(Paper presentation in the 7th Intl. Conf.

of WAVES on June 27 - 29, 2008)

THE "DOTTED RECORD" AND ITS IMPACT ON ANCIENT INDIAN

CHRONOLOGY, INCLUDING THE ANTIQUITY OF THE VEDAS AND OF THE
BHAGAVAD GITA

By

Sunil Kumar Bhattacharjya, Pune, India

ABSTRACT

In the Indian tradition, history is very important and this is one of the five criteria
that a Purana must meet. The Puranas have maintained details of the royal
dynasties from the times of Ramayana and Mahabharata and have even
ventured to determine the age of the earth and the universe. With records
carefully maintained the Hindus always thought that they are the indigenous
people of India from the ancient times and that their philosophical, religious and
other literature are several millennia old.

In the 4th century BCE Megasthenes wrote the "Indica", which has also been
used as a sort of historical document but this has not been interpreted properly.
Similarly the account of Alberuni, who came much later, has also not been
interpreted properly. Megasthenes, who was in the court of Sandrocottus, said
that the capital of the kingdom of the latter was Palibothra. In late 18th century
CE Sir William Jones wrongly arrived at the conclusion that Pataliputra was the
Palibothra and also suggested that Chandragupta Maurya was the Sandrocottus.
Then in early 19th century CE, Dubois suggested that people from Caucasus
region migrated to India. Yet till the middle of the 19th century CE nobody raised
the question as to whether the Hindus are the indigenous people of India or not.
In the later part of the 19th century Prof. Max Muller proposed that there was
Aryan Invasion in the 15th century BCE. He had also worked out an Ancient
Indian Chronology and also gave the dates of the Vedas, the Brahmanas, the
Puranas and the Sutras after the Aryan invasion. He arrived at the date of Lord
Buddha from the work of Sir Jones as well as from the Dotted record. But the
Dotted record was the record, which was kept together with the
Samantapāsādikā and Sanghabhadra translated the latter from Sanskrit to the
Chinese. Buddhaghosa also translated the Samantapāsādikā into the Pali
language. The Sri Lankan Buddhist scholars considered Sandrocottus to be
Chandragupta, as suggested by Sir Jones and calculated the date of Lord
Buddha in the 5th century BCE. They gave a date of the translation of
Samantapāsādikā by Sanghabhadra to tally with their date of Lord Buddha. Prof.
Max Muller heard about the Dotted record and he received the details of that

1
from his friend and past pupil, B. Nanjio and Prof. Max Muller seemed to have
found confirmation for his speculations from it. Thus a combination of the
speculation of Sir Jones with the speculation of the Sri Lankan Buddhist scholars
on the date of Lord Buddha and of the translation of the Samantapāsādikā (and
hence of the Dotted record) helped Prof. Max Muller to further speculate the
Aryan Invasion Theory and to prepare an Ancient Indian Chronology including
the date of the Vedas and other scriptures and literature.

The date of the Dotted record as well as of Sanghabhadra has been re-examined
and it is shown that Prof. Max Muller's ideas were flawed. The real Palibothra has
been identified for the first time and this will dismiss Sir Jones speculations for
ever. There was no Aryan Invasion and Lord Buddha died many centuries before
the 5th century BCE. It has also been shown how Alberuni was misquoted by
the historians to keep the Jonesian and Max-Mullerian speculations alive.

INTRODUCTION

India has a very ancient history and every Indian can be proud of the very high
material and intellectual achievements of the past. Yet there was an eclipse,
which climaxed towards the end of the nineteenth century CE, with Prof. Max
Muller's speculation of the Aryan Invasion Theory as well as of an Ancient Indian
chronology, which defied all logic. Prior to Prof. Max Muller's speculation of the
Aryan Invasion Theory, the historians referred to the Hindus as the indigenous
people of India. In his "History of India", M.S. Elphinstone wrote in 1841 CE that
nowhere in any ancient book of the Hindus there is any mention of the Hindus
ever inhabiting any other country. Moreover the Hindus do not have any Vedic
rituals performed outside India in the ancient times. This is despite Jean Antoine
Dubois's speculation in 1816 CE that there was migration of people to India from
the Caucasus region but without making any mention of the Aryans. As a result
of these speculations of Prof. Max Muller, the antiquity of the Vedas and also of
the Bhagavad Gita were lowered. Prof R.C Zaehner, who wrote an excellent
book on Bhagavad Gita, even ventured to make the absurd claim that Bhagavad
Gita got the ideas from Lord Buddha's teachings, while the contrary is only true.
Further his speculations of the Ancient Indian Chronology had lowered the
antiquities of all the Religious, Philosophical and Literary stalwarts of India of the
ancient past.

