JOURNALIST

   The following is a list of the principal cities existing in India in the seventh century, before the Christian era, that is, 2,017 years ago:

   Ayojjha (from which the Anglo-Indian word Oudh is derived) was a town in Kosala on the river Sarayu. It was quite unimportant in the Buddha's time.

   Baranasi  (Benares) on the north bank of the Ganges, at the junction between it and the river Barana.  The city proper included the land between the Barana and a stream called the Asi, as its name suggests.  Its extent, including the suburbs, is often stated to have been, at the time when it was the capital of an independent kingdom (that is, some time before the rise of Buddhism), twelve leagues, or about eighty-five miles.  Seeing that Megasthenes gives the circuit of the walls of Pataliputta (Pataliputra), where he himself lived, as 220 stadia (or about twenty-five miles), this tradition as to the size of the city, or rather county, when Benares was at the height of its prosperity, seems by no means devoid of credit.  Its Town Hall was then no longer used as a parliament chamber for the transaction of public business. Public discussions on religious and philosophical questions were carried on in it.

   Champa, on the river of the same name, was the ancient capital of Anga.  Its side has been identified by Cunningham with the modern villages of similar names twenty-four miles east of Bhagalpur; and is stated to have been sixty leagues from Mithila.  It was celebrated for its beautiful lake, named after Queen Gaggara, who had had it excavated.  On its banks was a grove of Champaka trees, well know for the fragrant odour of their beautiful white flowers.  And there, in the Buddha's time, wandering teachers were wont to lodge.  The Indian colonists in Cochin China named one of the most important of their settlements after this famous old town.  And the Champa in Anga was again, in its turn, so named after the still older Champa in Kashmir.

   Kampilla, the capital of the Northern Pancalas.  It was on the northern bank of the Ganges, but its exact site has not yet been decided with certainty.

   Kosambi, the capital of the Vatsas or Vamsas.  It was on the Jumna, and thirty leagues, say 230 miles, by river from Benares.  It was the most important ‘entrepot’ for both goods and passengers coming to Kosala and Magadha from the south and west.  In the Sutta Nipata the whole route is given from a place south of Ujjen, through Kosambi to Kusinara (Kushinagar), with the stopping-places on the way.  The route from Kosambi to Rajagaha was down the river.  In the Buddha's time there were already four distinct establishments of his Order in the suburbs of Kosambi - the Badarika, Kukkuta, and Ghosita Parks, and the Mango Grove of Pavariya.  The Buddha was often there, at one or other of these residences; and many of his discourses there have been handed down in the books.

   Madhura, on the Jumna, the capital of the Surasenas.  Very ancient remains have been found there.  The king of Madhura in the Buddha's time bore the title of Avanti-putto, and was therefore related to the royal family at Ujjeni.  Madhura was visited by the Buddha, and was the residence of Maha Kaccana, one of his most influential disciples, to whom tradition attributes the first grammatical treatment of the Pali language, and after whom the oldest Pali grammar is accordingly named.  As Madhura is mentioned in the Milinda as one of the most famous places in India, whereas in the Buddha's time it is barely mentioned, the time of its greatest growth must have been between these dates.  It was sufficiently famous for the other Madhura, in Tinnevelly, first mentioned in the Mahavamsa, to be named after it. A third Madhura in the extreme north, is mentioned in the Jatakas, and in the Peta Vatthu Vannana.

   Mithila, the capital of Videha, and the capital therefore of the kings Janaka and Makhadeva, was in the district now called Tirhut.  Its size is frequently given as seven leagues, about fifty miles, in circumference.

   Rajagaha, the capital of Magadha, the modern Rajgir.  There were two distinct towns; the older one, a hill fortress, more properly Giribbaja, was very ancient, and is said to have been laid out by Maha Govinda, the architect.  The later town, at the foot of the hills, was built by Bimbisara, the contemporary of the Buddha, and is Rajagaha proper.  It was at the height of its prosperity during, and immediately after, the Buddha's time.  But it was abandoned by Sisunaga, who transferred the capital to Vesali; his son Kalasoka transferring it to Pataliputta, near the site of the modern Patna.  The fortifications of both Giribbaja and Rajagaha are still extant, 4 ½  and 3 miles respectively in circumference; the most southerly point of the walls of Giribajja, the "Mountain Stronghold," being one mile north of the most northerly point of the walls of the new town of Rajagaha, the "King's House."  The stone walls of Giribbaja are the oldest extant stone buildings in India.

