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The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c19: Chapter VII. The Early History of the Buddhists

The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c19

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English

Contents

Chapter VII. The Early History of the Buddhists

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¹ In the Buddhist chapters names and titles appear in their Pāli form.

1. Pre-Buddhistic

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THE early history of the Buddhists should properly begin far enough back before the birth of the Buddha to throw light on the causes that were at work in producing the rise and progress of the Buddhist reformer. Unfortunately, even after all that has been written on the subject of early Buddhist chronology, we are still uncertain as to the exact date of the Buddha’s birth. The date 483 B.C. which is adopted in this History must still be regarded as provisional. The causes of this uncertainty which were explained by the present writer in 1877 still remain the same:

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If the date for Asoka is placed too early in the Ceylon chronicles, can we still trust the 218 years which they allege to have elapsed from the commencement of the Buddhist era down to the time of Asoka? If so we have only to add that number to the correct date of Asoka, and thus fix the Buddhist era [the date of the Buddha's death] at 483 B.C. or shortly after. Of the answer to this question, there can I think, be no doubt. *We can not*².

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² *Ancient Coins and Measures of Ceylon*, p. 44 of the separate edition (London, 1877).

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This statement was followed by an analysis of the details of the lists of kings and teachers, the length of whose reigns or lives, added together, amount to this period of 218 years. The analysis shows how little the list can be relied on. The fact is that all such calculations are of very doubtful validity when they have to be made backwards for any lengthened period. Sinologists, Assyriologists, Egyptologists have not been able to agree on results sought by this method; and, though Archbishop Usher’s attempt to discover in this way, from the Hebrew records, the correct date of the creation was long accepted, it is now mere matter for derision. As is well known, even the Christian chronologists, though the interval they had to cover was very short, were wrong in their calculation of our Christian era. The Ceylon chroniclers may have been as much more wrong as the interval they had to account for was longer. We must admit that they tried their best, and were not so utterly at sea as the Irish church-dignitary. But we do not even know who made the calculation. We first hear of it in the fourth century A.D., and are only entitled to conclude that at that date the belief in the 218 years was accepted by most of those Buddhists who continued in possession of the ancient traditions¹.

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¹ For the recent literature from the point of view of those who accept the 218 years as correct see Geiger, *Mahāvaṁsa* (English translation), pp. xxii–xxxvi.

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There have been endeavours, on the basis of other traditions, to arrive at a more exact date for the birth of the Buddha². It is sufficient to state that each of these is open to still more serious objection. We must be satisfied to accept, as a working hypothesis only, and not as an ascertained fact, the general belief among modern European scholars that the period for the Buddha's activity may be approximately assigned to the sixth century B.C.

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² *See*, for instance, the various results detailed by Winternitz, *Geschichte der indischen Litteratur*, II, i, 2, note 1.

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In previous chapters of this volume will be found the story, drawn from the Brāhman literature, of the gradual establishment in Northern India of the Āryan supremacy. For the period just before the rise of Buddhism (say the seventh century B.C.) this literature tells us very little about political movements. The Buddhist books also are devoted to ideas rather than to historical events, and pass over, as of no value to their main objects, the dates and doings and dynastic vicissitudes of the kinglets before their own time. The fact that they do so is historically important; and we should do wrong in ignoring, in a history of India, the history of the ideas held by the Indian peoples. But the fact remains. It is only quite incidentally that we can gather, from stories, anecdotes, or legends in these books, any information that can be called political. Of that referring to the pre-Buddhist period the most important is perhaps the list of the Sixteen Great Powers, or the Sixteen Great Nations, found in several places in the early books³. It is a mere mnemonic list and runs as follows:

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³ *Aṅguttara* I, 213; IV, 252, 256, 260. Referred to in *Mahāvastu* II, 2, line 15. Cf. the note in *Vinaya Texts*, II, 146.

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| 1. | Aṅgā | 9. | Kurū |
| 2. | Magadhā | 10. | Pañchālā |
| 3. | Kāsī | 11. | Macchā |
| 4. | Kosalā | 12. | Sūrasenā |
| 5. | Vajjī | 13. | Assakā |
| 6. | Mallā | 14. | Avantī |
| 7. | Cheti | 15. | Gandhārā |
| 8. | Vaṁsā | 16. | Kambojā |

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When a mnemonic phrase or verse of this kind is found in identical terms in different parts of the various anthologies of which the Buddhist canon consists, the most probable explanation is that it had been current in the community before the books were put together as we now have them, and that it is therefore older than those collections in which it is found¹. As this particular list is found in two of the oldest books in the canon it would follow that it is, comparatively speaking, very old. It may even be pre-Buddhist—a list handed down among the bards, and adopted from them by the early Buddhists. For it does not fitly describe the conditions which, as we know quite well, prevailed during the Buddha’s lifetime. Then the Kosala mountaineers had already conquered Benares (Kāsi), the Aṅgas were absorbed into the kingdom of Magadhas, and the Assakas probably belonged to Avanti. In our list all these three are still regarded as independent and important nations; and that the list is more or less correct for a period before the rise of Buddhism is confirmed by an ancient rune preserved in the Dīgha², and reproduced (in a very corrupt form, it is true) in one of the oldest Sanskrit-Buddhist texts³. It runs:

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¹ Cf. Rh.D., *Buddhist India*, p. 188.

