These dates are, of course, approximate only, and they depend on one or two points on which people may differ. But, with that reservation, I see no ground whatever for modifying the chronological system which I put forward more than twenty years ago. Professor Westergaard and Professor Kern, who have since suggested different dates for the death of Buddha, do not really differ from me in principle, but only in their choice of one or the other alternative, which I readily admit as possible, but not as more certain than my own. Professor Westergaard[2], for instance, fixes Buddha's death at 368 (370), instead of 477. This seems a wide difference, but it is so in appearance only.

Following Justinus, who says that Sandrokyptos[3] had conquered the empire of India at the time when Seleucus laid the foundations of his own greatness, I had accepted 315[4], half-way between the murder of Porus and the taking of Babylon by Seleucus, as the probable beginning

[1. According to Bigandet, Life of Gaudama, p. 361, the era of Buddha's death was introduced by Agatasatru, at the conclusion of the First Council, and began in the year 46 of the older Eetzana era (p. 12). See, however, Rhys Davids, Num. Orient. vi, p. 38. In the Karanda-vyuha, p. 96, a date is given as 300 after the Nirvana, 'tritiye varshasate gate mama parinirvritasya.' In the Asoka-avadana we read, mama nirvritim arabhya satavarshagata Upagupto nama bhikshur utpatsyati.

2. Uber Buddha's Todesjahr (1860), 1862.

3. The Greek name Sandrokyptus shows that the Pali corruption Kandagutta was not yet the recognised name of the king.

4. Mr. Rhys Davids accepts 315 B.C. as the date when, after the murder of king Nanda, Kandragupta stept into the vacant throne, though he had begun to count his reign seven or eight years before. Buddhism, p. 22O.]

p. xxxvii of Kandragupta's reign. Westergaard prefers 320 as a more likely date for Kandragupta, and therefore places the death of the last Nanda and the beginning of Asoka's royal pretensions 268. Here there is a difference between him and me of five years, which depends chiefly on the view we take as to the time when Seleucus really laid what Justinus calls the foundation of his future greatness. Secondly, Westergaard actually adopts the idea, at which I only hinted as possible, that the southern Buddhists made two Asokas out of one, and two Councils out of one. Trusting in the tradition that 118 years elapsed between Buddha's death and the Council under Asoka (at Pataliputra), and that the Council took place in the king's tenth year (as was the case with the imaginary Kalasoka's Council), he gets 268 - 10 = 258 as the date of the Council, and 368 or 370 as the date of Buddha's death[1].