   Reruka, or in later times, Roruva, the capital of Sovira, from which the modern name Surat is derived, was an important centre of the coasting trade.  Caravans arrived there from all parts of India, even from Magadha.  The names of the ivory, apes, and peacocks imported thence into Palestine are Indian names, since Roruka was a seaport. For though the more precise name of the port was also Roruka, we know from such expressions as that used in the Milinda, that the Indians talked about sailing to Sovira.  The exact site has not yet been rediscovered, but it was almost certainly on the Gulf of Kach, somewhere near the modern Kharragoa.  When its prosperity declined, its place was taken by Bharukaccha, the modern Bharoch, or by Supparaka, both on the opposite, the southern, side of the Kathiawad peninsula.

   Sagala.  There were three cities of this name. But the two in the far East were doubtless named after the famous Sagala in the extreme north-west, which offered so brave a resistance to Alexander, and where King Milinda afterwards reigned.  It lay about thirty-two degrees North, by seventy-four degrees East, and was the capital of the Maddas.  Cunningham thought he had found the ruins of it; but no excavations have been carried out, and the exact site is still therefore uncertain.

   Saketa, the site of which has been indentified with the ruins, as yet unexplored, at Sujan Kot, on the Sai River, in the Unao district of the modern province of Audh, or Oudh (ancient Ayojjha).  In ancient times it was an important city in Kosala, and sometimes the capital.  In the Buddha's time the capital was Savatthi (Shravasthi).  Saketa is often supposed to be the same as Ayojja (Oudh), but both cities are mentioned as existing in the Buddha's time. They were possibly adjoining. But it is Saketa, and not Ayojjha, that is called one of the six great cities of India.  The Anjana Wood near by Saketa is the place at which many of the Buddhist Suttas are said to have been spoken.  The distance from Saketa northwards to Savatthi was six leagues, about forty-five miles, and could be covered in one day with seven relays of horses.  But there was a broad river on the way, only to be crossed by ferry; and there are constant  references to the dangers of the journey on foot.

   Savatthi, or Shravasti, was the capital of Northern Kosala, the residence of King Pasenadi, and one of the six great cities in India during the lifetime of the Buddha.  Archaeologists differ as to its position; and the decision of this vexed point is one of the first importance for the early history of India, as there must be many inscriptions there.  It was six leagues north of Saketa, forty-five leagues north-west of Rajagaha, more than one hundred north-east of Supparaka, thirty leagues from Sankassa, and on the bank of the Achiravatti.

   Ujjeni, the capital of Avanti, the Greek Ozene, about seventy-seven degrees East and twenty-three degrees North.  There were born Kaccana, one of the leading disciples of the Buddha, and also Ashoka's son Mahinda, the famous Buddhist Monk (Bhikkhu) who gave the Gift of the Dharma to Ceylon. In later times there was a famous monastery there called the Southern Mount; and in earlier times the capital had been Mahissati.  Vedisa, where the famous Bhilsa Topes were lately found, and Erakaccha, another well-known site, were in the vicinity.  Vedisa was fifty leagues from Pataliputta.

   Vesali.  This was the capital of the Licchavi clan, already closely related by marriage to the kings of Magadha, and the ancestors of the kings of Nepal, of the Mauriyas, and of the dynasty of the Guptas.  It was the headquarters of the powerful Vajjian confederacy, afterwards defeated, but not broken up, by Ajatasattu (Ajatasatru).  It was the only great city in all the territories of the free clans who formed so important a factor in the social and political life of the sixth century before the Christian era. It must have been a great and flourishing place.  But though different guesses have been made as to its site, no one of them has yet been proved to be true by archaeological excavations.  It was somewhere in Tirhut; and just three leagues, or say, twenty-five miles, north of the Ganges, reckoned from a spot on the bank of that river, five leagues, say thirty-eight miles from Rajagaha.  Behind it lay the Great Forest, the Mahavana, which stretched northwards to the Himalayas. In that wood a hermitage had been built by the community for the Buddha, and there many of his discourses were delivered. We hear of its three walls, each of them a gavuta, a cow's call, distant from the next; and of the 7707 Rajas, that is Licchavi chiefs, who dwelt there; and of the sacred pool in which they received their  consecration.  There were many shrines of pre-Buddhistic worship in and around the city, and the discovery and excavation of the site is most desirable.

   The same may indeed be said of all these ancient cities. Not one of them has been properly excavated.  The archaeology of India is, at present, an almost unworked field.

 

 

   We have a good deal of information about the Clans, which is, however, at the best only fragmentary, about three or four of them.  Of the rest we have little more than the bare names.

