History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c13.s2.32

c13.s2.32

The event is said to have taken place during the reigns of King Bimbisāra of Magadha and Pasenadi of Kosala. Rockhill, basing his view on the Tibetan version, believes that it occurred in the sixteenth year of the Buddha’s ministry.¹ This date seems definitely too early. As Malalasekera has pointed out,² it would exclude the possibility of King Ajātasattu visiting Pūraṇa,³ since the former could have been only a small child at the time of the death of the latter. There are other weighty objections to Rockhill’s figure. Buddha’s ministry lasted forty-four years. If we retain 483 B.C. as the date of his *nirvāṇa*,⁴ on Rockhill’s theory Pūraṇa’s suicide must have occurred *c.* 511 B.C. But, on the basis of our synchronisms,⁵ and of the *Bhagavatī Sūtra*’s statement that Gosāla’s ministry lasted for sixteen years,⁶ the latter’s ministry must have commenced *c.* 501 B.C., or ten years after Pūraṇa’s death. This invalidates the strong Buddhist tradition that the ministries of the six heretical teachers were contemporary, and renders it quite impossible that Pūraṇa could have been in any way subordinate to Makkhali Gosāla.