An Introduction to Buddhism Teachings, History and Practices

Indian culture has not been as concerned with recording precise dates as have Chinese or Graeco-Roman cultures, so datings cannot always be arrived at with accuracy. All sources agree that Gotama was eighty when he died (e.g. D.ii.100), and the Pali sources of Theravāda Buddhism say that this was ‘218’ years before the inauguration of the reign of the Buddhist emperor Asoka (Skt Aśoka): the ‘long chronology’. Sanskrit sources preserved in East Asia have a ‘short chronology’, with his death ‘100’ years or so before Asoka’s inauguration. Based on a traditional date of the inauguration, Pali sources see Gotama’s dates as 623–543 bce. However, references in Asokan edicts to named Hellenistic kings have meant that modern scholars have put the inauguration at c. 268 bce (giving c. 566–486 bce for Gotama) or, more recently, anywhere between 267 and 280 bce. Richard Gombrich has argued that ‘218’ and ‘100’ are best seen as approximate numbers, and sees 136 as more likely, based on figures associated with a lineage of Buddhist teachers in the Dīpavaṃsa, a chronicle of Sri Lanka – with the ‘218’ in this text (6.1) as from its misunderstanding of figures in its earlier part. With various margins of error, Gombrich sees Gotama’s death as between 422 and 399 bce, with c. 404 as most likely, giving his dates as c. 484–404 bce.