   More details are given, very naturally, of the Sakiya clan than of the others.  The general position of their country is intimated by the distances given from other places:

   60 yojanas = 450 miles, from Rajagaha;
   50 yojanas = 375 miles, from Vesali;
   6 or 7 yojanas = 50 or 60 miles, from Savatthi;
  
   It must have been just on the border of Nepalese and English territory, as is now finally settled by the recent discoveries of the Tope (Burial Mound), put up by the Sakiyas over the portion they retained of the relics from the Buddha's funeral pyre, and of Ashoka's inscription, in situ, recording his visit to the Lumbini garden in which the Buddha was born.  Which of the numerous ruins in the immediate vicinity of these discoveries are those of Kapilavastu, the chief town of the clan, and which are the remains of the other townships belonging to them, will be one of the questions to be solved by future exploration.  The old Kapilavastu was probably at Tilsura Kot, but Mr. Peppe's important discoveries at the Sakiya Tope, may be on the site of a new Kapilavastu, built after the old city was destroyed by Vidudabha. Names of such townships mentioned in the most ancient texts are Catuma, Samagama, Khomadussa, Silavatti, Metalupa, Ulumpa, Sakkara, and Devadaha.

   It was at the last-mentioned place that the mother of Buddha was born.  And the name of her father is expressly given as Anjana, the Sakiyan. When, therefore, we find in much later records the statements that she was of Koliyan family, and that Prince Devadaha, after whom the town was so named, was a Koliyan chief, the explanation may well be that the Koliyans were a sort of subordinate subdivision of the Sakiyan clan.

   The existence of so considerable a number of market towns implies, in an agricultural community, a rather extensive territory.  Buddhaghosa has preserved for us an old tradition that the Buddha had eighty thousand families of relatives on the father's side and the same on the mother's side.  Allowing six or seven to a family, including the dependents, this would make a total of about a million persons in the Sakiya territory.  And though the figure is purely traditional, and at best a round number (and not uninfluenced by the mystic value attached to it), it is, perhaps, not so very far from what we might expect.

   The administrative and judicial business of the Clan was carried out in public assembly, at which young and old were alike present, in their common Mote Hall (Santhagara) at Kapilavastu.  It was at such a Parliament, or Palaver, that King Pasenadi's proposition, as already mentioned in the previous post, was discussed. When Ambattha goes to Kapilavastu on business, he goes to the Mote Hall where the Sakiyas were then in session there to consider that very matter.

   A single chief – how, and for what period chosen, we do not know - was elected as Office Holder, presiding over the sessions, and, if no sessions were sitting, over the State.  He bore the title of Raja, which must have meant something like the Roman Consul, or the Greek Archon.  We hear nowhere of such a triumvirate as bore corresponding office, among the Licchavis,  nor of such acts of kingly sovereignty as are ascribed to the real kings mentioned above.  But we hear at one time that Bhaddiya, a young cousin of the Buddha's was the Raja; and in another passage, Suddhodana, the Buddha's father (who is elsewhere spoken of as a simple citizen, Suddhodana, the Sakiyan) is called the Raja.

   A new Mote Hall, built at Kapilavastu, was finished whilst the Buddha was staying at the Nigrodharama (a place under the Banyan Grove), in the Great Wood (the Mahavana) near by.  There was a residence there, provided by the community, for recluses of all schools. Gautama Buddha was asked to inaugurate the new hall, and he did so by a series of ethical discourses, lasting through the night, delivered by himself, Ananda, and Moggallana.  They are preserved for us in full at the Pali Canon.

   Besides this Mote Hall at the principal town we hear of others at some of the other towns above referred to.  And no doubt all the more important places had such a hall, or pavilion, covered with a roof, but with no walls, in which to conduct their business.  And the local affairs of each village were carried on in open assembly of the householders, held in the groves which, then as now, formed so distinctive a feature of each village in the long and level alluvial plain.  It was no doubt in this plain, stretching about fifty miles from east to west, and thirty or forty miles to the southward from the foot of Himalaya Hills, that the majority of the clan were resident.

   The Clan subsisted on the produce of their rice-fields and their cattle.  The villages were grouped round the rice-fields, and the cattle wandered through the outlying forest, over which the peasantry, all Sakiyas by birth, had rights of common.  There were artisans, probably not Sakiyas, in each village; and men of certain special trades of a higher standing; the carpenters, smiths, and potters for instance, had villages of their own.  So also had the brahmins, whose services were in request at every domestic event.  Khomadussa, for instance, was a brahmin settlement.  There were a few shops in the bazaars, but we do not hear of any merchants and bankers such as are mentioned as dwelling at the great capitals of the adjoining kingdoms. The villages were separated one from another by forest jungle, the remains of the Great Wood (the Maha Vana), portions of which are so frequently mentioned as still surviving throughout the clanships, and which must originally (not so very long ago, probably, before the time under discussion) have stretched over practically the whole level country between the foot of the mountains and the Great River, the Ganges.  After the destruction of the clans by the neighbouring  monarchies this jungle again spread over the country.  From the fourth century onwards, down to our own days, the forest covered over the remains of the ancient civilization.

