Date of Gautama Buddha's Disincarnation

H.P. Blavatsky and T. Subba Row · Buddhas and Initiates Series · 20 pages

Twenty pages of chronological argument in two parts, the first by Blavatsky answering a question from F.W.H. Myers that arose out of Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism, the second by T. Subba Row. The opponent named throughout is Max Muller, of whom she remarks that no orientalist opposes Hindu and Buddhist chronology more vehemently — evidently an Indophile but not a Buddhophile — with General Cunningham agreeing with him rather more than would seem strictly prudent in view of possible future discoveries.

The evidence in dispute is the Puranas and the Mahavansa, which Muller found hopelessly entangled and contradictory. Her counter is to point out who else had assessed the same sources: the accuracy of that Sinhalese history, she notes, was warmly acknowledged by Sir Emerson Tennent, the historian of Ceylon. The value of the document to a general reader is not the date it settles on but the demonstration of how a chronological argument of this period was actually conducted — which authorities counted, how a dating was defended, and what the esoteric account claims to add to the philological one.

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