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² II, 235, translated in *Dialogues of the Buddha*, II, 270.

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³ *Mahāvastu* III, 208, 209.

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Dantapura of the Kaliṅgas, and Potana of the Assakas,
Māhissati for the Avantis, Roruka in the Sovīra land,
Mithilā for the Videhas, and Champā among the Aṅgas,
And Benares for the Kāsis—all these did Mahā-Govinda plan.

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We have here seven territories evidently, from the context, regarded as the principal ones, before the rise of Buddhism, in the centre of what was then known as Jambudīpa (India). Though quite independent of the list just discussed these mnemonic verses tell a similar story. Here also appear the Assakas, Aṅgas, and Kāsis. Only the Kaliṅgas are added; and the name of their capital, Dantapura, ‘the Tooth city,’ shows incidentally that the sacred tooth, afterwards taken from Dantapura to Ceylon was believed, when this list was drawn up, to have been already an object of reverence before the time of the Buddha. This tradition of a pre-Buddhist Dantapura, frequently referred to in the Jātakas, is thus shown to be really of much greater age. And it is clear that at the time when the four Nikāyas were put into their present form⁴ it was believed that, before the Buddha’s life-time, the distribution of power in Northern India, had been different from what it afterwards became.

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⁴ For the Nikāyas and their probable date, *v. inf.*, pp. 195–6.

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In an appendix to the Dīgha verse the names of the seven kings of the seven nations are given, and it is curious that they are called the seven Bhāratas. Their names are Sattabhu, Brahmadatta, Vessabhu, Bharata, Reṇu, and two Dhaṭaraṭṭhas; but the record does not tell us which of the seven nations each belongs to. In an interesting story at Jātaka III, 470¹, the hero is Bharata, king of the Sovīras, reigning at Roruva. This is most probably meant for the same man as the Bharata of the Dīgha passage; and we may therefore apportion him to the Sovīras. The mention of Reṇu in a list of ancient kings of Benares given in the Dīp. III, 38–40 probably refers to the Reṇu of our passage since the same rare name is given in both places as the name of the father of Reṇu. On the other hand the King Reṇu of Jātaka IV, 144 is evidently not meant to be the same as this one. Three of the other four names also recur (not Sattabhu); but no inference can be drawn that the same people are meant.

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¹ The references are to the Pāli text of the Jātaka. In the English translation the volumes correspond, and the pages of the original are indicated in square brackets.

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There are lists of pre-Buddhist Rājas (whatever that term may signify) in the chronicles and commentaries. But they can only be evidence of beliefs held at a late date; they have not yet been tabulated or sifted; and it would not be safe to hazard a prophecy that, even when they shall have been, there will be found anything of much value.

2. India in the Buddha's Time; The Clans

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There is no chapter or even paragraph in the early Pāli books describing the political conditions of North India during the lifetime of the Buddha. But there are a considerable number of incidental references, all the more valuable perhaps because they are purely incidental, that, if collected and arranged, give us a picture, no doubt imperfect, but still fairly correct as far as it goes, of the general conditions, as they appeared to the composers of the paragraphs in which the incidental references occur. They were collected in the present writer's *Buddhist India*; and to that work the reader is referred for a fuller account. Considerations of space render it possible to state here only the more important of the conclusions which these references compel us to draw.

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Of these the most far-reaching, and in some respects the most surprising, is the fact that we find not only one or two monarchies, and several kingdoms of lesser importance—like German duchies or the kingdoms in England at the time of the Heptarchy—but also a number of republics; some with complete, some with a more or less modified independence; and one or two of very considerable power. This reminds us of the political situation at about the same period in Greece. We shall find a similar analogy, due to similar causes, in other matters also. If not pressed too far the analogy will be as useful as it is certainly interesting.

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The following is a list of the republics actually referred to by name in the oldest Pāli records. Some mentioned by Megasthenes are added to it.