   This jungle was infested from time to time by robbers, sometimes runaway slaves.  But we hear of no crime, and there was not probably very much, in the villages themselves - each of them a tiny self-governed republic.  The Koliyan central authorities were served by a special body of peons, or police, distinguished, as by a kind of uniform, from which they took their name, by a special headdress. These particular men had a bad reputation for extortion and violence.  The Mallas had similar officials, and it is not improbable that each of the clans had a somewhat similar set of subordinate servants.

   A late tradition tells us how the criminal law was administered in the adjoining powerful confederate clan of the Vajjians, by a succession of regularly appointed officers, - "Justices, lawyers, rehearsers of the law maxims, the council of representatives of the eight clans, the general, the vice-consul, and the consul himself."  Each of these could acquit the accused.  But if they considered him guilty, each had to refer the case to the next in order above them, the consul finally warding the penalty according to the Book of Precedents.  We hear of no such intermediate officials in the smaller clans; and even among the Vajjians (who are all called 'Rajas' in this passage), it is not likely that so complicated a procedure was actually followed.  But a book of legal precedents is referred to elsewhere, and tables of the law also. It is therefore not improbable that written notes on the subject were actually in use.

   The names of the clans, including the Sakiyas, were:

   Bhaggas of Sumsumara Hill;
   Bulis of Allakappa;
   Kalamas of Kesaputta;
   Koliyas of Rama-gama;
   Mallas of Kushinagar (Kusinara);
   Mallas of Pava;
   Moriyas of Pipphalivana;
   Sakiyas of Kapilavastu;
   Videhas of Mithila;
   Licchavis of Vesali;
   Vajjis (Vajjians): splitted as Videhas and Licchavis.

   There are several other names of tribes of which it is not yet known whether they were class or under monarchical government.  We have only one instance of any tribe, once under a monarchy, reverting to the independent state.  And whenever the supreme power in a clan became hereditary, the result seems always to have been an absolute monarchy, without legal limitations of any kind.

   The political divisions of India at or shortly before the time when  Buddhism arose are well exemplified by the stock list of the Sixteen Great Countries, the Sixteen Powers, which is found in several places in the Anguttara Nikaya and in the Vinaya Texts.  It is interesting to notice that the names are names, not of countries, but of peoples, as we might say Italians or Germans.  This shows that the main idea in the minds of those who drew up, or used, this old list was still tribal and not geographical.  The list is as follows:

   Anga; Magadha; Kasi; Kosala; Vajji; Malla; Ceti; Vamsa; Kuru; Pancala; Maccha; Surasena; Assaka; Avanti; Gandhara; Kamboja.

   The Angas dwelt in the country to the east of Magadha, having their capital at Champa, near the modern Bhagalpur.  Its boundaries are unknown.  In the Buddha's time it was subject to Magadha, and we never hear of its having regained independence.  But in former times it was independent, and there are traditions of wars between these neighbouring countries. The Anga Raja in the Buddha's time was simply a wealthy nobleman, and we only know of him as the grantor of a pension to a particular brahmin.

   The Magadhas, as is well known, occupied the district now called Behar.  It was probably then bounded to the north by the Ganges, to the east by the river Champa, on the south by the Vindhya Mountains, and on the West by the river Sona. In the Buddha's time (that is, inclusive in Anga) it is said to have had eighty thousand villages, and to have been three hundred leagues (about twenty three hundred miles) in circumference."

   The Kasis are of course the people settle in the district round Benares. In the time of the Buddha this famous old kingdom of the Bharatas had fallen to so low a political level that the revenues of the township had become a bone of contension between Kosala and Magadha, and the kigdom itself was incorporated into Kosala.  Its mention in this list is historically important, as we must conclude that the memory of it as an independent state was still fresh in men's minds.  This is confirmed by the very frequent mention of it as such in the Jatakas, where it is said to have been over two thousand miles in circuit.  But it never regained independence; and its boundaries are unknown.

   The Kosalas were the ruling clan in the kingdom whose capital was Savathi, in what is now Nepal, seventy miles north-west of the modern Gorakhpur.  It included Benares and Saketa; and probably had the Ganges for its southern boundary, the Gandhak for its eastern boundary, and the mountains for its northern boundary.  The Sakiyas already acknowledged, in the seventh century B.C., the suzerainty of Kosala.

   It was the rapid rise of this kigdom of Kosala, and the inevitable struggle in the immediate future between it and Magadha, which was the leading point in the politics of the Buddha's time.  These hardy mountaineers had swept into their net all the tribes between the mountains and the Ganges.  Their progress was arrested on the east by the free clans.  And the struggle between Kosala and Magadha for the paramount power in all India was, in fact, probably decided when the powerful confederation of the Licchavis became arrayed on the side of Magadha.  Several successful invasions of Kasi by the Kosalans under their kings, Vanka, Dabbasena, and Kamsa, are referred to a date before the Buddha's time.  And the final conquest would seem to be ascribed to Kamsa, as the epithet "Conqueror of Benares" is a standing addition to his name.