There were several factors which led Prof. Max Muller to make these fantastic
speculations and the "Dotted Record" contributed to it in no less measure.

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HISTORY OF THE DOTTED RECORD

After Lord Buddha passed away Upali collected the Vinaya pitaka with due
respect and marked a dot on a record and kept it next to the Vinaya. This
became a regular practice to mark a dot in that record every year. Before his
death Upali gave it to his disciple Dāsaka. Dāsaka gave it to Sonaka and Sonaka
gave it to Siggiva. Siggiva gave it to Moggaliputta Tissa and the latter gave it to
Candavajji. This practice continued till it reached a Tripitaka Master, who took the
Dotted Record and the Samantapāsādikā (a commentary on the Vinaya pitaka)
with them, when he and his disciple Sanghabhadra visited Canton in China.
Before his death the Master wanted to return to his native land (India) and he
handed over the Dotted Record and the Samantapāsādikā to his disciple
Sanghabhadra. Sanghabhadra translated the Samantapāsādikā into the Chinese
language with the help of a Sāmanera (bhikshuni) named Seng-Wei, at the
Bamboo Grove monastery at Canton. These details have been given by Fei
Chang-fang. ( Ref.1). At that point of time there were 975 dots in the "Dotted
Record", which indicated that 975 years have passed since Lord Buddha died.

Sangabhadra belonged to the Dharmagupta school of the Sarvāstivādins. All

Sarvāstivāda literature was in Sanskrit and the history of their compilation goes
back to the time of Kaniska, who came to power in 1298 BCE. The Rajatarangini
and the recent studies of Prof. Narahari Achar on the available astronomical data
of that time confirm that Kaniska became king in 1298 BCE. The great Buddhist
scholar Asvaghosa came from Magadha to the court of Kaniska and a Buddhist
Council of the Sarvāstavādins was held under the patronage of Kaniska. In that
council the Buddhist literature of the Sarvāstavādins including the Tripitaka were
compiled and written down in Sanskrit. Sri Lankan Buddhists do not recognize
this council but the northern Buddhist schools confirm that it did take place five
hundred years after the death of Lord Buddha. Thus from the Date of Kaniska the
date of death of Lord Buddha comes out to be around 1800 BCE.

DATE OF SANGHABHADRA

Sanghabhadra was a Sarvāstavādin and a contemporary of Vāsubandhu.

According to Hiuen Tsang Vāsubandhu was born 900 years after the death of
Lord Buddha. In his early life Vāsubandhu was a sarvāstivādin and he wrote the
Abhidharmakosha but later on he became a critic of his own work and wrote the
Abhidharmakosha-bhashya, where he refuted many aspects in
Abhidharmakosha. He finally became a co-founder of the Yogāchāra school in
association with his half-brother Asanga. The Buddhist scholar, Dignaga was a
disciple of Vāsubandhu. Dignaga had been criticized by Kumarila Bhatta. The
Jaina records confirm that Lord Mahavira lived from 599 BCE to 527 BCE and
also that Lord Mahavira defeated Kumarila Bhatta in debate. According to Jina
Vijaya, Kumarila Bhatta was born in 557 BCE. Kumarila Bhatta was a
contemporary of another Buddhist scholar Dharmakirti, who was born long after

3
Dignaga. It is thus reasonable to state that Sanghabhadra was born long before
the 6th century BCE and it could well be around the 8th or the 9th century BCE.

The question naturally arises that if Sanghabhadra was born around the 8th or
the 9th century BCE and the Sarvāstivāda literature were in Sanskrit why then
the Sri Lankan Buddhist scholars believed that Sanghabhadra translated the
Samantapāsādikā in 489 CE and that the text was originally in the Pali
language. To delve into this mystery we must look at the misinterpretation of
Indian Chronology during the 18th and the 19th century CE.

