When I saw that the date of Buddha's death, 477 B.C., which in my History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature (1859) I had myself tried to support by such arguments as were then accessible, had received so powerful a support by the discovery of the inscriptions of Sahasram, Rupnath, and Bairat, due to General Cunningham, who had himself always been an advocate of the date 477 B.C., and through their careful decipherment by Dr. Buhler, I lost no time in testing that date once more by the Dipavamsa, that Ceylonese chronicle having lately become accessible through Dr. Oldenberg's edition and translation[2]. And here I am able to say that, before having read Dr. Buhler's Second Notice, I arrived, though by a somewhat different way, at nearly the same conclusions as those so well worked out by Dr. Buhler in his restoration of the Episcopal Succession (theravali) of the Buddhists, and therefore feel convinced that, making all such allowances as the case requires, we know now as much of early Buddhist chronology as could be known at the time of Asoka's Council, 242 B.C.

Taking the date of Buddha's death 477 B.C. for granted, I found that Upali, who rehearsed the Vinaya at the First Council, 477 B.C., had been in orders sixty years in the twenty-fourth year of Agatasatru, i.e. 461 B.C., which was the sixteenth year A.B. He must therefore[3] have been born in 541 B.C., and he died 447 B.C., i.e. thirty years A.D., at the age of 94. This is said to have been the sixth year of Udayi, and so it is, 453 - 6 = 447 B.C.

In the year 461 B.C. Dasaka received orders from Upali, who was then 80 years of age; and when Dasaka had been

[1. Oldenberg, loc. cit. p. 750.

2. The Dipavamsa, an ancient Buddhist historical record. London, 1879.

3. Assuming twenty to be the minimum age at which a man could be ordained.]

p. xliii in orders forty-five years (Dipavamsa IV, 41), he ordained Saunaka. This would give us 461 - 45 = 416 B.C., while the tenth year of Nagadasa, 429 - 10, would give us 419 A.D. Later on the Dipavamsa (V, 78) allows an interval of forty years between the ordinations of Dasaka and Saunaka, which would bring the date of Saunaka's ordination to 421 B.C., instead of 419 or 416 B.C. Here there is a fault which must be noted. Dasaka died 461 - 64 = 397 A.D., which is called the eighth year of Sisunaga, and so it is 405 - 8 = 397 A.D.

When Saunaka had been in orders forty years, i.e. 416 - 40 = 376, Kalasoka is said to have reigned a little over ten years, i.e. 387 - 11 = 376 A.D., and in that year Saunaka ordained Siggava. He died 416 - 66 = 350 A.D., which is called the sixth year of the Ten, while in reality it is the ninth, 359 - 6 = 353 A.D. If, however, we take 419 as the year of Saunaka's ordination, his death would fall 419 - 66 = 353 B.C.