   The Vajjians included eight confederate clans, of whom the Licchavis and the Videhans were the most important.  It is very interesting to notice that while tradition makes Videha a kingdom in earlier times, it describes it in the Buddha’s time as a Republic.  Its size, as a separate kigdom, is said to have been three hundred leagues (about twenty-three hundred miles) in circumference.  Its capital, Mithila, was about thirty five miles Northwest from Vesali, the capital of the Licchavis.  There it was that the great King Janaka ruled a little while before the rise of Buddhism.  And it is probable that the modern town of Janakpur preserves in its name a memory of this famous Rajput scholar and philosopher of olden time.

    The Mallas of Kushinagar (Kusinara) and Pava were also independent clans, whose territory, if we may trust the Chinese pilgrims, was on the mountain slopes to the East of the Sakiya land, and to the North of the Vajjian confederation.  But some would place it South of the Sakiyas and east of the Vajjians.

   The Cetis were probably the same tribe as that called Cedi in older documents, and had two distinct settlements.  One, probably the older, was in the mountains, in what is now called Nepal.  The other, probably a later colony, was near Kosamby to the east and has been even confused with the land of the Vamsa, from which this list makes them distinct.

   Vamsa is the country of the Vacchas, of which Kosambi, properly only the name of the capital, is the more familiar name.  It lay immediately to the north of Avanti, and along the banks of the Jumna.

   The Kurus occupied the country of which Indraprastha, close to the modern Delhi, was the capital;  and had the Panchalas to the east, and the Matsyas to the south.  Tradition gives the kingdom a circumference of two thousand miles.  They had very little political importance in the Budda’s time.  It was at Kammassa-dhamma in the Kuru country that several of the most important Suttantas – the Maha Satipatthana, for instance, and the Maha Nidana – were delivered.  And Ratthapala was a Kuru noble.

   The two Pancalas occupied the country to the east of the Kurus, between the mountains and the Ganges.  Their capitals were Kampilla and Kanoj.

   The Macchas, or Matsyas, were to the south of the Kurus and west of the Jumna, which separated them from the Southern Pancalas.

   The Surasenas, whose capital was Madhura, were immeditately south-west of the Macchas, and west of the Jumna.

   The Assakas had , in the Buddha’s time, a settlement on the banks of the Godhavari.  Their capital was Potana, or Potali.  The country is mentioned with Avanti in the same way as Anga is with Magadha, and its position on this list, between Surasena and Avanti, makes it probable that, when the list was drawn up, its position was immediately north-west of Avanti.  In that case the settlement on the Godhavari was a later colony; and this is confirmed by the fact that there is no mention of Potana (or Potali) there.  The name of the tribe is also ambiguous.  Sanskrit authors speak both of Asmaka and of Asvaka.  Each of these would be Assaka, both in the local vernacular and in Pali.  And either there were two distinct tribes so called, or the Sanskrit form Asvaka is a wrong reading, or a blunder in the Sanskritisation of Assaka.

   Avanti, the capital of which was Ujjeni, was ruled over by King Canda Pajjota (Pajjota the Fierce) referred to above.  The country, much of which is rich land, had been colonized or conquered by Aryan tribes who came down the Indian valley, and turned west from the Gulf of Kach.  It was called Avanti at least as late as the second century A.D., but from the seventh or eight century onwards it was called Malava.

   Gandhara, modern Kandahar, was the district of Eastern Afghanistan, and it probably included the northwest of the Punjab.  Its capital was Takkasila (Taxila or Takshila).  The King of Gandhara in the Buddha’s time, Pukkusati, is said to have sent an embassy and a letter to King Bimbisara of Magadha.

   Kamboja was the adjoining country in the extreme northwest, with Dvaraka as its capital.

 

   When Buddhism arose there was no paramount sovereign in India.  The kingly power was not, of course, unknown.  There had been kings in the valley of the Ganges for centuries, long before Buddhism, and the time was fast approaching when the whole of India would be under the sway of monarchical governments.  In those parts of India which came very early under the influence of Buddhism, we find, besides a still surviving number of small aristocratic republics, four kingdoms of considerable extent and power.  Besides, there were a dozen or more of smaller kingdoms,  but no one of these was of much political importance. 

   The tendency towards the gradual absorption of these domains, and also of the republics, into the neighbouring kingdoms, was already in full force.  The evidence at present available is not sufficient to give us an exact idea either of the extent of the country, or of the number of the population, under the one or the other form of government; nor has any attempt been so far made to trace the history of political institutions in India before the rise of Buddhism.  We can do no more then, than state the fact - most interesting from the comparative - that the earliest Buddhist records reveal the survival, side by side with more or less powerful monarchies, of republics with either complete or modified independence.

