| B.C. | |
| Chandragupta | 325 |
| Sisunagas, 360 years | 360 |
| Sunakas | 128 |
| Sabadeva to Ripunjaya, 23 reigns at 18 years | 414 |
| 1227 | |
which may probably be taken as very near the true date.
It must for the present remain an open question whether the dates just quoted can be so established as to stand the test of the exigencies of modern critical acumen. It would be very satisfactory if this could be so accomplished. In the first place, because it would afford a firm basis for all our reasoning regarding the ancient history and ethnography of India, but also because it would prove that the Puranas do contain the germs of truths which, when properly investigated, may lead to the most important deductions. My own impression is entirely in favour of the existence of the requisite materials for the purpose; but the fashion has been lately to pooh-pooh the whole thing, and no attempt has been made—so far as I know—by any competent scholar, to investigate the matter on scientific principles.
Be this as it may, when we come to the Anjana era, 691 B.C.,[662] and the life of Buddha, we tread on surer ground; and it is fortunate for our purposes that it so, as with the life of Buddha the mediæval history of India may be said to commence, and unless his date and that of his successors can be established with at least approximate certainty, the history of architecture in India must remain unintelligible. In this instance, however, the materials, I believe, exist in abundance. They have not, it is true, been as yet investigated to such an extent as to render any point certain, but the difficulties are daily disappearing, and as every point gained adds materially in throwing light on others that have hitherto been considered unsettled, we may hope before long to see the whole satisfactorily resolved.
There is perhaps no single point in the whole early history of India on which the chronicles of Ceylon and Further India are so distinct and unanimous than that Buddha died—as they express it, attained Nirvana—at the age of eighty years, in the year 543 B.C., or in the year 148 of the Eetzana[663] or Anjana epoch.[664]
Attempts have recently been made, it appears to me on the most illogical and insufficient data, to invalidate this conclusion. There is an admitted falsification in the Ceylonese annals, as set forth in the ‘Mahawanso,’ of sixty years about this date; but as Turnour, who first pointed it out, explained also the reason for it,[665] the rectification is easy, and the result clear. It seems that Vijaya, the first Indian immigrant or conqueror of Ceylon, landed in the island 483 years B.C., or thereabout; and the reigns of his successors, down to Devenampiyatisso, the contemporary of Asoka, when added together, amount to only 236 years. When the annals came to be expounded in the ‘Mahawanso,’ it was thought expedient, for the good of religion, that the coming of Vijaya should be coincident with the death of Buddha; and as the sacred era could not be disturbed, Asoka’s reign was carried back so as to admit of the adjustment. This was effected principally by reducing the epoch of the nine Nandas from 100 years, at which the Puranas place them, to forty-four, and by other slight alterations. The sixty years was afterwards recovered by small increments to subsequent reigns, not of much consequence, but injuriously affecting the correctness of the whole chronology of the ‘Mahawanso,’ down to about A.D. 400, when it was compiled in its present form. As the date of Asako’s reign is perfectly well known (272-236 B.C.), we have only to reject the most improbable coincidence of Vijaya landing on the day of Buddha’s Nirvana, which there is nothing to support, and the whole becomes clear, and everything falls into its place.[666]
Besides the Ceylonese lists, and those quoted by Crawfurd from the Burmese annals,[667] the Puranas afford us two, quoted below, which are of great interest to us, and the whole are so marvellously coincident, that there seems very little doubt of their general authenticity.
| Solar List. | Lunar List. | ||
| Saisunaga Dynasty reigned 360 years. | |||
| B.C. | B.C. | ||
| Kritanjaya | 691 | Sisunaga | 685 |
| Rananjaya | — | Kakavarna | — |
| Sanjaya | — | Kshemadharman | — |
| Sakya | — | Kshetranjas | — |
| Suddhodana | — | Bimbisara 603 | |
| Kanwapana, 9. | |||
| Bhumiputra, 14. | |||
| Ratula | — | Ajatasatru | 551 |
| Prasenajit | — | Udayaswa | 519 |
| Kshudraka | — | Dasaka | 503 |
| Kundaka | — | Nagadasoka | 495 |
| Suratha | — | Sisunaga | 471 |
| Sumitra | 451? | Kalasoka | 453 |
| Maha Nanda | 425 | ||
| Sumalya | — | ||
| 7 Nandas | — | ||
| Interregnum Kautilya ending | 325 | ||
With regard to the first or Solar list, Professor Wilson remarks, that “Sakya is no doubt the name of the author or reviver of Buddhism, but is out of place, as he was the son and not the father of Suddhodana.”[668] This, however, is only one of the numerous instances in which the grandson takes his grandfather’s name, and which is an interminable cause of confusion in Indian chronological inquiries.[669] Gautama, as we know, never ascended the throne, but devoted himself to his religious duties, but his son Ratula succeeded his grandfather. In like manner, the Prasenajit in the list is not the cousin and companion of Buddha, but the grandson, or grand-nephew of that earlier king of the same name. Sumitra, the last name mentioned in the Bhagavat Purana, seems to have ascended the throne about 451. There are no exact dates for fixing this event, and with him perished the long line of Solar monarchs, who for more than twenty-six centuries—if our chronology is correct—had influenced in so marked a manner the destinies of India.
It was during the reign of Kalasoka, the eleventh king of this dynasty, that the second convocation was held, 100 years after the Nirvana. This, too, it has recently become the fashion to doubt. The accounts, however, in the ‘Mahawanso,’ and the pointed mode in which it is referred to in the Burmese annals, seem sufficient to settle the point. Like Vijaya’s landing in Ceylon on the day of Buddha’s Nirvana, Prome is said to have been founded 443, the year of this convocation.[670] They must have believed strongly, or they would not have attempted the adjustment.