User:Mullappilly Parameswaran/sandbox

== DATE OF THE BUDDHA AND DATES IN INDIAN HISTORY CHALLENGED

Eventhough India had preserved its hisory in its own way in its literature (Puranas, Itihasas etc.), Stupas, Edicts, Coins etc. in its own way from 13 February, 3102 B.C.onwards, some prejudiced Western Orientalists (who thought that Indians were uncivilized people without any history), when they got a chance to supersede Indian predominance in scholarship, found great pleasure in re-writing the history of the land according to their conjectures.

The method adopted by them was like this:

1. In 1793 one scholar declared that he had solved the riddle of ancient Indian history, by stating that Sandrakottas of Megasthanes, the Greek writer of 4th century B.C., is Chandra Gupta Maurya of the Indian Puranas.

2. In 1825, another scholar drew the attention of the scholars to the importance of the Ceylonese Pali Chroniles (Mahavamsa, Dipavamsa etc) as source books for the history of Buddhism.

3 In the year 1837-38, another scholar, by comparison of many scattered inscriptions, and coins, discovered the key to the long lost alphabet in which the edicts were engraved.

4. The second scholar, no sooner did he see this, than he sprang to the conclusion that they are the inscriptions of Asoka of the Mahavamsa and he is the grandson of Chandragupta Maurya.

A WEAK ‘SHEET ANCHOR’:

1. The invasion of India by Alexander of Macedonia lasted from 327 B. C. to 323 B. C. According to the Greeks of that time, the name of the king of Prassi in India, coranated after the invasion of Alexander, was Sandrokottas. On the basis of the identity, as proposed by the western scholars, of Sandrokottas of the Greeks with Chandragupta Maurya of the Indian Puranas, the date of his coronation was taken to be c. 320 B.C. This was called the sheet anchor of ancient Indian chronology and the chronology of ancient Indian history was prepared with this year as the base year.

2. Asoka of the edicts, was identified as the grandson of the Chandragupta Maurya and his date was decided as c. 265 B.C.

3. In the Ceylonese chronicle Mahavamsa, it is stated that the coronation of Asoka took place 218 yeas after the Nirvana of the Buddha.This felicitated to decide the date of the Buddha’s Nirvana as c. 483.B.C. ie., 265 + 218 = 483 (Year of death) + 80 = 563 (Year of birth).

But the historical truths, known to India, from its own preservation in literature, Stupas, edicts, coins etc., proves, beyond doubt, that the conjectures based on the books Indika of Megasthanes and Mahavamsa of Ceylon are far from truth.

Seleukas Niketar sent Megasthanes to Sandrakottas as an ambassador in 302 B.C... He stayed in India for some time and had written a book on India called Indika It was already lost with in 2/3 centuries, but some excerpts remained in other writers’ books. The relevant quotations are:--

1.Alexander obtained from Phegus a description of the country beyond the Indus. First came a desert....beyond this was a river called Ganges...beyond again situated the dominions of the nations Praisioi and Gangaridai, whose king Xandrammes, Agrammes or Andrammes had an army of 20,000 horses etc.. 2.The usurper who visited Alexander in his camp for help and who killed Xandrammes and obtained the throne was Sandrakottas or Andrakottas.

3.After Alexander’s death, the places conquered by him in India came under the rule of Seleukas Nikator. Sandrakottas defeated Nikator and got back the places to Indian rule.

4.Megashenes and Deimachos were sent by Seleukas Nikator on an embassy, the former to king Sandracottas of Palibothra and the other to his son Amitrochades also referred to as Sandrocyptus.

5.About Sandrakottas it is said that he was the king of Prassi (Praisioi) whose capital was Palibothra.With the help of a big army he had conquered the whole of India and he was the greatest among the Indian kings.

6.Selukas Nikator had given his daughter in marriage to Sandracottas.

Indian historians have proved from their studies that Sandrakottas of Megasthanes cannot be Chandragupta of Maurya dynasty due to various historical and geographical reasons. Except in the case of Chandragupta with Sandrakottas, there is not even a verbal semblance or phonetic similarity, in the case of the other kings. The same is the case of Prassi and Palibotra also. Further, the western orientals had failed to see the actual Chandraguptas of Gupta dynasty in Indian History. Some Indian historians have pointed out that it can be Samudragupta of Gupta dynasty. But there is no evidence to show that he sought the help of Alexander or killed his father, Chandragupta I., or embrased Buddhism.

The most interesting thing in this matter is that even though Bhagavata Purana gives a dynastic account of the kings that ruled over Magadha from the time of the Mahabharata War (3137 B.C.) ie., covering a period of about three thousand years, there is no mention of the invasion by Alexander or a king visiting the Alexander or a king marrying a Greek princess. Similarly, there is no mention of the Buddha, Buddhism or Chanakya in Greek accounts. The reason can be that the list ends with Andhra dynasty and the Gupta dynasty comes after that. The reason for not appearing the Alexander’s invasion and the name of Porus in the Puranas, can be the same, ie., it happened after the period of Andhra dynasty.

In short the sheet anchor as well as the Buddha’s dates based on it (563--483 B.C) have been challenged from the very beginning. It seems the Buddha belonged to a distant past or pre-historic period.

REFERENCE: Dates of the Buddha by Shriram Sathe Bharatiya Itihasa Sankalana Samiti, Hyderabad.(1987)