HANDLING OF INDIAN CHRONOLOGY IN THE 18th AND the 19th

CENTURIES CE

In the Indian tradition the puranas provide the geneology of the royal dynasties
as this is one of the five criteria requirements, which must be fulfilled by a work,
to be eligible to be called a purana. Because of this requirement even though the
puranas are very ancient yet they have to be updated from time to time, so far as
the historical information is concerned. Thus the puranas are valuable historical
documents and the historical details of the puranas are authentic and free from
the exaggerations and allegorical details found in the other pauranic stories,
which were meant to convey the spiritual messages through different stories.
Another historical source book was Kalhana's Rajatarangini. On top of these
there were many astronomical details given in the ancient literature, which help
one to arrive at the chronological information precisely.

In the 4th century BCE Megasthenes was in the court of Sandrocottus as a

Greek emissary, though he himself was not of Greek origin. He wrote "Indica"
and only the fragments of it are available today. But it does help one to know
about the royalty and the social structures of those days. He says that
Sandrocottus had his capital at Palibothra. Sir William Jones had mistakenly
identified Pataliputra to be the Palibothra. Megasthenes wrote clearly that
Palibothra was at the confluence of Ganga and Errannobas (or Yamuna), the
third largest river in India (after Ganga and Sindhu or Indus). Megasthenes also
mentioned several other rivers of India including Sone. But Sir Jones said that
there was no ancient city near the confluence of Ganga and Yamuna. (Ref. 2)
Even though Megasthenes had specifically mentioned Sone separately yet Sir
Jones conveniently stated that Megasthenes mentioned about Sone negligently.
But there was none in those days to protest against such horrendous accusation
hurled at Megasthenes. Present day well -informed historians know that there
was indeed the city of Pratisthanpur at the confluence of Ganga and Yamuna,
which was also mentioned by the great poet Kalidasa of the 8th century BCE in
his drama "Vikramorvashia". The city of Pratisthanpur was destroyed completely
about one thousand years ago by a devastating fire and from that time onward
that city has been known as Jhusi (or Jhunsi), a name derived from the Hindi
word Jhulasna or to burn. Megasthenes stated that in those days all the buildings
/ houses near the rivers and the sea were made of wood and Palibuthra, being at

4
the confluence of Ganga and Yamuna, was no exception and that the structures
with brick and clay were built only in places far away from the rivers and the sea.
Thus it appears possible that the fire destroyed all the traces of the ancient
wooden structures, if any of these at all survived till the time of the devastating
fire. Jhusi is located towards the east of Allahabad, just across the river Ganga.
Archaeologists have found grains and other artifacts in the mounds of Jhusi,
which dates back to before the 4th century BCE. The Ashokan pillar found in
Jhusi had inscriptions of Samudragupta and it was shifted to the Allahabad Fort
and the emperor Jahangir also made his inscriptions on that. There is also
inscription of Ashoka in that and it was of Samudragupta after he was converted
to Buddhism and he assumed the name of Ashokaditya. All the Gupta kings had
their second names ending in "-aditya"

Sir Jones found abundant information from the Buddhist literature regarding the
Pataliputra being the capital of Chandragupta Maurya, the grandfather of Ashoka
Maurya. It was earlier during the reign of the king Ajātsatru that the capital of
Magadha was shifted from Rajagriha to Pataliputra. Sir Jones had conveniently
suggested that Pataliputra was the Palibothra and Chandragupta Maurya was
the Sandrocottus.