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1. The Sākiyas, capital Kapilavatthu
2. The Bulis, capital Allakappa
3. The Kālāmas, capital Kesaputta
4. The Bhaggas, capital on Sumsumāra Hill
5. The Koliyas, capital Rāmagāma
6. The Mallas, capital Pāvā
7. The Mallas, capital Kusinārā
8. The Moriyas, capital Pipphalivana
9. The Videhas, capital Mithilā
10. The Licchavis, capital Vesālī
11–15. Tribes, as yet unidentified, mentioned by Megasthenes

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Nos. 1–10 occupied in the sixth century B.C. the whole country east of Kosala between the mountains and the Ganges. Those mentioned, as is reported in other authors, by Megasthenes seem to have dwelt in his time on the sea-coast of the extreme west of India north of the gulf of Cutch¹. It is naturally in relation to the Sākiyas that we have the greatest amount of detail. Their territory included the lower slopes of the Himālayas, and the glorious view of the long range of snowy peaks is visible, weather permitting, from every part of the land. We do not know its boundaries or how far it extended up into the hills or down into the plains. But the territory must have been considerable. We hear of a number of towns besides the capital—Chātumā, Sāmagāma, Khomadussa, Silāvatī, Medaḷumpa, Nagaraka, Ulumpa, Devadaha, and Sakkara. And according to an ancient tradition preserved in the Commentary on the Dīgha² there were 80,000 the clan. This number (it is noteworthy that the number 84,000 was not chosen) would, allowing for dependents, mean a population of at least half a million. It would be absurd to take this tradition as a correct, or as an official enumeration. We do not even know who first made the calculation. But it would be equally absurd deliberately to ignore it. It is at least interesting to find that even as late as Buddhaghosa the traditional estimate of the number of the Sākiyans was still, in spite of the temptation to magnify the extent of the ‘kingdom’ which the Buddha renounced, so limited and so reasonable as this.

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¹ M'Crindle, *Ancient India as described by Megasthenes*, p. 144, cf. p. 156.

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² See Rh.D., *Dialogues of the Buddha*, I, 147.

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The administrative business of the clan, and also the more important judicial acts, were carried out in public assembly, at which young and old were alike present¹. The meetings were held in a mote-hall—a mere roof supported by pillars, without walls. It is called *santhāgāra*, a technical term never used of the council chamber of kings².

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¹ *D.* 1, 91.

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² See the passages quoted at *J.P.T.S.*, 1909, 65.

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We have no account of the manner in which the proceedings were conducted in the Sākiya mote-hall. But in the *Mahā-Govinda Suttanta* there is an account of a palaver in Sakka’s heaven, evidently modelled more or less on the proceedings in a clan meeting. All are seated in a specified order. After the president has laid the proposed business before the assembly others speak upon it, and Recorders take charge of the unanimous decision arrived at³. The actions of gods are drawn in imitation of those of men. We may be sure that the composers and repeaters of this story, themselves for the most part belonging to the free clans (and, if not, to neighbouring clans familiar with tribal meetings) would make use of their knowledge of what was constantly done at the mote-hall assemblies. This is confirmed by the proceedings adopted in the rules observed at formal meetings of the Chapters of the Buddhist Order. Quite a number of cases are given in the Canon Law⁴; and in no single case, apparently, is there question of deciding the point at issue by voting on a motion moved. Either the decision is regarded as unanimous; or, if difference of opinion is manifest, then the matter is referred for arbitration to a committee of referees⁵. It is even quite possible that certain of the technical terms found in the Rules of the Order (*ñatti* for ‘motion,’ *ubbāhikā* for ‘reference to arbitration,’ etc.), are taken from those in use at the mote-halls of the free clans. But however that may be, we are justified by this evidence in concluding that the method of procedure generally adopted in the mote-halls was not, as in modern parlia-ments, by voting on a motion, but rather as just above explained.

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³ Translated in *Dialogues*, vol. ii, pp. 259–264.

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⁴ Translated in Rhys Davids’ and Oldenberg’s *Vinaya Texts*. See especially vol. iii, pp. 44 ff.

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⁵ *Vinaya Texts*, iii, pp. 49 ff.

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A single chief (how or for what period chosen we do not know) was elected as office holder, presiding over the Senate, and, if no senate were in session, over the state. He bore the title of *Rāja* which in this connexion does not mean king, but rather something like the Roman *consul*, or the Greek *archōn*. We hear at one time that Bhaddiya, a young cousin of the Buddha was ‘rāja’¹, at another that the Buddha’s father Suddhodana (elsewhere spoken of as a simple clansman, Suddhodana the Sākiyan), held that rank².

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¹ ^1 *Vinaya* II, 181.

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² ^2 *Dīgha* II, 52.

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We hear of mote-halls at some of the other towns besides the capital, Kapilavatthu. And no doubt all the more important places had them. 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 in the long and level alluvial plain.

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The clan subsisted on the produce of their rice fields and their cattle. The villages were of grouped, not scattered, huts on the margin of the rice field. The cattle wandered in harvest time, under the charge of a village herdsman, through the adjoining forest (of which the village groves were a remnant), and over which the Sākiyan peasantry had common rights. Men of certain special crafts, most probably not Sākiyans by birth—carpenters, smiths, and potters for instance—had villages of their own ; and so also had the Brāhmans whose services were often in request for all kinds of magic. The villages were separated one from another by forest jungle, the remains of the Great Wood (the *Mahāvana*), portions of which are so frequently mentioned as still surviving throughout the clanships. The jungle was infested from time to time by robbers, sometimes runaway slaves. But we hear of no crime (and there was probably not very much) in the villages themselves—each of them a tiny self-governed republic.

