Dionysius established the beginning of the Christian era (or the Era of the Incarnation) as 1 January 754 AUC (
anno urbis conditae, "from the foundation of the city [of Rome]"). The system of dating by AD did not come into wide usage until the eleventh century; the negative chronology of BC gained currency only after the publication in 1681 of Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet's
Universal History. However, Dionysius's system ultimately became so widely accepted that it formed the basis of a new system, created in the last decades of the twentieth century, that distinguished between "the common era" (CE) and "before the common era" (BCE). (The CE–BCE system was soon increasingly favored by English-language scholars and is, in fact, the system employed by this encyclopedia.)
Periodizations similar to the Christian system are found in other religious traditions: the Muslim system of dating events AH (anno Hegirae, "in the year of the Hijrah"), attributed to the second caliph, ʿUmar I (634–644); the Buddhist era, in use in Ceylon and Southeast Asia, which begins with the Buddha's attaining Nirvāṇa in 544 BCE; the Jain era, commencing with the death of Jina in 528 BCE; and the Kollam era, restricted to the Malabar Coast, associated with Parasurama, an avatāra of Viṣṇu.
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