In reality Chandragupta of the Gupta dynasty was the Sandrocottus. Jaina record
says that the Gupta era started 215 years after the death of Lord Mahavira.
Gupta era is reckoned from the coronation of Chandragupta. The coronation of
Chandragupta of the Gupta dynasty thus took place in 527 - 215 = 312 BCE.
Chandragupta had a truce with Seleucus in 305 BCE, according to which
Seleucus ceded some of his territory to the west of Indus to Chandragupta and
Chandragupta made a return gift of five hundred elephants to Seleucus.
Seleucus, as a result, could concentrate on consolidating his empire in the west.
According to the Jaina records Chandragupta abdicated his throne in 297 BCE
and became a Jaina monk. Chandragupta was born before the advent of the
Shālivahana Saka era and the Vikrama Samvat era. His date is therefore should
be expressed in terms of the Saka-raja kāla (or the Saka-nripati kāla), which
started in 553 BCE. According to Alberuni, the Gupta rule ended in the year 241
of the Saka kāla ie. in 241 + 78 = 319 CE. He identified the last king of the
Guptas as Valabha. If we consider the date of start of the Gupta era as 312 BCE
as given by the Jaina records then we find that 241 years before that ie in 312 +
241 = 553 BCE there was the Sakarāja kāla. Sakarājā kāla started from the year
553 BCE, in which Cyrus-II, the Great, led a revolt against the median king, as a
consequence of which he became the ruler of all Iran, thus starting the
Achaemenian period, which lasted till the arrival of Alexander, the Great, in 330
BCE. This means that the Indian historians should have considered the Sakarāja
kāla and calculated to find the start of the Gupta era in 553 - 241 = 312 BCE.
This matches with the figure obtained by using the data from the Jaina record.
Because of the wrong identification of Sandrocottus with Chandragupta Maurya
by Sir Jones and also because of the tremendous power and influence enjoyed

5
by him, the contemporary historians ignored all historical facts and obligingly
reduced the antiquity of the Gupta dynasty by 553 + 78 = 631 years and started
saying that Chandragupta of the Gupta dynasty became king in the year 241 of
the Shalivahana Saka and consequently the Ancient Indian Chronology was
greatly damaged. In fact Alberuni also was of the opinion that Buddhism
prevailed in Persia (Iran) and Irak (Iraq and upto Syria )before the advent of
Zarathustra in the 7th century BCE. (Ref.3) This shows that Ashoka Maurya lived
much before the 7th century BCE and Lord Buddha died about 300 years before
the coronation of Ashoka Maurya. So would Alberuni have ever said that
Sandrocottus was Chandragupta Maurya and would he have ever said that
Chandraupta of the Gupta dynasty was born around 600 years after
Sandrocottus? Alberuni must be turning in his grave as the Indian historians,
since the second half of the 19th century, conveniently overlooked this
observation of Alberuni to suit their own pre-conceived notions, even though Max
Muller himself retracted his own speculations when he said subsequently that no
one on earth can tell the date of the Vedas correctly. It is the historians, who are
keeping the Aryan Invasion Theory and his chronology alive even today even
after getting so many newer information such as about the lost Saraswati river to
which Sir William Jones and Prof. Max Muller did not have access to..

From Buddhist record Ashoka Maurya became king 300 years after the death of
Lord Buddha and that the Jaina teacher Nighanta Nataputta was a contemporary
of Lord Buddha. The Sri Lankan Buddhist scholars fixed the date of Lord Buddha
assuming two limits (ie. upper and lower limits) that Lord Buddha died after Lord
Mahavira and that he died before Ashoka Maurya became the king. But they
were wrong in assuming that Nighanta Nataputta and Lord Mahavira was the
same person. They were in fact different persons as they died in different places
and they did not profess the same code of practice or vows. While Lord
Mahavira recommended the five-fold vows (or yamas or restraints), Nighanta
Nataputta , like Bhagawan Pārsvanath recommended four-fold vows. In fact after
the death of Lord Mahavira there was a meeting of Kesi, the senior follower of
Bhagawan Parsvanath and Gautama Indrabhuti

The linguistic experts also ignored the fact that Lord Buddha taught in the Pali
language, also called the Shuddha-Magadhi or the Ancient Prakrit, whereas
Lord Mahavira taught in Ardha-Magadhi or Jaina-prakrit, which is the language
that evolved from Pali, over several centuries. All these show that Lord Buddha
preceded Lord Mahavira by long time and they could not have been
comtemporaries. Not only the linguists did not do justice to Indian History even
the Political and Social scientists till late 20th century ignored the fact that the
Polity as found in the accounts of Megasthenes and Kautilya (or Vishnugupta or
Chanakya) were vastly different, as pointed out by Goyal. ( Ref.4) From his
studies Goyal had rightly concluded that Megasthenes and Kautilya could not
have belonged to the same time period. This also means that if Kautilya, the
king-maker, who was instrumental in installing Chandragupta Maurya in the

6
throne of Magadha, was not a contemporary of Sandrocottus then obviously
Sandrocottus cannot be Chandragupta Maurya. But it appears that Goyal did not
dare to challenge the views of those academic historians, who still holds on to
the speculations of Sir William Jones and Prof. Max Muller. Goyal simply said
that Kautilya could have been from a period later than that of Megasthenes.