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Tradition tells that the neighbouring clan, the Koliyas, were closely related by descent with the Sākiyas³; but we are not told much about the former. Five of their townships besides the capital are referred to by name:—Halidda-vasana¹, Sajjanela², Sāpūga³, Uttara⁴, and Kakkara-patta⁵. Every Koliyan was a Vyagghapajja by surname, just as every Sākiyan was a Gotama; and in tradition the name of their capital Rāmagāma, so called after the Rāma who founded it, is once given as either Kolanagara or Vyagghapajja⁶. The central authorities of the clan were served by a body of peons or police, distinguished, as by a kind of uniform, by a special form of head-dress⁷. These men had a bad reputation for extortion and violence. In the other clans we are told only of ordinary servants. The tradition that the Koliyans and Sākiyans built a dam over the river Rohinī which separated their territories, and that they afterwards quarrelled over the distribution of the store of water⁸, may very well be founded on fact.

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³ ^3 *Sumaṅgala* I, 258 ff.

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¹ *M.* I, 387; *S.* V, 115.

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² *A.* II, 62.

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³ *A.* II, 194.

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⁴ *S.* IV, 340.

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⁵ *A.* IV, 281.

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⁶ *Sum.* I, 262.

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⁷ *S.* IV, 341.

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⁸ *Jāt.* V, 412–416.

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Of the form of government in the Vajjian confederacy, comprising the Licchavis, the Videhas, and other clans, we have two traditions, Jain and Buddhist⁹. They are not very clear, and do not refer to the same matters, the Jain being on military affairs, while the Buddhist refers to judicial procedure.

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⁹ Jacobi, *Jaina Sūtras*, I, xii.

The Kingdoms. I. Kosala

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Kosala was the most important of the kingdoms in North India during the lifetime of the Buddha. Its exact boundaries are not known. But it must have bordered on the Ganges in its sweep downwards in a south-easterly direction from the Himālayas to the plains at the modern Allahābād. Its northern frontier must have been in the hills, in what is now Nepāl; its southern boundary was the Ganges; and its eastern boundary was the eastern limit of the Sākiya territory. For the Sākiyas, as one of our oldest documents leads us to infer, claimed to be Kosalans¹⁰. The total extent of Kosala was therefore but little less than that of France to-day. At the same time it is not probable that the administration was very much centralised. The instance of the very thorough Home Rule enjoyed, as we have seen, by the Sākiyas should make us alive to the greater probability that autonomous local bodies, with larger power than the village communities, which were of course left undisturbed, were still in existence throughout this wide territory.

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¹⁰ *Sutta Nipāta*, verse 422.

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One or two of the technical terms in use to describe such powers have survived. *Rāja-bhogga* for example is the expression for a form of tenure peculiar to India. The holder of such a tenure, the *rāja-bhoggo*, was empowered to exact all dues accruing to the government within the boundaries of the district or estate granted to him. But he had not to render to government any account of the dues thus received by him. They were his perquisite. He could hold his own courts, and occupied in many ways the position of a baron, or lord of the manor. But there was a striking difference. He could draw no rent. The peasantry had to pay him the tithe of the rice grown; and though the amount was not always strictly a tithe, and by royal decree could be varied in different localities, the grantee could not vary it. So with the import, or ferry, or octroi duties. The rate of payment, and the places at which the levy could be made, were fixed by the government. We have not enough cases of this tenure to be able to interpret with certainty the meaning of all the details, and limits of space prevent a discussion of them here. But the general principle is quite clear¹. It shows how easy would be the grant to local notabilities of local government to this extent, and how narrow was the line of distinction between the collection of dues by civil servants or farmers of the taxes and their collection by a grantee in this way. This custom, thus traced back to so early a period in the history of India, seems never to have fallen into abeyance. It certainly, in the period under discussion, was of manifest advantage. But it must be admitted that it is, to English ideas, very strange—so strange that our civilians made the mistake, in Bengal, of regarding all such persons legally empowered to collect the land-tax as landlords, and of endowing them accordingly with the much greater privileges and powers of the English landlord. In the Buddhist period there is no evidence of the existence, in North India, of landlords in our sense of that term.

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¹ D. I, 114, 127, 130: cf. II, 50 and Divy., 620, *Vin.* III, 221, with the Old Commentary at 222, *M.* III, 133, *Jāt.* VI, 344, *Sum. Vil.* I, 245, 246.

