Page:A Collection of Esoteric Writings.djvu/178

164 Buddha lived, and they are still in use in different parts of the country. These methods are known as Souramanam, Chandramanam and Barhaspatyamanam. According to the Hindu works on Astronomy a Souramanam year consists of 365 days, 15 ghadias and 31 vighadias; a Chandramanam year has 360 days, and a year on the basis of Barhaspatyamanam has 361 days and 11 ghadias nearly. Such being the case, General Cunningham ought to have taken the trouble of ascertaining before he made his calculation the particular manam employed by the writers of Magadha and Ceylon in giving the date of Buddha's death and the manam used in calculation the years of the Buddhist era mentioned in the inscription above quoted. Instead of placing himself in the position of the writer of the said inscription and making the required calculation from that standpoint, he made the calculation on the same basis on which an English gentleman of the 19th century would calculate time according to his own calendar.

If the calculation were correctly made, it would have shown him that the inscription in question is perfectly consistent with the statement that Buddha died in the year 543 according to Barhaspatyamanam (the only manam used in Magadha and by Pali writers in general). The correctness of this assertion will be clearly seen on examining the following calculation.

543 years according to Barhaspatyamanam are equivalent to 538 years and 8 months (nearly) according to Souramanam.

Similarly 1819 years according to the former manam are equivalent to 1798 years nearly according to the latter manam.

As the Christian era commenced on the 3102 in the year of Kaliyuga (according to Souramanam) Buddha died in the year 2565 of Kaliyuga and the inscription was written in the year 4362 of Kaliyuga (according to Souramanam). And now the question is whether according to the Hindu Almanac, the first day of the waning moon of Kartik coincided with a Wednesday.