With two wrong premises that Chandragupta Maurya was Sandrocottus and that
Lord Mahavira was Nigantha Nataputta, the Sri Lankan Buddhist scholars fixed
the date of Lord Buddha between the date of Sandrocottus and that of Lord
Mahavira. Taking the date of Chandragupta's abdication of throne in 297 BCE
and the reign of his son Bindusara to be 25 years they calculated Ashoka's
accession to throne in 297 - 25 = 272 BCE and his coronation four years later in
272 - 4 = 268 BCE. They assumed that Ashoka's coronation took place 218
years after the death of Lord Buddha. However according to the Indian Buddhists
it was 300 years and not 218 years. They had reduced the reign of the Nandas to
22 years whereas it was 100 years. They also did not mention the period of reign
of Aniruddha and his brother Munda properly. Both of them ruled for 8 years
each but the the Pali version of Samantāsādikā has given only 8 years for both of
them together. They had necessarily reduced that period by about 100 years to
make it 218 years as otherwise it would have meant that the death of Lord
Buddha occurred before that of Lord Mahavira. Adding 218 years to 268 BCE,
the year of Ashoka's coronation they calculated that Lord Buddha died in 268 +
218 = 486 BCE. Taking 486 BCE as the date of death of Lord Buddha they
calculated the date of Sanghabhadra's translation of Samantapāsādikā to be
975 - 486 = 489 CE, since 975 years passed from the death of Lord Buddha as
indicated by the 975 dots on the Dotted Record.

In the introduction to his translation of "The Amitayur-dhyana sutra" Prof. Max

Muller states as follows:

"-----------The date of Kandragupta (Sandrocryptos) as fixed by Greek historians

and serving to determine the dates of Ashoka and his inscriptions in the third and
indirectly Buddha in the fifth century (BCE) ------------." (Ref. 5)

Here Prof. Max Muller writes the name of Chandragupta as Kandragupta. Prof
Max Muller received the details of the Cantonese Dotted Record from his friend
and past pupil B. Nanjio in 1884 CE. Other western scholars came to know of the
Dotted record later when Takakusu wrote about it while trying to show that not
only Sanskrit but Pali literature was also translated to the Chinese language and
he took Samantapāsādikā as an example. (Ref. 6) Prof. Max Muller accepted the
Dotted Record as giving support to his speculations on ancient Indian
Chronology, even if he might have known about the manipulations of the date of
Lord Buddha as well of the Dotted record. Prof. Max Muller rejected the protests
from other Indian and western scholars including M.Troyer, who on the basis of

7
his mastery in Kalhana's Rajatarangini, did not accept Prof. Max Muller's
speculations on the ancient Indian Chronology.

