The Chinese place the
death of Buddha upwards of 1000 years before Christ, so that according
to them the date of this inscription would be about A.D. 800, a period
much too early for the style of character used in the inscription. But
as the day of the week is here fortunately added, the date can be
verified by calculation. According to my calculation, the date of the
inscription corresponds with Wednesday, the 17th of September, AD. 1342.
This would place the Nirvana of Buddha in 477 B.C., which is the very
year that was first proposed by myself as the most probable date of that
event. This corrected date has since been adopted by Professor Max
Muller."
The reasons assigned by some Orientalists for considering this so-called
"corrected date" as the real date of Buddha's death have already been
noticed and criticized in the preceding paper; and now we have only to
consider whether the inscription in question disproves the old date.
Major-General Cunningham evidently seems to take it for granted, as far
as his present calculation is concerned, that the number of days in a
year is counted in the Magadha country and by Buddhist writers in
general on the same basis on which the number of days in a current
English year is counted; and this wrong assumption has vitiated his
calculation and led him to a wrong conclusion.
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