A History of Indian Literature v2.c21: Appendix I. The Year of Buddha’s Death. Did a Gotama Buddha live?
A History of Indian Literature v2.c21
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Appendix I. The Year of Buddha’s Death. Did a Gotama Buddha live?
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Much as has already been written about the year of Buddha’s death, it is by no means firmly established as yet. According to the Singhalese tradition, 544 B.C. would be the death-year, but this is rejected by most European scholars as incompatible with the chronology of the kings of Magadha. According to M. de Z. Wickremasinghe, there used to be in Ceylon too, an era beginning with 483 B.C. as the year of Buddha’s death, whilst 544 B.C. as the death-year cannot be traced back further than about the middle of the 11th century.[^1) However, all the seemingly convincing evidence which we thought we had acquired in favour of various dates between 477 and 487 B.C., has in every case proved to be uncertain and doubtful. *Cf.* J. F. *Fleet*, JRAS 1909, 1 ff., 323 ff., 981 ff.; 1910, 1308; 1912, 239 ff.; *Oldenberg*, AR 13, 1910, 611 ff., V. Gopala *Aiyer*, Ind. Ant. 37, 1908, 341 ff.; W. *Geiger*, The Mahavaṁsa, Transl., p. xxii ff.; J. *Charpentier*, Ind. Ant. 43, 1914, 130 ff.; T. W. *Rhys Davids* in Cambridge History I, 171 ff.; E. *Hultzsch*, Inscriptions of Asoka (1925), p. xxxii f., xxxv; H. *Jacobi*, Buddhas und Mahāvīras Nirvāṇa und die politische Entwicklung Magadhas zu jener Zeit, in SBA 1930, p. 557 ff. K. P. *Jayaswal* (JBORS I, 1915, 67 ff., 97 ff.; *cf.* III, 1917, 425 ff.; IV, 1918, 264 ff.) again endeavoured to prove, on the basis of a new reading of the Hāthīgumphā inscription of Khāravela, that the year 544 B.C. is the year of Buddha’s death, and V. A. *Smith* (JRAS 1918,
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[^1): *Cf.* W. *Geiger*, The Mahāvaṁsa, Transl., p. xxviii.
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543 ff.; Early History, 4th ed., 49 f.) agreed with him, though he is also compelled to say: "I do not believe that the date can be fixed with anything like certainty." *Jayaswal's* readings and calculations have, however, been shown to be untenable, by R. C. *Majumdar* (Ind. Ant. 47, 1918, 223 f.; 48, 1919, 187 ff.; cf. R. P. *Chanda*, Ind. Ant. 48, 214 ff.; K. G. *Sankara Aiyar*, Ind. Ant. 49, 1920, 43 ff.). A. B. *Keith*, too (Buddhist Philosophy, p. 32) refutes *Jayaswal's* argumentation, but even he declares the usual dating 487-477 to be uncertain, and says that "the case against the traditional date is insufficient to justify its rejection out and out."[^1) When we take into consideration that there is sufficient evidence to show that Buddha was a contemporary of kings Bimbisāra and Ajātaśatru, whom we can place with a fair amount of certainty in the 6th and 5th centuries B. C., then we are at least justified in saying that the best working hypothesis is to place the life of Buddha into this period too.[^2)
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It is true that we are taking it for granted that Gotama Buddha did really live. R. Otto *Franke* (ZDMG 69, 1915, 455 f.)—like E. *Senart* and A. *Barth* before him—doubts even this, and is of opinion that "the so-called doctrine of Buddha is perhaps only the collection of a bundle of didactic elements from the vast treasury of philosophical thoughts" which came into being in India in the centuries preceding the Christian era. In another passage (OZ 4, 1915-16, p. 10) the same scholar says: "For me Gotama Buddha is not a bit less mythical than his six 'mythical predecessors'"; "Buddha" according to him is but a dogmatical conception, and all the seven Buddhas are but "paradigmata of the dogmatical Buddha," who to him is apparently nothing more than "a form, grown
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[^1): *Cf.* also E. J. *Thomas*, The Life of Buddha, p. 27; G. P. *Malalasekera*, The Pali Literature of Ceylon, London 1928, p. 15; Mrs. *Rhys Davids*, Sakya or Buddhist Origins, London 1931, p. 484. [^2): Cf. also Appendix VI.
