Lectures
 The Date of the Buddha
E Bruce Brooks
Ethnogenesis IV Conference, Harvard, 12 May 2002

E Bruce Brooks

This paper was was delivered in two minutes, as a 12-sentence summary, together with a two-page handout. A corrected version of the handout is given below..

Textual Argument

1. Preface and Abstract. It is agreed that the date of the death of the Buddha is important for early Indian chronology, and also that the former wide consensus about a c0480 value for that date no longer exists; many scholars now incline toward a date a century or more later. I have analyzed (in translation) one important Pâli text bearing on this question, and have also extensively studied (in the original) the contemporary Chinese text record as a whole. This double approach has suggested that, however schematic the previous claim may appear, a date in the neighborhood of the the previously accepted c0480 is after all essentially correct. On the way to this conclusion, I detach from the Buddha's death two things which, in recent discussions, have been strongly linked with it. These are:

2. The Mahâ-Parinibbâna Sutta (MpnS). This text is unique in the Pâli canon as a description of the last days of the Buddha; there are no competing accounts. The text is obviously composite. Other Pâli texts do not have this manifest composite character, but appear to be unitary works, whatever the probable date of their actual composition. If the MpnS was seen by later Buddhists as having unique authority to confer fictive certification, this composite character of the text is readily explained: the core text was updated repeatedly, over time, to introduce into it more developed versions of early ideas, or to mention later practices on which it was desired to have the Buddha express an opinion, or to introduce, as early, institutional innovations for which it was desired to establish a precedent. This composite character of the text thus implies its use as a unique certification device. That respected position is explained if the MpnS core was in fact of early date.

3. Types of Later Material. Many suggestions have been made as to how to distinguish early from late ideas within the Buddhist tradition. Impressions of centrality to Buddhist doctrine, as perceived from the standpoint of mature Buddhism, or testimonials as to the beauty of certain passages, as they affect individual sensibilities, have no value as evidence of age. On the contrary, they would tend to point precisely to developed rather than to primitive features. I believe that the following initial canons are more justifiable:

4. Reconstruction of the MpnS. A reconstruction of the text along these lines, and not involving internal inconsistencies, is possible, but the result cannot be presented in full on this occasion. It is currently scheduled to be posted elsewhere on this site as a work in progress. Comment and criticism from viewers will be much appreciated. Meanwhile, some features of the reconstruction in progress may be noted.

Consequences

5. The Core MpnS. This turns out to be a circumstantial narrative, without any magical elements, written entirely in prose, and of no great length. It recounts the events leading up to the death of the Buddha, and concludes with the death itself. This portion probably dates from a time shortly after the Buddha's death, before the Buddhist religion as such had been organized and elaborated. Exactly what that date was cannot be established directly from the contents of the core text.

6. The Framing Narrative. Two segments seem to have been designed as a final contexting frame for the MpnS as a whole; they need not have been added at the same time. They are:

7. Other Late Features. The use of numbered sets in some of the relatively late materials probably comes out of the same literary milieu as does the similar feature in some classical Sanskrit texts. That device appears for the first time in Chinese texts of the very late 04c. If the Indian and Chinese literary phenomena are connected, is presently seems likely that the Chinese version is the more likely to be derivative, so that we should expect the first Sanskrit appearances to be not later than, say, c0320. The classical Sanskrit texts are not directly datable, but these numbers are largely compatible with some relative chronologies which have been suggested by previous scholars.

8. Ânanda. One feature of the earlier MpnS addenda is the narrative prominence of Ânanda, who is, however, less dominant in the core MpnS narrative. Later tradition associates Ânanda with authority for transmission of doctrine, and gives Upâli similar authority for the vinaya or rules of monastic discipline. We would seem to have in these early (but not original) MpnS layers the beginning of the Ânanda emphasis. Of Upâli there is no trace in the MpnS core, and the MpnS makes no detailed or explicit provision for the later rise of Buddhist monasticism, under the authority of Upâli or anyone else.

9. Vinaya. There is a traditional sequence of Vinaya masters. The interpretation of Sarao (which is close to that of Gombrich) would give Upâli a life span of 0441-0367, and date his assuming a role as Vinaya Master (Vinaya Pamokkha) to 0397, in the early 04c. This does not mean that the Buddha must be dated to the same period. Instead, it gives one version of the point at which the developing Buddhist religion had shifted from a mendicant to a monastic mode, and had acquired enough experience of that new mode that a need arose to codify that experience and to supply an authority for it. Considerable time may well have elapsed between the death of the Buddha (who is still portrayed in this material as the leader of an exclusively mendicant group) and this later point.

10. Date of the Earliest Expansions. What seem to be the earliest expansions of MpnS take the core narrative as given, but imply a concern that posterity will take a negative view of that narrative. Thus,

The concern of Ânanda is mirrored in the concern of Confucius's disciples in Analects (LY) 9:12, that Confucius is dying without having achieved high rank; they disguise themselves as the retainers of a mighty official. In a lucid interval in his final sickness, Confucius rebukes them for this imposture, remarking that at any rate he is not dying "by the roadside," as the Buddha had in fact done. The date of this passage, within the gradual accretion history of the Analects, can be fixed rather closely to c0405. If we see the Analects passage as an actual echo of the MpnS passage or its orally known equivalent, then the early expansion layers of MpnS itself must be at least somewhat earlier than c0405.