   It is significant that this important factor in the social condition of India in the sixth and seventh centuries B.C. has remained hitherto unnoticed by scholars either in Europe or in India.  They have relied for their information about the Indian peoples too exclusively on the brahmin books.  And these, partly because of the natural antipathy felt by the priests towards the free republics, partly because of the later date of most of the extant priestly literature, and especially of the law books, ignore the real facts.  They convey the impression that the only recognised, and in fact universally prevalent, form of government was that of kings under the guidance and tutelage of priests.  But the Buddhist records, amply confirmed in these respects by the somewhat later Jain ones, leave no doubt upon the point. As regards the monarchies, the four referred to above as then of importance are as follows:

1) - The kingdom of Magadha, with its capital at Rajagaha (afterwards at Pataliputra), reigned over at first by King Bimbisara and afterwards by his son Ajatasattu.
2) - To the north-west there was the kingdom of Kosala - the Northern Kosala - with its capital at Sravatthi, ruled over at first by King Pasenadi and afterwards by his son Vidudabha.
3) - Southwards from Kosala was the kingdom of the Vamsas or Vatsas, with their capital at Kosambi on the Jumna, reigned over by Kind Udena, the son of Parantapa.
4) - And still farther south lay the kingdom of Avanti, with its capital Ujjeni, reigned over by King Pajjota.

   The royal families of these kigdoms were united by matrimonial alliances; and were also, not seldom in consequence of those very alliances, from time to time at war.  Thus Pasenadi's sister, the Kosala Devi, was the wife of Bimbisara, King of Magadha.  When Ajatasattu, Bimbisara's son by another wife (the Videha lady from Mithila), put his father Bimbisara to death, the Kosala Devi died of grief.  Pasenadi then confiscated that township of Kasi, the revenues of which had been granted to the Kosala Devi as pin money.  Angered at this, Ajatasattu declared war against his aged uncle.  At first victory inclined to Ajatasattu.  But in the fourth campaign he was taken prisoner, and not released until he had relinquished his claim.  Thereupon Pasenadi not only gave him his daughter Vajira in marriage, but actually conferred upon her, as a weding gift, the very village in Kasi in dispute.  Three years afterwards Pasenadi's son Vivudabha revolted against his father, who was then at Ulumba in the Sakya country.  The latter fled to Rajagaha to ask Ajatasattu for aid; but was taken ill and died outside the city's gates.  We shall hear further on how both Vidudabha, and Ajatasattu, his brother-in-law, were in conflict with the adjoining republican confederacies, the former with the Sakiyans, the latter with the Vajjians of Vesali.

   The royal families of Kosambi and Avanti were also united by marriage.  The commentary on verses 21-23 of the Dhammapada gives a long and romantic story of the way in which Vasula-dattha, the daughter of King Pajjota of Avanti, became the wife, or rather one of the three wives, of King Udena of Kosambi.  The legend runs that Pajjota  - whose fierce and unscrupulous character is there painted in terms confirmed by one of our oldest authorities - inquired once of his courtiers whether there was any king whose glory was greater than his own.  And when he was straightway told that Udena of Kosambi surpassed him, he at once determined to attack him.  Being then advised that an open campaign would be certainly disastrous, but that an ambush - the more easy as Udena would go anywhere to capture a fine elephant - might succeed, he had an elephant made of wood and deftly painted, concealed in it sixty warriors, set it up in a defile near the boundary, and had Udena informed by spies that a glorious elephant, the like of which had never been seen, was to be found in the frontier forest.  Udena took the bait, plunged into the defile in pursuit of the prize, became separated from his retinue, and was taken prisoner. Now Udena knew a charm of wonderful power over the hearts of elephants.  Pajjota offered him his life and freedom if he would tell it.

"Very well," was the reply, "I will teach it you if pay me the salutation due to a teacher."

"Pay salutation to you - never!"

"Then neither do I tell you my charm."

"In that case I must order you to execution."

"Do as you like" of my body you are lord. But not of my mind."

   Then Pajjota bethought him that after all no one else knew the charm, and he asked Udena if he would teach it to someone else who would salute him. And being answered yes, he told his daughter that there was a dwarf who knew a charm; that she was to learn it of that dwarf; and then tell it to him, the King.  And to Udena he said that a hunchback woman would salute him from behind a curtain, and that he had to teach her the charm, standing the while himself outside the curtain.  So cunning was the King to bar their friendship.  But when the prisoner day after day rehearsed the charm, and his unseen pupil was slow to catch it up and to repeat it, Udena at last one day called out impatiently,  "Say it so you hunchback!  How thick lipped you must be, and heavy jawed!"  Then she, angered, rejoined:  "What do you mean, you wretched dwarf, to call such as I am hunchback?"