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It was the rise of this great power, Kosala, in the very centre of Northern India, which was the paramount factor in the politics of the time before the Buddhist reform. We do not know the details of this rise. But there are purely incidental references imbedded in the ethical teachings in the Buddhist books which afford us at least hints as to the final manner of it, and as to the date of it. For instance we have the story of Dīghāvu in the Vinaya¹. There Brahmadatta, king of Kāsi, invades Kosala, when Dīghīti was king at Sāvatthī, and conquered and annexed the whole country; but finally restored it to Dīghīti's son, with whom he had become on very friendly terms. Other traditions inform us on the other hand of several invasions of the Kāsi country by the then kings of Kosala, Vaṅka, Dabbasena, and Kaṁsa². And when that most excellent story, the *Rājovāda Jātaka*³—as good in humour as it is in ethics—was first put together to represent two kings in conflict, the quite natural idea was to fix upon kings of Kosala and Kāsi, and the author does so accordingly.

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¹ *Vinaya Texts*, ii, 293-305.

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² *Jāt.* i, 262; ii, 403; iii, 13, 168, 211; v, 112.

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³ *Jātaka* ii, 1.

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No references have so far been found in the books as to any contests between Kosala and any other tribe or nationality. It would seem therefore that the gradual absorption into Kosala of the clans and tribes in the northern part of Kosala as we know it in the Buddha's time took place without any such battle, campaign, or siege as was sufficiently striking to impress the popular imagination; but that when Kosala came into contact with Kāsi there ensued a struggle, with varying result and lasting through several reigns, which ended in the complete subjugation of the Kāsi country by Kaṁsa, king of Kosala.

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As to the approximate period of these events, we see that they were supposed to have taken place not only before the time of Pasenadi, who was born about the same time as the Buddha and lived about as long, but also before the time of his father the Great Kosalan. We have four kings of Kosala mentioned as taking part in these wars, and cannot be sure that there were not others who had quieter reigns. It would be enough and more than enough to allow, in round numbers, a century for all these kings. And the period cannot be much longer than that. For the name Brahmadatta could not have been older than towards the close of the Brāhmaṇa literature; and a century and a half before the birth of the Buddha would about bring us to that.

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The king of Kosala in the Buddha's time was Pasenadi. He was of the same age as the Teacher⁴; and though never actually converted, was very favourable to the new movement, adopted its more elementary teachings, and was fond of calling upon the Buddha either to consult him or simply for conversation. A whole book of the Saṁyutta⁵ is devoted to such talks, and others are recorded elsewhere. They are mostly on religion or ethics, but some political and personal matters are occasionally mentioned incidentally.

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⁴ *M.* ii, 124.

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⁵ The Kosala Saṁyutta, *S.* i, 68-102.

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For instance five ‘rājas’ are introduced discussing a point in psychology with Pasenadi. Whatever the title may exactly imply it is probable that we have the leaders of five clans or communities that, formerly independent, had, at that time, been absorbed into Kosala. Again we hear of a double campaign. In the first Ajātasattu, king of Magadha, attacks Pasenadi in the Kāsi country and compels him to take refuge in Sāvatthi¹. In the second, Pasenadi comes down again into the plains, defeats Ajātasattu, and captures him alive. Then he restores to him the possession of his camp and army, and lets him go free². The commentaries inform us that he also gave him, on this occasion his daughter Vajirā, to wife³. They also give the reasons for the dispute between the two kings; but this will be better dealt with under the next heading. Another conversation arises when the king comes to tell the teacher of the death of his (the king’s) grandmother for whom he expressed his deep devotion and esteem. She had died at a great age, specified as 120 years, no doubt a round number⁴. At another talk Sumanā, the king’s sister, is present, and becomes converted. Desiring to enter the Order she refrains from doing so in order to take care of this same old lady, and attains Arahantship while still a lay-woman⁵. The last and longest talk between the two friends took place at Meḷalumpa in the Sākiya country. The king, in much trouble with his family and ministers, expressed his admiration, and possibly also some envy, at the manner in which the teacher preserved peace in his Order. He then took his last leave with a striking declaration of his devotion⁶. But even as they were talking the crisis had come. The tradition records that the minister in whose charge the insignia had been left when the king went on alone, had in his absence, proclaimed the king’s son, Viḍūḍabha, as king. Pasenadi found himself deserted by all his people. He hurried away to Rājagaha to get help from Ajātasattu, and, worn out by worry and fatigue, he died outside the gates of the city⁷. Ajātasattu gave him a state funeral, but naturally enough left Viḍūḍabha undisturbed.

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¹ S. I, 79.

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² S. I, 82–85.

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³ *Jāt.* II, 404; IV, 343.

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⁴ S. I, 97; cf. *Jāt.* IV, 146.

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⁵ S. I, 69; *Thīg.* 16.

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⁶ M. II, 118–124.

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⁷ *Jātaka* IV, 152.

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The first use the latter made of his new position was to invade the Sākiya territory, and slaughter as many of the clan—men, women, and children—as he could catch. Many however escaped¹, and it is, perhaps, to this remnant that we owe the Piprahwa Tope discovered by Mr Peppé. Elsewhere² it has been shown that the reasons given for this invasion were probably not the real ones. But why should the Buddhists have taken pains so elaborately to explain away the fact, unless the fact itself had been indisputable? This is the last we know of Kosala. We hear nothing more of Viḍūḍabha, or of his successors if he had any. When the curtain rises again Kosala has been absorbed into Magadha.