11. Date of the Core MpnS Narrative. Some details which may plausibly be ascribed to the core MpnS narrative also have counterparts in the Chinese Analects text, whose chronology has been clarified by my previous researches. These counterparts are found in the slightly earlier chapter LY 7 (c0450). This chapter is strangely at variance with the rest of the Analects, in ways which invite a hypothesis of an unusual influence, or an unusual compiler mindset, at work. In LY 7, as nowhere else in the work,

If these correspondences are valid, then some notion of the core MpnS, or the tradition which it records, would seem to have reached the pre-Chinese eastern states by the middle of the 05c, and by the previous argument, a slightly later version of that text or tradition would seem to have reached them by the end of the 05c. Without here going into further details, it would seem that the death of the Buddha must be located somewhere in the first half of the 05c.

12. Chronological Outcome. It would then seem that we have the following very general scenario for the beginning and development of Buddhism:

This is a very rational sequence; one can hardly imagine its stages occurring in reverse order. It also allows, not only for the increasing popularity of Buddhism, but for the increasing wealth available to its increasingly urban patrons (and patronesses), as no other scenario does.

13. The Date of the Buddha. We now dome to the point. There are three seemingly independent sources, all of which seem to converge.

The alternative interval of 256 years, as Narain has argued, is based on counting backward from a later date in Asoka's reign, namely, the year of his abdication to pursue a life of virtue. These numbers also imply a death date of 0483. This was the date previously accepted by Indooogists, and it appears that the Indologists had a firm basis for that conclusion.

It then appears that, wheavert the validity of his basic idea, two of Jaspers' "Axial Age" figures, the Buddha (d 0483) and Confucius (d 0479), were exact contemporaries.

Notes

Important. The date of the Buddha's decease was long regarded as the earliest firmly known date in Indian history. Much depends on it: the chronology of Indian kings, the correlation of Buddhism with the archaeological record, and the pace of development in Buddhism itself. [Return]

Scholars. Skepticism about the previously accepted date of the Buddha's death (which ranged from 0486 to 0483), and preference for a later date, go back to Rhys Davids (SBE v11, xlvi). It has gained a wider acceptance with the work of Heinz Bechert and his associates (Dating, v1 1991). [Return]

Chinese. For a summary of this research, see in general the Home Page of the present site, and references available there. [Return]

Certification. The ascription of later developments to the founder of a movement, and the creation of intermediary figures who are then claimed to have a direct link to the founder, are common devices in the internalizing and rationalizing of later developments. Origin myths in all cultures have a similar dynamic. One parallel Chinese case is the supposed disciple Shang Jyw, who never appears in the Analects of Confucius (agreed to be the source closest to early Confucian tradition), and who functions in a later disciple list solely as the transmitter of Confucius's knowledge of the Yi or Divination Classic. The Analects itself, in its earlier layers, contains no direct or indirect evidence that Confucius knew or used the Yi, and as late as the 03c, the rival Confucians Sywndz and Mencius shunned the Yi altogether. The Yi had begun to acquire commentaries already in the 03c, and during Han it became part of the recognized canon. Shang Jyw was invented at about this time to give a Confucian pedigree for this fundamentally non-Confucian work. [Return]

Text. I use the numbering of sections in the SBE version of the Rhys Davids translation, but have ignored the special conventions imposed on the spelling of Pâli terms by the SBE editors. [Return]

Composite. This was argued extensively by Rhys Davids (SBE v11 xii-xviii). Pande Studies (4ed 1995) 98-106 calls the text "a veritable mosaic," and summarizes various opinions about later material within MpnS. Von Hinüber Pâli Literature (1996), while acknowledging the existence of eg Bareau Composition (1976), notes that the text "has never really been investigated." For our investigation, its conclusions, and a reconstruction based on those conclusions, see Buddhica, elsewhere at this site. [Return]

Magadha. The "Brahmin minister of a Magadha ruler" inevitably suggests Kautilya, minister of the first Maurya ruler Chandragupta, and generally credited as the architect of the Mauryan Empire. That he was a Brahmin is shown by the emphasis on Vedic traditional learning in the sayings which are attributed to him in the Arthashastra. The question of core and additions in the rulings of Kautilya are too complicated to be taken up here; they were the subject of another Ethnogenesis presentation. [Return]

Analects. For the segmentation and chronology of this text, see Brooks, The Original Analects (Columbia 1998). [Return]

Narain. See "The Date of Gotama Buddha's Parinirvâna," in Bechert Dating v1 (1992) 185-195. The later date proposed by Bechert himself for the death of the Buddha implies taking as fact what is obvious fiction: the retrojection of Upali's activity, as the chief tacher of late monasticism, to the time of the Historical Buddha himelf. [Return]

Pachow. See W Pachow, A Study of the Dotted Record, JAOS v85 #3 (1965). [Return]

Calligraphic Separator

Postscript. I am grateful to the Ethnogenesis IV audience for helpful questions and comments directly following the presentation, and in subsequent informal conversation during the remainder of the conference. The text above has been slightly expanded in the light of those questions and comments.

All lectures and abstracts posted on this site are Copyright © by their authors.

 Back to Lectures Page

2 Sept 2000 / Contact The Project / Exit to Conferences Page