The mistake of the Southern Buddhists lies in dating the Nirvana of Sanggyas Pan-chhen from the actual day of his death, whereas, as above stated, He had reached it over twenty years previous to his disincarnation.  Chronologically, the Southerners are right, both in dating His death in 543 “B.C.,” and one of the great Councils at 100 years after the latter event.  But the Tibetan Chohans, who possess all the documents relating to the last twenty-four years of His external and internal life—­of which no philologist knows anything—­can show that there is no real discrepancy between the Tibetan and the Ceylonese chronologies as stated by the Western Orientalists.* For the profane, the Exalted One was born in the sixty-eighth year of the Burmese Eeatzana era, established by Eeatzana (Anjana), King of Dewaha; for the initiated—­in the forty-eighth year of that era, on a Friday of the waxing moon, of May.  And it was in 563 before the Christian chronology that Tathagata reached his full Nirvana, dying, as correctly stated by Mahavana—­in 543, on the very day when Vijaya landed with his companions in Ceylon—­as prophesied by Loka-ratha, our Buddha.

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* Bishop Bigandet, after examining all the Burmese authorities
accessible to him, frankly confesses that “the history of Buddha offers
an almost complete blank as to what regards his doings and preachings
during a period of nearly twenty-three years.” (Vol.  I. p. 260.)
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Professor Max Muller seems to greatly scoff at this prophecy.  In his chapter ("Hist.  S. L.”) upon Buddhism (the “false” religion), the eminent scholar speaks as though he resented such an unprecedented claim.  “We are asked to believe”—­he writes—­“that the Ceylonese historians placed the founder of the Vijyan dynasty of Ceylon in the year 543 in accordance with their sacred chronology!” (i.e., Buddha’s prophecy), “while we (the philologists) are not told, however, through what channel the Ceylonese could have received their information as to the exact date of Buddha’s death.”  Two points may be noticed in these sarcastic phrases:  (a) the implication of a false prophecy by our Lord; and (b) a dishonest tampering with chronological records, reminding one of those of Eusebius, the famous Bishop of Caesarea, who stands accused in history of “perverting every Egyptian chronological table for the sake of synchronisms.”  With reference to charge one, he may be asked why our Sakyasinha’s prophecies should not be as much entitled to his respect as those of his Saviour would be to ours—­were we to ever write the true history of the “Galilean” Arhat.  With regard to charge two, the distinguished philologist is reminded of the glass house he and all Christian chronologists are themselves living in.  Their inability to vindicate the adoption of December 25 as the actual day of the Nativity, and hence to determine the age and the year of their Avatar’s death—­ even before their own people—­is far greater than is ours to demonstrate the year of