The Journal of the Siam Society Vol. LXIV, Part 1-2, 1976 - Khamkoo

346 REVIEW ARTICLE
560" from the era meant that 561 corresponded to year 1 kat gai. The
next earlier date in the text is 550 rava.y cai which is entirely incoherent
no matter from where it is counted. 52
The foregoing seems to demonstrate that before the year 1 of the
cufa era the cyclical dates of the text were inserted carelessly and often
even capriciously after the text as a whole had been compiled, and cannot
possibly have been taken over from an ancient contemporary document.
They also reveal an author who was ignorant of the way in
which the cycle really worked.
As I noted, Manit also recognizes that the cyclical dates are full of
errors and he attempts to revise them according to his conception of the
eras which were actually in use and succeeded one another in northern
Thailand between one and two thousand years ago. Following the
mythical "original Thai" era in this sequence comes the Buddhist era
which, according to Southeast Asian theravada tradition, was established
immediately after the Buddha's death in a snake year, and Manit notes
the one-year difference between Ceylonese usage in which year 1 of B.E.
is the snake year of the Buddha's death, while in Thailand year 1 is the
following horse year, resulting in a situation in which, with respect to
A.D., a Buddhist date equals either A.D. + 543 or 544.
Now these dates for the Buddhist era, since they are valid for
nearly all the extant documents of Burma, Siam, Cambodia or Laos are
proper when discussing the Buddhist era as a cultural item within this
region, but when dealing with a story such as TS which involves India
and China as well, such Southeast Asian assumptions may not be taken
as absolute facts. First of all, in the opinion of historians of India, the
death of the Buddha did not occur in 543/4 RC., but rather in± 480, or
± 460, and even such an ardent Ceylonese nationalist asS. Paranavitana .
found himself forced to admit that although "the Buddha, according to
Ceylon tradition, was born in 623 B.C .... modern historians favour a
52) Manit, p. I 00.