Assumed support from the Dotted Record coupled with Max Muller's own
Germanic background induced him to suggest a historical time-line, which
included the mythical Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) according to which the Aryans
invaded India in the 15th century BCE. In 1868 CE the German linguist Theodor
Benfey stated that Aryan mother-tongue originated in Europe between the source
of the Danube river and the Caspian Sea. Then Ludwig Geiger suggested that
Germany was the Aryan homeland. At that time Prof. Martin Haug suggested that
the Rig Veda was composed subsequent to the Pentateuch (ie. the first five
chapters of the Old Testament of the Bible). The latter was composed in the
middle of the 15th century BCE, as evidenced from data given in the Old
Testament itself. Prof. Max Muller also believed that the origin of all languages
was when and where the Biblical Tower of Babylon was constructed. Equipped
with all this information Prof. Max Muller thought that the Aryans came to India
from Germany in the middle of the 15th century BCE but without making it explicit
he simply suggested that Aryan invasion occurred in the middle of the 15th
century BCE and that this was based on linguistic studies, thus camouflaging his
real inspirations which came from his fancy that his own ancestors came to India
in the middle of the 15th century BCE and composed the Rig Veda as well as the
other Vedas and that was the real root of the Vedas. Ascribing 15th century BCE
to the time for Aryan Invasion and the 5th century BCE to the date of death of
Lord Buddha, Max Muller worked out the dates of the ancient Indian literature
including the scriptures, ie. the Vedas, Brahmanas, Puranas and Sutras
allocating arbitrary time periods for their development. Thus he had completely
disoriented the historians, both western and Indian. But Max Muller saw his
reasoning crumble before his eyes towards the end of his life and he realized his
mistakes and the AIT has generally weakened. Towards the end of his life Max
Muller himself said that nobody can definitely say about the date of the Vedas
whether it is 1500 BCE or much earlier and that was a clear negation of the AIT
and it does not require a genius to understand that. But the subsequent
historians including the Indian historians wanted to keep the AIT alive and some
of the books are perpetuating that to this day without any sign of their withdrawal.
In the course of analyzing the ways of working of Prof. Max Muller, Gregory
Schrempp wrote that in the light of criticisms Max Muller started revising his own
formulations ultimately leaving behind him a legacy of retrodictions
(contradictions) that covered his entire career. (Ref. 8)

8
MORE ON THE DOTTED RECORD

Pachow (Ven. Fa-Chow), who was a professor in the Ceylon University in Sri
Lanka, gave the translation of a passage from Seng-Yu's Ch'usan-Tsang Chi
Chi, a portion of which is as follows:

"On the 10th of the third Moon, in the 10th year of Yung-Ming of the Chi
dyanasty, Bhikshuni Ching-hsiu of Cheng-Lin learnt that the Venerable
Sanghabhadra. assisted by the Venerable Seng-Wei translated the Sanskrit text
"Samantapāsādikā, into Chinese, consisting of 18 fascicles---------------." ( Ref.7)

It is clear from the above that Sangabhadra translated the Sanskrit text and not
the Pali text of Samantapāsādikā. But Pachow, probably from pressure from the
Sri Lankan Budddhist scholars, contradicted what is given in the original excerpt
shown above and stated in a foot-note that actually this was in Pali. His assertion
was unfounded as Sanghabhadra was a Sarvāstavādin and all Sarvātavādi
literature were in Sanskrit, right from the time of Kaniska.

Buddhaghosa did write the Pali version of the Samantapāsādikā before his
arrival in Sri Lanka towards the end of the rule of his host king, Sriniwasa or
Sirikuda, who died within one year of his arrival in Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan
Buddhist scholars identified Mahanama as the Sirikuda, but this is questionable.
Buddhaghosa wrote several books during this time and the writing of
Samantapāsādikā during that time does not seem probable. In the book " The
Inception of Discipline and the Vinaya Nidana", the author mentions that the
commentaries of the four Agamas refer to Samantapāsādikā but the latter
scarcely refers to the other Agamas. This suggests that the Samantapāsādikā is
the earlier work.(Ref. 9) Before his arrival in Sri Lanka he had translated the
Samantapāsādikā into pali from its Sanskrit version, which was the same as the
version used by Sanghabhadra and that version remained with him in Canton
unless he came back with it later to India, but there is no mention of his return to
India anywhere. According to Bigandet Buddhaghosa went to Sri Lanka 943
years after the year of the religion, ie. after the death of Lord Buddha. (Ref. 10)
The time gap between Buddhaghosa's visit to Si Lanka and the time of
Sanghbhadra's translation of the Samantapāsādikā was only 975 - 943 = 32
years. This makes Buddhaghosa a contemporary of Sanghabhadra and
Vasubandhu.

A comparison of the pali version of the Samantapāsādikā has been done with the
Chinese version of that by Bapat and Hirakawa. (Ref.11) In the Chinese version
the influence of the Dharmagupta school of Sarvāstivādins is very clear. Pali
version uses the word "Nikaya" and the Chinese version uses the word "Nigama"
in line with the Northern schools of Buddhism. There were several other leanings
towards the Dharmagupta school. The names of the places are different in many

9
cases. Bapat and Hirakawa mention that in several places the transliterations
point to Sanskrit origin.