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¹ *Dhp. A.* I, 359; *Mahāvaṃsa* VIII, 18, and the *Ṭīkā* on it.

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² *Buddhist India*, pp. 11, 12.

II. Magadha

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This was a narrow strip of country of some considerable length from north to south, and about twelve to fifteen per cent. in area of the size of Kosala. Just as Kosala corresponded very nearly to the present province of Oudh, but was somewhat larger, so Magadha corresponded in the time of the Buddha to the modern district of Patna, but with the addition of the northern half of the modern district of Gayā. The inhabitants of this region still call it Magā, a name doubtless derived from Magadha³. The boundaries were probably the Ganges to the north, the Son to the west, a dense forest reaching to the plateau of Chotā Nāgpur to the south, and Aṅga to the east. The river Champā had been the boundary between Magadha and Aṅga⁴; but in the Buddha's time Aṅga was subject to Magadha—it is the king, not of Aṅga, but of Magadha, who makes a land-grant in Aṅga (that is a grant of the government tithe)⁵, and an Aṅga village is one of the eighty thousand parishes over which the king of Magadha holds rule and sovereignty⁶. All the clansmen in each of these two countries are called by Buddhaghosa, princes⁷ (exactly as he elsewhere calls the Sākiyas and Licchavis). The same writer says that the two kingdoms amounted together to ‘three hundred leagues⁸.’ It is reasonable to suppose, as he was born and bred in Magadha, that he was not so very far wrong. But this is said in reference to the time of Bimbisāra. Later on he estimates the area of the whole of the United Kingdom of Magadha, in the time of Ajātasattu, at five hundred leagues. We may conclude from this that, according to the tradition handed down to Buddhaghosa, the size of the kingdom had nearly doubled in the interval. This would be about correct if the allusion were to Ajātasattu's conquests north of the Ganges¹. As Buddhaghosa however seems to use the larger figures of a date, not after, but at the beginning of those conquests, other wars of which we have no record, to the east or south, may be meant.

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³ Grierson in *E.R.E.* VI, 181.

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⁴ *Jāt.* IV, 454—above, pp. 172–3.

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⁵ *Dīgha* I, 111.

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⁶ *Vinaya* I, 179.

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⁷ *Rāja-kumārā*, *Sum.* I, 279, 294. See *Early Buddhism*, 27.

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⁸ *Yojanas*, *Sum.* I, 148.

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¹ *V. inf.*, p. 185.

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The king of Magadha in the Buddha's time, was Bimbisāra. Of his principal queens one was the Kosala Devī, daughter of Mahā-Kosala, and sister therefore of Pasenadi²; another was Chellanā, daughter of a chieftain of the Licchavis³; and a third was Khemā, daughter of the king of Madda in the Punjab⁴. If the traditions of these relationships be correct they are eloquent witnesses to the high estimate held in other countries of the then political importance of Magadha.

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² *Jāt.* II, 403.

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³ Jacobi, *Jaina Sūtras*, I, xii-xv.

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⁴ *Thig. A.* on 139-143, and *Apadāna* quoted *ibid.* 131.

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Bimbisāra had a son known as Vedehi-putto Ajātasattu in the canonical Pāli texts, and as Kūnika by the Jains. The later Buddhist tradition makes him a son of the Kosala Devī; the Jain tradition, confirmed by the standing epithet of Vedehi-putto, son of the princess of Videha, in the older Buddhist books, makes him a son of Chellanā. Buddhaghosa has preserved what is no doubt the traditional way of explaining away the evidence contained in the epithet⁵. But the matter cannot be further discussed here.

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⁵ *Sum.* I, 139. Cf. *Dialogues*, II, 78.

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One of the very oldest fragments preserved in the canon is a ballad on the first meeting of Bimbisāra and Gotama. In the ballad the latter is called ‘the Buddha.’ But the meeting took place about seven years before he became the Buddha in our modern sense; and this unwonted use of a now familiar title would have been impossible in any later document⁶. Gotama has only just started on his search for truth. The king, with curious density, offers to make him a captain, and give him wealth. It will be noticed that the king still resides in the palace of the old capital at the Giribbaja, ‘the Hill Fort.’ Some years afterwards when Gotama returns as a teacher, the king was lodged in the new palace that gave its name to the new capital, Rājagaha, ‘the King's House.’ The ruins of both these places are still extant; and the stone walls of the Giribbaja are probably the oldest identified remains in India. Dhammapāla says that the place was originally built or planned by Mahā-Govinda, the famous architect, to whom it was the proper thing to ascribe the laying out of ancient cities¹.

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⁶ *Sutta Nipāta*, verse 408. See *Dialogues*, II, 2. The ballad is translated in Rh.D., *Early Buddhism*, 31-34.

