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

2. The words Saddham, Uddhadehikam, and Nivâpo, given in Childers, refer to pagan rites. 3. On funerals among Buddhists in Japan, see Miss Bird's 'Unbeaten Tracks,' vol. i.] p. xlvi Gotama's time to the time when the existing chronicles were compiled, we should be able, if we could fix the date of any one of the kings, to calculate the date of the Buddha's death. This last we can do; for the date of Kandragupta, and the date of his grandson Asoka, can be independently fixed within a few years by the aid of the Greek historians. But unfortunately the earlier parts of the otherwise reliable Ceylon chronicles are, like the earlier parts of Livy's otherwise reliable history of Rome, full of inconsistencies, and impossibilities. According to the Râga-paramparâ, or line of kings, in the Ceylon chronicles, the date of the Great Decease would be 543 B.C., which is arrived at by adding to the date 161 B.C. (from which the reliable portion of the history begins) two periods of 146 and 236 years. The first purports to give the time which elapsed between 161 B.C. and the great Buddhist church Council held under Asoka, and in the eighteenth year of his reign, at Patna; and the second to give the interval between that Council and the Buddha's death. It would result from the first calculation that the date of Asoka's coronation would be 325 B.C. (146 + 161 + 18). But we know that this must contain a blunder or blunders, as the date of Asoka's coronation can be fixed, as above stated, with absolute certainty within a year or two either way of 267 B.C.