Pachow says that the contention of Takakusu that Sanghabhadra was a

Sinhalese or Burmese is not convincing.(Ref. 7) Pachow suggests that
Sanghabhadra's return to "Nan" in the South, as mentioned in Li - tai San - Pao -
Chi of Fei Chang - fang and Ch'u - San - tsang Chi Chi of Sang - Yu, was
actually to Fu-Nan or Cambodia and the Dotted record was taken from India to
Cambodia and from there to Canton by sea and not from Ceylon. (Ref. 7) When
Moggaliputta Tissa handed over the Vinaya to Candavajji, the Dotted Record
was also given with the Sanskrit version of Samantapāsādikā and that is how it
reached Canton. Mogaliputta gave one set of the Vinaya to Mahinda (Mahendra)
also but without the Dotted Record, otherwise it would have been known to the
Sri Lankan Buddhist about it from that source.

CONCLUSIONS

During the times of Sanghabhadra the Chow dynasty (1122 - 249 BCE) was in
power in China. Thus it was the Chow dynasty and not the Chi dynasty at time of
Sangabhadra contrary to what has been claimed by Takakusu. As
Sanghabhadra was around the 8th or 9th century BCE and the Dotted record
indicated 975 years from the death of Lord Buddha at the time of the translation
by Sanghabhadra it is reasonable to say that Lord Buddha died in the 18th or the
19th century BCE and not in 486 BCE as worked out by the Sri Lankan Buddhist
scholars. Their assertion that the Dotted Record was translated in 489 BCE has
no basis except for this being an attempt to prove that Lord Buddha was born in
486 BCE. They have not tried to determine the date of Sanghabhadra
independently. That Lord Buddha was born many centuries before 486 BCE has
been ascertained by the modern scholars also by studies on astronomical data
available in the literature of those days, according to which Lord Buddha was
born 1887 BCE and he died in 1807 BCE. The more reliable period as to when
the Dotted Record was translated, as shown above, removes one of the great
hurdles in working out the ancient Indian Chronology correctly. This also helps in
establishing the antiquity of the Vedas and of the Bhagavad Gita, which are
considered the foundations of the Sanatana dharma or the Hinduism.

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REFERENCES

1) Li - tai San - Pao Chi (or "The Chronicle of the three jewels"), Fei Chang
fang (597 CE), as quoted in Ref. 5

2) The Tenth Anniversary Discourse at the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Sir,

William Jones, February 28, 1793.

3) Edward C. Sachau, Alberuni'a India, Vol. 1, Page 21

4) India as known to Kautilya and Megasthenes, S.R. Goyal, Kusumanjali

Book World, Jodhpur (2001 CE)

5) Buddhists Mahayana Texts, Translation by E.B.Cowell, F. Max Muller and

J. Takakusu, Oxford Clarendon Press (1984) ( Vol. XLIX of the Sacred
Books of the East)

6) On the "Dotted Record", J. Takakusu, Journal of Royal Asiatic Society,

435,437 (1896), as quoted in Ref. 5

7) A Study of the Dotted Record, W. Pachow, Journal of the American

Oriental Society, 85,342 - 348 (1965)

8) "The Re-education of Friedrich Max Muller : Intellectual Appropriation and

Epistemological Antinomy in Mid-Victorian Evolutionary Thought" by
Gregory Schrempp, MAN (erstwhile "Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute of Great Britain and Ireland"), New Series, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 90 -
110, March 1983

9) The inception of Discipline and the Vinaya Nidana (Being a translation and
edition of the Buddhaghosa's Samantapāsādikā, the Vinaya commentary
by N.A.Jayavickrama (Sacred books of the Buddhists, Vol. XXI (1962)

10) The Life and Legend of Gaudama, Bishop Bigandet, Rangoon (1866)

11) Shan - Chien - P'i - P'o - Sha, A Chinese version by Sangabhadra of

Samantapāsikā (English translation), P.V. Bapat and A. Hirakawa,
Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune, India (1970)

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