A Date Held by Faith, Questioned by Comparison

The traditional date of 527 BCE for Mahavira's nirvana rests on Jain scriptural chronology rather than on external corroboration, and modern historians have long treated it with caution for exactly that reason. Mahavira is traditionally described as a close contemporary of the Buddha, and the Buddha's death is dated by most modern scholarship to sometime in the fifth century BCE, appreciably later than the Jain date for Mahavira would allow if the two were truly contemporaries in the way the traditions describe. That comparative pressure has led a substantial body of modern historical scholarship to place Mahavira's actual death closer to 425 BCE, roughly a century after the traditional count, while acknowledging that no fully independent evidence fixes either figure's dates with certainty. Jain religious practice has not revised its calendar in response to this argument.

Paryushana, Das Lakshana Parva, Mahavir Jayanti and the Jain observance of Diwali as the anniversary of Mahavira's liberation continue to be dated by the traditional 527 BCE epoch, which is a case, not unlike the Nanakshahi dispute among Sikhs, of a living calendar continuing to run on a date its own community holds by conviction rather than by the balance of external evidence.