the number of days in a current
English year is counted; and this wrong assumption has vitiated his
calculation and led him to a wrong conclusion. Three different methods
of calculation were in use in India at the time when Buddha lived, and
they are still in use in different parts of the country. These methods
are known as Souramanam, Chandrarmanam 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 (measure) employed by the writers of Magadha and Ceylon in giving
the date of Buddha's death and the manam used in calculating 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 of which an English gentleman of the
nineteenth 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 B.C. 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 536 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 manarn.

As the Christian era commenced on the 3102nd 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
almanack, the first day of the waning moon of Kartik coincided with a
Wednesday.

According to Suryasiddhanta the number of days from the beginning of
Kaliyuga up to midnight on the 15th day of increasing moon of Aswina is
1,593,072, the number of Adhikamasansas (extra months) during the
interval being 1608 and the number of Kshayathithi