   And he pulled the corner of the curtain to see, and asked her who she was, and the trick was discovered, and he went inside, and there was no more talk that day of learning charms, or of repeating lessons. And they laid a counter-plot.  And she told her father that a condition precedent to the right learning of the charm was the possession of a certain potent herb picked under a certain conjunction of the stars, and they must have the right of exit, and the use of his famous elephant.  And her wish was granted.

   Then one day, when her father was away on a pleasure jaunt, Udena put her on the elephant, and taking also money, and gold-dust in bags of leather, set forth. But men told Pajjota the King; and he, angry and suspecting, sent a force in rapid pursuit. Then Udena emptied the bag of coins.  And the pursuers waiting to gather them up, the fugitives forged ahead.  When the pursuers again gained on them, Udena let loose a bagful of gold-dust.  Again the pursuers delayed.  And as they once more gained on the fugitives, lo!  the frontier fortress, and Udena's own troops coming out to meet their lord!  Then the pursuers drew back; and Udena and Vasula-datta entered, in safety and in triumph, into the city; and with due pomp and ceremony she was anointed as his Queen.

   It is sufficient evidence that, when the tradition arose, King Pajjota of Avanti and King Udena of Kosambi were believed to have been contemporary rulers of adjoining kigdoms, and to have been connected by marriage and engaged in war. We hear a good deal else about this Udena, King of the Vacchas or Vamsas of Kosambi.  Formerly, in a fit of drunken rage, at a picnic, because his women folk left him, when he was sleeping, to listen to a religious discourse by Pindola (a highly respected and famous member of the Buddhist Sangha), he had had Pindola tortured by having a nest of brown ants tied to him.  Long afterwards the King professed himself an adherent of the Buddha's in consequence of a conversation he had with this same man Pindola, on the subject of self-restraint.  At another picnic the women's pavillion was burnt, with his Queen, Samavati and many of her attendants.  His father's name was Parantapa; and he had a son named Bodhi, after whom one of the Suttantas is named and concerning whom other details are given.  But Udena survived the Buddha, and we are not informed whether Bodhi did, or did not, succeed him on the throne.

   Pasenadi, the King of Kosala, is described as a very different character.  The whole of the Third Samyutta, consisting of twenty stories, each with a moral bias, is devoted to him.  And there are about an equal number of references to him in other parts of the literature.  Educated at the celebrated seat of learning, Takkshila, in the extreme north-west, eh was placed, on his return, by his father, Maha Kosala, upon the throne.  This liberality of thought and conduct was only strenghtened when, early in the new movement, he proclaimed himself an adherent, in a special sense, of the Buddha's.  This was in consequence of a talk he had had with the Buddha himself.  The King had asked him how he, being so young, as compared with other already well-known teachers, could claim an insight beyond theirs.  The reply simply was that no religious should be despised because of his youth.  Who would show disrespect to a prince, or to a venomous serpent, or to a fire, merely because it was young?  It was the nature of the doctrine, not the personal peculiarities of the teacher, that was the test.

   Sumana, the King's aunt, sister of his father, Maha Kosala, was present at this conversation, and made up her mind to enter the Sangha, but delayed doing so in order to nurse an aged relative.  The delay was long.  But on the death of the old lady, Sumana, then old herself, did enter the Sangha, and became an Arhat, and is one of the Buddhist ladies whose poems are preserved in the Theri Gatha.  The aged relative was Pasenadi's grandmother;  so that we have four generations of this family brought before us.

   A comparison between Digha I.87, and Divyavadana 620 - where the same action is attributed in the older book to King Pasenadi and in the younger to King Agnidatta - makes it highly probable that Pasenadi (used as a designation for several kings) is in reality an official epithet, and that the King's real personal name was Agnidatta.

   Among the subjects chosen for the bas-reliefs on the Bharahat tope, in the third century B.C., is one representing Pasenadi issuing forth on his chariot, drawn by four horses with their tails and manes elaborately plaited, and attended by three servants.  Above him is figured the Wheel of the Law, the symbol of the new teaching of which the King of Kosala was so devoted a supporter.

   It is stated that this was from the desire to associate himself by marriage with the Buddha's family that Pasenadi asked for one of the daughers of the Shakiya chiefs as his wife. The Shakiyas discussed the proposition in their Mote Hall, and held it beneath the dignity of their clan.  But they sent him a girl named Vasabha Khattiya, the daughter, by a slave girl, of one of their leading chiefs.  By her Pasenadi had the son, Vidudabha, mentioned above.  And it was in consequence of the anger kindled in Vidudabha's heart at the discovery of the fraud that, having determined to wreak his vengeance on the Shakiyas, he, on coming to the throne, invaded their country, took their city, and put to death a great number of the members of the clan, without distinction of age or sex.  The details of the story have not been found as yet in our oldest records.  But the main circumstance of the war against the clan is very early alluded to, and is no doubt a historical fact.  It is said to have preceded only by a year or two the Maha-para-nirvana of the Buddha himself.