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¹ *Vimāna-vatthu Commentary*, p. 82, and above p. 173.

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On Gotama's second visit to Rājagaha Bimbisāra presented him with the Bamboo Grove, where huts could be built for the accommodation of the Order²—just as he endowed also the opposite teaching³. We hear very little about him in the books. He is not even mentioned in three out of the four Nikāyas, and the few references in the fourth are of the most meagre kind. But the Vinaya gives a short account of an attempt made by Ajātasattu to kill his father with a sword⁴, and in the closing words of the *Samañña-phala* there is an allusion to the actual murder which he afterwards committed⁵. The commentary on that Suttanta gives a long account of how it happened⁶. The details may or may not be true; but the main fact that Bimbisāra was put to death by his son Ajātasattu may be accepted as historical. The Ceylon chronologists place this event eight years before the Buddha's death, at the time when Bimbisāra, who had come to the throne when he was fifteen, had reigned fifty-two years⁷.

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² *Vinaya* I, 39.

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³ *Dīgha* I, 111, 127.

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⁴ *Vinaya* II, 190.

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⁵ *Dīgha* I, 86.

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⁶ *Sum.* I, 133–136; *Peta-v. A.* 105.

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⁷ *Dīp.* III, 56–60; *Mhv.* II, 29, 30.

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On the death of Bimbisāra, his wife, the Kosala Devī, is said by tradition to have died of grief⁸. The government revenues of an estate in Kāsi had been settled upon her by Mahā-Kosala as pin-money on her marriage. At her death the payment of course ceased. Ajātasattu then invaded Kāsi. It seems incredible that this could have been the real motive of the war, unless the kings of that place and time were less expert in inventing pretexts for a war which they wanted than modern kings in Europe. The war itself is however mentioned in the Canon⁹, and with some detail. In the first campaign Ajātasattu out-manœuvred his aged uncle, and drove him back upon Sāvatthi. In the next, however, Pasenadi lured his nephew into an ambush, and he was compelled to surrender with all his force. But Pasenadi soon set him at liberty, gave him back his army, and, according to the commentary, gave him also one of his daughters in marriage.

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⁸ *Jāt.* II, 403.

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⁹ *Saṁyutta* I, 84–86. Cf. *Dhp. A.* III, 259; *Jāt.* IV, 342.

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In the opening paragraph of the *Mahā-parinibbāna Suttanta*¹⁰ we hear of Ajātasattu's intention to attack the Vajjian confederacy, and, as the first step in the attack, of his building a fortress at Pāṭaliputta, the modern Patna, on the south bank of the Ganges, the then boundary between his territory and theirs. The minister in charge of this work was a Brāhman, known to us only by his official title, ‘the Rain-maker’ (Vassakāra). He fled suddenly to the Vajjian capital Vesālī, giving out that he had barely escaped with his life from Ajātasattu. The Vajjians gave him refuge and hospitality. He then dwelt among them, carefully disseminating lies and slanders until he judged the unity of the confederation to be finally broken. Three years after his kindly reception he gave the hint to his master, who swooped down on Vesālī, and destroyed it, and treated his relatives very much as Viḍūḍabha had treated his. We can only hope this ghastly story of dishonour, treachery, and slaughter is a fairy-tale. The question can only be discussed with profit when we have the whole of the commentary before us.

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¹⁰ Rh.D., *Dialogues of the Buddha*, II, 78.

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The son of Ajātasattu is mentioned in the Canon¹. His name was Udāyi-bhadda, and it follows from the statements of the Ceylon Chronicles that he succeeded his father on the throne². This is confirmed in the commentaries³. The name also occurs in medieval Jain and Hindu lists, independent no doubt, both of them, of the Buddhist books⁴.

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¹ *Dīgha* I, 50 = *Dialogues*, I, 68.

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² *Dīp.* V, 97; *Mhv.* IV, 1.

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³ *Smp.* 321; *Sum.* I, 153-4.

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⁴ V. inf., pp. 189-90.

III. Avanti

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The king of Avanti in the Buddha's time was Pajjota the Fierce, who reigned at the capital Ujjenī. There is a legend about him which shows that he and his neighbour king Udena of Kosambī were believed to have been contemporaries, connected by marriage, and engaged in war⁵. The boundary is not given, but a commentary mentions incidentally that the two capitals were in round numbers fifty yojanas, about four hundred miles, apart. We have seen that when the Nikāyas were composed Avanti was considered to have been one of the important kingdoms of India before the Buddha's time⁶. Shortly after the Buddha's death Ajātasattu is said to have been fortifying his capital, Rājagaha, in anticipation of an attack by Pajjota of Avanti⁷. The king of the Sūrasenas, at Madhura, in the Buddha's time, was called Avantiputto; and was therefore almost certainly the son of a princess of Avanti⁸. The Lalita-vistara gives the personal name of the king of Madhura in the year of the Buddha’s birth as Subāhu¹, and this may be the same person.

