The two points on which Westergaard differs from me, seem to me questions which should be kept before our mind in dealing with early Buddhist history, but which, for the present at least, admit of no definite solution.

The same remark seems to me to apply to the calculations of another eminent Sanskrit scholar, Professor Kern[2]. He lays great stress on the general untrustworthiness of Indian chronology, and I am the last to differ from him on that point. He then places the beginning of Kandragupta's reign in 322 B.C. Allowing twenty-four years to him and twenty-eight to his son Bindusara, he places the beginning of Asoka's reign in 270. Asoka's inscriptions would fall about 258. As Asoka reigned thirty-six or thirty-seven years, his death would fall in 234 or 233 B.C. Like Westergaard, Professor Kern too eliminates Kalasoka, as a kind of chronological Asoka, and the Council of Vaisali, and therefore places Buddha's death, according to the northern tradition, 100 or 110 years before Dharmasoka, i.e. 270 + 100 or + 110 = 370 or 380[3]; while, according to the southern

[1. Westergaard. loc. cit. p. 128.

2. Jaartelling der Zuidelijke Buddhisten, 1873.

3. See Professor Kern's remark in Indian Antiquary, 1874, p. 79.]

p. xxxviii tradition, that 118 years elapsed between Asoka's accession and Buddha's death, the Ceylonese monks would seem originally to have retained 270 + 118[1] = 388 B.C. as Buddha's Nirvana, a date which, as Professor Kern holds, happens to coincide with the date assigned to the death of Mahavira, the founder of the Gaina religion.