H-Buddhism

A Note on Śākyaśrībhadra's Adoption of a Sinhalese Theriya

Parinirvāṇa Era
Discussion published by John Newman on Sunday, June 18, 2023

A Note on Śākyaśrībhadra's Adoption of a Sinhalese Theriya Parinirvāṇa Era

While working on a study of the use of the term saindhava to designate Buddhist monks from Siṃhala
(Laṅkā) and elsewhere who were in northeastern India during the 12th–13th centuries CE, I recently
came across information that I believe solves aspects of a chronological puzzle that has long troubled
scholars of late Indic Buddhism. Because my saindhava study will not be published for some time I
thought it worthwhile to bring a summation of some preliminary findings to the attention of the
scholarly community.

It has long been known that the Kashmiri mahāpaṇḍita Śākyaśrībhadra (ca. 1149–1225 CE)
reckoned his current date in 1204, in 1207, and twice in 1210 CE while he was in Tibet after fleeing the
violence of the Ghurid Turkic-Afghan attacks on the great monasteries of Magadha and Bengal at the
beginning of the 13th century. The Tibetan scholars Sa skya Paṇḍita Kun dga' rgyal mtshan and Bu
ston Rin chen grub refer to these reckonings as having been done using a saindhava parinirvāṇa era.
Modern etic scholars of Buddhism have noted that Śākyaśrībhadra's parinirvāṇa era corresponds to the
so-called "long [or 'uncorrected'] chronology" of the Sinhalese Theriya [= Theravāda] tradition that
places the parinirvāṇa in 544 BCE. Thus far it has only been assumed that this correspondence
suggests that Śākyaśrībhadra obtained his parinirvāṇa epoch from a Theriya/Theravāda source.

Confirmation of this hypothesis has in fact been available since 1937. (I thank David Reigle for
drawing my attention to the following publication.) As documented in his article "Second Search of
Sanskrit Palm-leaf MSS. in Tibet," Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society 23.1 (1937) p. 47n3,
at Zhwa lu monastery Rāhula Sāṅkṛityāyana transcribed text from an untitled 12 folia complete palm-
leaf manuscript written in "Māgadhī" [i.e., northeast Indian] script, which Sāṅkṛityāyana says is an
autograph of Vibhūticandra, and to which Sāṅkṛityāyana gave the title "Jyotiṣavaidyakakroḍapattra."
Sāṅkṛityāyana provides the Sanskrit text (only) of the following excerpt, which he reports is found on f.
1b of this ms. I transcribe this excerpt as it is given in the devanāgarī text of Sāṅkṛityāyana:

vaiśākhe paurṇṇamāsyāṃ grasanakujadine caikanetrarttuvarṣe (|)

nirvvāṇe śākyasaiṃhe 621 śakanṛpatirabhūt sārddhamāsaṃ hi darśe |

pañcāśattaḥ śatebhyo 5000 gatamidamaparaṃ śeṣitandeśanāyāḥ (|)

mānaṃ syāt saiṃhalantat smṛtamaghaharaṇaṃ nirvvide ca grahādeḥ ||

Thorough treatment of this verse cannot be undertaken here. For the moment it is sufficient to
note that according to Vibhūticandra "it is the opinion of the Sinhalese" (mānaṃ syāt saiṃhalan tat)
that "the Śaka king was 621 years after the [pari-]nirvāṇa of [the Buddha] Śākyasiṃha"
(caikanetrarttuvarṣe nirvvāṇe śākyasaiṃhe 621 śakanṛpatir abhūt). If we subtract 621 years from 78
CE (the Śaka era epoch) we arrive at 544 BCE, the year of the Sinhalese Theriya so-called "long

Citation: John Newman. A Note on Śākyaśrībhadra's Adoption of a Sinhalese Theriya Parinirvāṇa Era. H-Buddhism. 06-18-2023.
https://networks.h-net.org/node/6060/discussions/12881245/note-%C5%9B%C4%81kya%C5%9Br%C4%ABbhadras-adoption-sinhalese-t
heriya-parinirv%C4%81%E1%B9%87a-era
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

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 H-Buddhism

chronology" parinirvāṇa epoch.

Vibhūticandra is said to have been born in Bengal and ordained in the Saṃmatīya (mang pos
bkur ba) nikāya. He was a close disciple of Śākyaśrībhadra in India and a prominent member of the
Kashmiri master's refugee paṇḍita entourage in Tibet. Vibhūticandra's statement that this parinirvāṇa
era "is the opinion of the Sinhalese" indicates that he knew that Śākyaśrībhadra had adopted this era
from the Sinhalese. Thus I believe this verse provides conclusive evidence in support of the supposition
that Śākyaśrībhadra obtained his parinirvāṇa epoch from a Sinhalese Theriya source.

Although we cannot explore it in detail here, this finding is remarkable for a number of reasons.
Śākyaśrībhadra was considered to have been a leader of the Buddhist Sangha at the Nālandā,
Vikramaśīla, and (perhaps) Uddaṇḍapura mahāvihāras at the end of the 12th century. His tenure in
that role ended with the onset of the Ghurid Turkic-Afghan invasion led by Muḥammad Bakhtiyār
Khaljī, which destroyed those institutions and initiated the demise of large-scale Buddhist monasticism
in northeastern India. It is noteworthy that both Śākyaśrībhadra and his student Vibhūticandra were
masters of the Kālacakra tantra—Śākyaśrībhadra himself wrote three works on the calendrics and
astronomy of the Kālacakra tantra that are preserved in the Tibetan Tangyur. Why Śākyaśrībhadra
employed the Sinhalese Theriya parinirvāṇa epoch in Tibet instead of that of the Kālacakra—which sets
a tathāgata epoch in 779 BCE—remains to be explained.

Regardless of the answer to that question, Śākyaśrībhadra's adoption of the Sinhalese Theriya
parinirvāṇa era appears to have been influential because we have an Indic manuscript from ca. 1264
CE which is dated parinirvāṇa 1808 / Śaka 1186; see: A Note on a Sanskrit Palmleaf Manuscript Dated
Parinirvāṇa 1808 / Śaka 1186 = ca. 1264 CE. Thirteenth century CE usage of this parinirvāṇa epoch
may also finally establish the dating of the Bodhgayā inscription of Puruṣottamasiṃha dated bhagavati
parini(r)vṛte samvat 1813, which in turn bears upon the determination of the vexing, much-discussed
Lakṣmaṇasena era and other issues in the chronology of this period (see Richard Salomon, Indian
Epigraphy [Oxford: OUP, 1998], pp. 193–194n159 for references to earlier studies). On a final note,
Śākyaśrībhadra's employment of a Sinhalese parinirvāṇa era once again illustrates the artificiality of
the 19th century Buddhological invention of "Northern" and "Southern" Buddhisms.

John Newman

New College of Florida

Citation: John Newman. A Note on Śākyaśrībhadra's Adoption of a Sinhalese Theriya Parinirvāṇa Era. H-Buddhism. 06-18-2023.
https://networks.h-net.org/node/6060/discussions/12881245/note-%C5%9B%C4%81kya%C5%9Br%C4%ABbhadras-adoption-sinhalese-t
heriya-parinirv%C4%81%E1%B9%87a-era
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.