n]gharama in its
place. The latter piece of information is found also in the
_Dipava[=n]sa_ of more than a century earlier. [Footnote: Turnour,
_Mahava[.n]sa_, pp. 66-67 and p. 203, 206: _Dipava[=n]sa_ XIX
14; comp. also Kern, _Buddhismus_, Bd. I, S. 422. In the first
passage in the _Mahava[.n] sa_, three Nigha[n.][t.]as are introduced
by name, Jotiya, Giri, and Kumbha[n.][d.]a. The translation incorrectly
makes the first a Brahma[n.] and chief engineer.]
None of these works can indeed be looked upon as a truly historical
source. There are, even in those paragraphs which treat of the oldest
history after Buddha's death, proofs enough that they simply hand down a
faulty historical tradition. In spite of this, their statements on the
Nirgrantha, cannot be denied a certain weight, because they are closely
connected on the one side with the Buddhist canon, and on the other they
agree with the indisputable sources of history, which relate to a slightly
later period.
The first authentic information on Vardhamana's sect is given by our
oldest inscriptions, the religious edicts of the Maurya king A['s]oka,
who, according to tradition was anointed in the year 219 after Buddha's
death, and--as the reference to his Grecian contemporaries, Antiochos,
Magas, Alexander, Ptolemaeus and Antigonas confirms,--ruled, during the
second half of the third century B.
Pages:
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56