English
All the dates, however, before Chandragupta are to be considered only as hypotheti- cal. The second council under E&ldiioka is extremely problematical, and the date of Buddha's death, as 218 before ASoka, is worth no more than the date of Vijaya's landing in Ceylon, fixed 218 before Devdr n^mpriya Tishya. Professor Lassen, in order to give an historical value to the date of 543 assigned to the dearth of Buddha, adds 66 years to the 22 years of the reign of the Nandas, and he quotes in support of this the authority of the PurlLnas which ascribe 88 years to the first Nanda. The Pur&nas, however, if taken in their true meaning, are entirely at variance with the Buddhist chronology before Chandragupta, and it is not allowable to use them as a corrective. As to 1 A. CanniDgham in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, zylli. p. 20. ' Asiatic Researches, xx. 297. ' Nagarjuna, who mast be somewhat later than Yasumitra, is roughlj placed 400 years after Buddha bj the l^orthern, 500 after Buddha by the Southern Buddhists. 300 CHANDBAGUPTA. the chronology of the Ceylonese Buddhists, so far from becoming more perfect by the addition of those sixty-six years, it would really lose all consistency. The most useful portions of that chronology are the prophecies of Buddha and others, as to the number of years intervening between certain events. All these dates would have to be surrendered if we adopted Professor Lassen^s correction. The great Council would not fall 218 years after Buddha's death, Chandragupta would not come to the throne 162 years after the Nirv&na : Buddha, in fact, as well as his apostles, would be convicted as false prophets by their very disciples.* Whatever changes may have to be introduced into the earlier chronology of India, nothing will ever shake the date of Chandragupta, the illegitimate successor of the Nandas, the ally of Seleucus, the grandfather of Afeoka. That date is the sheet- anchor of Indian chronology, and it is sufficient for the solution of the problem which occupies us at present. It enables us to place E&ty&yana before Chandragupta, the successor of the Nandas, or, at all events, the founder of a new dynasty, subsequent to the collapse of Alexander's empire. It enables us to fix chronologically an important period in the litera- ture of India, the SAtra period, and to extend its limits to at least three generations after K&tj^&yana, to about 200 b. c. In doing so, I am far^from main- taining that the evidence which connects the names of Kftty&yana and Nanda is unexceptionable. Nowhere except in Indian history should we feel justified in ascribing any weight to the vague traditions con- tained in popular stories which were written down more than a thousand years after the event. The most that can be said in favour of these traditions is, first, CHRONOLOGY. 801 that there was no object in inventing them ; secondly, that they are not in contradiction with anything we know of the early history of India from other sources ; and thirdlj', that the date which from their sugges- tions we assign to the literary works of E&ty&yana and his predecessors and successors, harmonises with the conclusions derived from the literature of the Brahmans, as to the probable growth and decay of the Hindu mind previous to the beginning of our era. Although these chronological discussions have oc- cupied so much of our space, it is necessary to add a few words of explanation. It might seem as if, in bringing together all the evidence available for our purpose, certain authorities had been overlooked which might have confirmed our conclusions. Pro- fessor Bohtlingk, whose researches with regard to the age of P&nini deserve the highest credit, has endeavoured to fortify his conclusions by some ad- ditional evidence, derived from the works of Chinese travellers; and other writers on the same subject have followed his example, though they have given a dif- ferent interpretation to the statements of those tra- vellers, and have arrived at difi^erent results as to the probable date of P&nini. The evidence of these Bud- dhist pilgrims, however, yields no real results, either for or against the