any era, however fabulous its beginning, will be practically useful; but no conclusion can be drawn from this, its later use, as to the correctness of its beginning. As a conventional era, that of Ceylon may be retained, but until new evidence can be brought forward to substantiate the authenticity of the early history of Buddhism as told by the Ceylonese priests, it would be rash to use the dates of the Southern Buddhists as a corrective standard for those of the Northern Buddhists or of the Brahmans. Each of these chronological systems must be left to itself. They start from different premises, and necessarily arrive at different results. The Northern Buddhists founded their chronology on a reported prophecy of Buddha, that “a thousand years after his death his doctrines would reach the Northern countries.”¹ Buddhism was definitely introduced into China in the year 61 A.D.; hence the Chinese fix the date of Buddha’s death about one thousand years anterior to the Christian era. The variations of the date, according to different Chinese authorities, are not considerable, and may easily be explained by the uncertainty of the time at which Buddhism found its way successively into the various countries north of India, and at last into China.