Mahâ-Parinibbâna-Suttanta: The Book of the Great Decease

------------------------ The date of the Great Decease is not quite certain. The dwellers in the valley of the Ganges, for many generations after Gotama's death, were a happy people, who had no need of dates; and it was only long afterwards, and in Ceylon, that the great event became used as the starting-point for chronological calculations, as the Buddhist era. The earliest use of the Buddha's Parinibbâna as such an era is in an Inscription of King Nissanka Malla's, of the twelfth century A.D., published by me in the journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1875. Both in the historical records of Ceylon, and in those passages of the Purânas which are the nearest approach to historical records in India, the chronology is usually based on the lists of kings, just as it is in the Old Testament. Only by adding together the lengths of the reigns of the intermediate kings is it possible to calculate the length of the time that is said to have elapsed between any two given events. If these lists of kings had been accurately kept from [1. Compare Mahâvamsa, pp. 4, 125; 129,199, 223-225, and Chap. 39, verse 28; Gâtaka I, 166, 181, 402; II, 6; Dasaratha Gâtaka, pp. 1, 21, 22, 26, &c.; Dhammapada Commentary, pp. 94, 205, 206, 222, 359; Hatthavana-galla-vihâra-vamsa, Chap. IX; Hardy, 'Eastern Monachism,' pp. 322-324. 2. The words Saddham, Uddhadehikam, and Nivâpo, given in Childers, refer to pagan rites.