date assigned to P&nini and E&ty&- yana, and it is for this reason that it has been entirely discarded in the preceding pages. Professor Bohtlingk relied on the testimony of Hiouen-thsang, a Buddhist pilgrim who travelled through India in the years 629 — 645 after Christ, and whose travels have lately been translated by M. Stanislas Julien. There we read ^ : 1 M^moires sur lea Contr^es occideo tales par Hiouen-tlisang, liv. It. p. 200. CHROBIOLOGY, S02 . £^it environ cinq cent li, au sud-est --fee *^°JL Cl^*P**i>> il arriva au couvent " ^^^it^® ^7 ffl,-Da-seiig-kia-lan (T&masavana-g \a *^^rl-A't*^ ,^ couvent de la ForSt Sombre. Or ^^'^-•^ -LxxC^V^ ' r0.^® *'"posant, et se distinguaie ^^' ^J*t^^'^''! £ lei*' T^"^"^ ^* r^l^vation de leur cara > par^ ^jl9 ^PP'^^iUe Buddhas du Kalpa des sL ^ ^-ciHicule- 1^^* joi^®''*' *^*8 ce lieu, rassembler J m^aaral^^P*^ r>eV*^ ®*^ 1^ expliquer la subliin ^ Atitttde ^^,^id ce^^ti^me aun^e apr^s le i\ir ?^ Patis^^*'^ ^^tb&gata, U y eut un maitre de La de ^^^ L jC&ty^yana, qui composa, dam tittfts, ^°^7^^.tcbi-lun (Abhidharma-JD&na-pra couve* ^'^ *\.6.tiaV" . V* ♦Viis l<^Sli*^ seem a very definite state Atfi^* ''f aJof K&tyflyana, placing him, if w, ent ftS *° ntioti*^ d*e of Buddha's death, aboui Accept t^® uThoW cfl-^ reprove that ffiouen-thsanj 243 B. c- f Kft,ty^y*"* Vararuchi ? It might \n ■was Bpeakii^S °gg^ty&.yftna, so simply mentioned \>i aid t^®^* iiflt ^® * person of note. Hiouen ■Oiouen-^^^^' ntioo ancient authors except mei of note, and m , ^ ^ chance person of that name this piac®' ^^''^^ g^.^ovra author.^ It could hardlj ^tttmtt9tlae*o^^^^j^ty&yana, because he was th< vg meant tor ^^^^^ jj^^ y^ placed 300 yean !^p\l of ^.\l Besides Mah&k&ty&yana, there ii fterli^^^'^ * _ of t^® ixam name of greatei "^^^ ^ . Lalitavistara. pp. 3. 415. 417. CHR0N0L0G7. 303 literary fame than Ellty&yana Yararuchi. But the E&ty&yana of whom Hiouen-thsang speaks was a Buddhist, and the author of a work on metaphysics, which Hiouen*thsang himself translated from San- skrit into Chinese. Making all possible allowance for the tendency of later Buddhist writers to refer the authorship of certain works to names famous in ancient Brahmanic history, we can hardly build much on the supposition that the author meant by the Chinese traveller was the old K&ty&yana Vararuchi, the contemporary of Pfinini. But, even if all these objections could be removed, what use could we make of Hiouen-thsang's chronology, who follows the system of the Northern, and not of the Ceylonese, Buddhists, who makes A^oka to reign 100 years after Buddha, Eanishka 400, the king of Himatala 600, and so on? We should first have to deter- mine what, according to FJiouen-thsang, was the real date of Buddha's Nirv&na, and what was the era used at his time in the monasteries of Northern India ; whether he altered the dates, assigned by the Buddhists of India to the various events of their traditional history, according to the standard of the Chinese Buddhist chronology, or whether he simply repeated the dates, such as they were communicated to him in the different places which he visited. All these questions would have to be answered, and if they could be answered, we should in the end only arrive at the date of a Kktykyaxka, but not of the K&ty£lyana with whom we are concerned. There is another passage in Hiouen-thsang which has been frequently discussed, and according to which it would seem that we should have to place P&nini much later, and that Efi,ty&yana, the critic of CHUON'OIl.OGY. „q4; 0t Taave lived before the first cent ^gk,t>^ ^br^**' 1 iti ^^s eaccellent work, " M^m< ^fte*"'^ ^eina*^' ^istorique et Scientifique sur I'lr >^'^^phiq^ a^^^*^e^ du XI'. si^cle, d'aprfes (5,600. ^^retaei* ^^ persans et chinois (Paris, 184J a.tvt'^^iiiS ai'^^^jaJl attention to this passage. He s fecT^"*- -tj^e 61*^^ * 1 que pour plusieurs autres j)ersonna Nf^^ g y."A-i^^^^d<l^'^sme, Hiouen-thsang attribui (■p* y-ies ^^ :gtet*^®^ ^* premiere a une epoque Tvo*^* s dettX ^^e ^*^^^^*^ P^^'* longue qu'^ present, Y^^. de I'lio^ i^ii 500 apr^s la mort de BouddJ ^ ^ con^e vers ^^^ps du second Vikram&ditya, ^* *t K-di^® *** p*^* ^® regne de Kanika.