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nebulous, of an ancient conception of the deity," "perhaps of the philosophical conception of the pantheistic divinity," perhaps a form of this divinity, which was especially associated with trees. How improbable and how baseless is this hypothesis compared to the assumption that Gotama Buddha is an historical personage, who enjoyed such great veneration that myths and legends were woven around him! True, we know very, very little about the real life of Gotama. On the other hand, tradition and even monuments afford us a few facts which there are no grounds to doubt. *Oldenberg* (*Reden des Buddha*, p. xx f.) is right when he says that there is no reason to doubt the accounts that Buddha belonged to the Sakya race and was born at Kapilavatthu, in all other respects so insignificant a place. At any rate this tradition was already so firmly established in about 250 B.C., that king Aśoka went on a pilgrimage to Buddha's birthplace, and recorded the memory of this pilgrimage in an inscription on the column found in 1896 near the Nepalese village of Paderia. The inscription reads: "When King Piyadasi had been anointed 20 years, he came here in person and paid his devotion here, because the Buddha, the sage born of the Sakya race, was born here."
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It was also in the vicinity of Kapilavatthu, near Piprāvā, on the Nepalese frontier, that Mr. W. C. *Peppé* found in 1898 a reliquary chest containing a crystal urn with remains of bones which were formerly regarded as actual relics of the Buddha.¹ The readings and explanation of the inscription which is written round the rim of the lid of the urn, certainly admits of various interpretations. Even if the explanation: "This is the reliquary treasure of the Lord Buddha of the Sakyas," is, as I believe, the correct one, this does not constitute a proof of the "authenticity" of the relics; it only shows that at Aśoka’s time (the script is that of the Aśoka inscriptions) people *believed* that these were relics of the Buddha.¹ Yet, this belief would scarcely have arisen, unless a man venerated as a saint, as a “Buddha,” had actually lived in the days before Aśoka.
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¹ *Cf., e.g.,* R. *Pischel*, Leben und Lehre des Buddha, 4th Ed., by J. *Nobel*, 1926, p. 48f.
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¹ *Cf.* R. O. *Franke* in OZ 4, 1915-16, 1ff. ; E. J. *Thomas*, The Life of Buddha, 160ff.
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Even when we eliminate all legendary and mythical elements from the tradition, the Buddhist texts still afford us a life-like and very plausible picture of the personality of Gotama and his career as the founder of a religion and as a preacher.² If the personality of the Buddha, with its strong reaction on the contemporaries, had never existed, it would indeed be passing strange that in Buddhist literature it is precisely the picture of the Master which is so living. “It is no exaggeration to say,” says Sir Charles *Eliot* (I, 297), “that the Buddha is the most living figure in Hindu literature. He stands before us more distinctly not only than Yājñavalkya and Śaṅkara, but than modern teachers like Nānak and Rāmānuja, and the reason of this distinction can, I think, be nothing but the personal impression which he made on his age.”
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² See also E. J. *Thomas*, The Life of Buddha, p. 225f.
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In addition to this, the accounts of the Buddhists regarding Gotama Buddha and his contemporaries are in striking agreement with those of the Jainas regarding Mahāvīra, and the two currents of tradition supplement each other.³ Lastly, when we call to mind that it has repeatedly happened in India, down to quite modern times, that founders of a religion or of a religious sect are deified even during their own lifetime, then we can only call it exaggerated, barren scepticism to doubt that Gotama Buddha lived just as certainly as did Keshub Chunder Sen, the founder of the "Brahmo Samaj of India," who died in 1884, and who was worshipped as a deity by some of his adherents as early as in the year 1868.¹
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³ *Cf.* *Oldenberg*, Buddha, 5th Ed., Berlin 1906, p. 95f. As to whether Buddha is historical, *ibid*, p. 98ff.
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¹ J. C. Oman, Brahmans, Theists and Muslims of India, London 1907, p. 122f.
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If we wish to regard Buddhism, with *Franke*, as "only a collected bundle of general Indian doctrines," we should still have to explain why this "bundle," in spite of all the changes of Buddhism, shows such individual traits, if there was not an individual, a creative personality, who bound this "bundle" into something entirely new and special, and stamped the impress of his personality upon it. Even if we were unable to give credence to the Buddhist chroniclers, and could not determine the exact date of the Buddha, but were compelled to limit ourselves to affirming that his doctrine came into being before Aśoka's time, we cannot doubt the personality of the founder² any more than that of Kālidāsa, whose date we can also determine only approximately.
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² *Franke* admits in a later essay (ZDMG 69, 1915, p. 456) that such a personage existed, when he says: "Let us content ourselves with the conviction that it was no ordinary mind which evolved what we call the earliest Buddhism, and with the fact that he was an Indian Aryan of (be it said provisionally) one of the pre-Christian centuries but not the latest of those centuries." Why this "Indian Aryan" should not have been called Gotama and received the epithet "Buddha," it is really difficult to see.