   The Shakiyas may have considered the royal family of Kosala of inferior birth to themselves.  There is mention, in several passages, of the pride of the Shakiyas, which can be found in the Dhammapada, Vinaya and Jatakas.  But, even so, we cannot see, in the present state of our knowledge, why they should object.  We know that the daughter of one of the chiefs of a neighbouring clan, equally free and equally proud, the Licchavis of Vesali, was married to Bimbisara, king of Magadha.  It is, furthermore, almost certain that the royal family at Savatthi was simply one of the patrician families who had managed to secure hereditary position in the Kosala clan.  For the chiefs among the Kosalas, apart from the royal family, and even the ordinary clansmen (the kulaputta), are designated by the very term (rajano, kings)  which is applied to the chiefs and clansmen of those tribes which had still remained aritocratic republics. And it is precisely in a very natural tendency to exaggerate the importance of the families of their respective founders that the later records differ from the earlier ones.  

   It is scarcely probable, therefore, that the actual originating cause of Vidudabha's invasion of the Shakiyas territory was exactly as set out above.  He may have used the arrogance of the Shakiyas, perhaps, as a pretext.  But the real reasons which induced Vidudabha to attack and conquer his relatives, the Shakiyas, were, most likely, the same sort of political motives which later on induced his counsin, King Ajatasattu of Magadha, to attack and conquer his relatives, the Licchavis of Vesali.

   We hear already of Ajatasattu's intention to attack them in the opening sections of the Maha-para-nibbana Sutra(*) and the Buddha is represented as making the not very difficult forecast that eventually, when the Licchavis had been weakened by treachery, he would be able to carry out this intention.  But it was not till more than three years afterwards that, having succeeded, by the treachery of the brahman Vassankara, in sowing dissension among the leading families of Vesali, he swooped down upon the place with an overwhelming force, and completely destroyed it.

   We are also told that Ajatasattu fortified his capital, Rajagaha, in expectation of an attack about to be made by King Pajjota of Ujjeni.  It would be most interesting to know whether the attack was ever made, and what measure of succes it had.  We know that aftewards, in the fourth century B.C., Ujjeni had become subject to Magadha, and that Ashoka, when a young man, was appointed governor of Ujjeni.  But we know nothing else of the intermediate states which led to this result.

   About nine or ten years before the Buddha's Maha-para-nirvana, Devadatta, his first cousin, who had long previously joined the Order, created a schism in the Sangha.  We hear of Ajatasattu, then the Crown Prince, as the principal supporter of this Devadatta, the quondam disciple and bitter foe of the Buddha.

   About the same time Bimbisara, the King, handed over the reins of government to the Prince. But it was not long before Devadatta incited him, in order to make quite sure, to slay the King. And Ajatasattu carried out this idea in the eight year before the Buddha's Maha-para-nirvana, by starving his father slowly to death.

   Once, subsequently, when remorse had fastened upon him, we hear of his going, with a great retinue, to the Buddha and inquiring of him what were the fruits, visible in this present life, of becoming a member of a religious order. The famous Suttanta, in which this conversation is set out - the Sammana Phala Sutta - is translated in full in my Dialogues of the Buddha. An illustration of the King saluting the Buddha on this occasion is the subject of one of the bas-reliefs on the Bharhut Tope. As usual, the Buddha himself is not delineated. Only his footprints are shown.

   At the close of the discourse the King is stated to have openly taken the Buddha as his guide in future, and to have given expression to the remorse he felt at the murder of his father. But it is also distinctly stated that he was not converted. There is no evidence that he really, after the moment when his heart was touched, continued to follow the Buddha's teaching. He never, so far as we know, waited again either upon the Buddha, or upon any member of the Order, to discuss ethical matters. And we hear of no material suport given by him to the Order during the Buddha's lifetime.

   We are told, however, that, after the Buddha's death, he asked (on the ground that he, like the Buddha, was a Kshatriya) for a portion of the relics; that he obtained them; and built a stupa or burial-mound over them. (See the Maha-para-nirvana Sutra). And though the oldest authority says nothing about it, younger works state that on the convocation of the First Council at Rajagaha, shortly after the decease, it was the King who provided and prepared the hall at the entrance to the Sattapanni cave, where the rehearsal of the doctrine took place. He may well have thus showed favour to the Buddhists without at all belonging to their party. He would only, in so doing, be following the usual habit so characteristic of Indian monarchs, of patronage towards all schools. Mention is made occasionally and incidentally of other kings - such as Avanti-putta, King of the Surasenas.

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Note:  (*) - Buddhist India, by T.W. Rhys-Davids, 1903, and translated by T.W.Rhys Davids in his Buddhist Suttas, in which the name given to this tribe there is Vajjians.  But it is clear that the Licchavis were a clan of the Vajjians.