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⁵ *Buddhist India*, 4-7.

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⁶ Above, p. 172. Cf. *Jāt.* IV, 390.

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⁷ *M.* III, 7.

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⁸ *M.* II, 83.

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¹ Ed. Rajendralal Mitra, p. 24.

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Avanti became from the first an important centre of the new doctrine we now call Buddhism (in India it was not so called till centuries later). Several of the most earnest and zealous adherents of the *Dhamma* were either born or resided there. Abhaya Kumāra is mentioned² and Isidāsī³ and Isidatta⁴ and Dhammapāla⁵ and Soṇa Kuṭikaṇṇa⁶, and especially Mahā-Kaccāna⁷. The last of these is stated to have been called by the Buddha the most pre-eminent of those of his disciples able to expound at length, both as to form and meaning, that which had been said in short. The last but one, Soṇa, was in a similar way declared to be the most eminent of the disciples distinguished for beauty of expression⁸. In what language were they supposed to have exercised these literary gifts? It was certainly not the religious language then current in the priestly schools of Brāhmanism. This archaic form of speech which has been preserved in the Brāhmaṇas and Upanishads was called by the grammarians *chhāndasa*, ‘the language of *chhandas* or Vedic poetry,’ to distinguish it from the *laukika* or ‘secular’ language; and the Buddha had expressly forbidden his ‘word’ to be put into *chhandas*. Each disciple was to speak the word in his own dialect⁹. It would be a mistake, however, to be misled by the ambiguities of the word dialect, and to suppose it to mean here the language as spoken by any peasantry. The higher ethics and philosophy of ‘the Word’ could not be discussed in any such dialect. Now for two or three generations before the birth of the Buddha, the so-called Wanderers¹⁰ were in the habit of passing from Avanti to Sāvatthi, from Takkasilā to Champā, discussing in the vernacular, wherever they went or stayed, precisely such questions. They had invented or adapted abstract words and philosophical or ethical terms useful for their purpose, and equally current in all the dialects; while during the same period there had been developed in the rising kingdoms, and especially in Kosala (in the very centre of the regions covered by the Wanderers, and by far the largest and most important of them all) the higher terms necessary for legal and administrative purposes. Just as the Christians adopted for their propaganda, not classical Greek but the Greek of the *Koinē*, the varying dialect understood through all the coasts and islands of the Eastern Mediterranean, which they found ready to their hands; so the Buddha and his followers adopted this common form of vernacular speech, varying no doubt slightly from district to district, which they found ready to their hands. The particular form of this common speech, the then Hindustānī, in which the Pāli Canon was composed, was almost certainly, as the present writer ventured to suggest nearly forty years ago on historical grounds¹, and as Professor Franke contends on philological grounds², the form that was current in Avanti³. If that be so, it could be said that Buddhism, born in Nepāl, received the garb in which we now know it in Avanti, in the far West of India. It is true that no such curt summary of a great movement can be sufficient. But this would be nearer to the facts than that other summary, so often put forward as convenient, that Buddhism arose in Magadha and that its original tongue was Māgadhī⁴.

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² *Thag. A.* 39.

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³ *Thīg. A.* 261–4.

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⁴ *S.* IV, 288; *Thag.* 120.

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⁵ *Thag.* 204.

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⁶ *Vinaya Texts*, II, 32; *Thag.* 369; *Ud.* V, 6.

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⁷ *Saṃyutta* III, 9; IV, 117; *Aṅguttara* I, 23; V, 46; *Majjhima* III, 194, 223.

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⁸ *Cf.* *Dhp. A.* IV, 101.

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⁹ *Vinaya* II, 139. *Cf.* the note in *Vinaya Texts*, III, 150.

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¹⁰ See *Buddhist India*, 141–146.

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¹ Rh.D. in *Trans. Phil. Soc.* 1875.

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² R. Otto Franke, *Pali und Sanskrit*, 1902.

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³ Cf. Windisch, *Algiers Cong. of Orientalists*, 1906; and Rh.D., *Buddhist India*, 140–161.

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⁴ For this view see the references given by Winternitz, *Gesch. d. ind. Lit.* II, i, p. 10, note 3.

IV. The Vaṁsas

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The King of the Vaṁsas in the Buddha’s time is called in the Canon Udena⁵. His father’s name was Parantapa, and his son’s name Bodhi Kumāra⁶. But Udena survived the Buddha⁷, and we are not informed whether Bodhi did or did not succeed him on the throne. Tradition has preserved a long story of the adventures of Udena and his three wives. We have it in two recensions—a Pāli one, the Udena-vatthu⁸; and a Sanskrit one, the Mākandika-avadāna⁹. It is quite a good story, but how far each episode may be founded on fact is another question. The capital was Kosambī, the site of which has been much discussed¹⁰. It seems to have been on the south bank of the Jumna, at a point about 400 miles by road from Ujjenī, and about 230 miles up stream from Benares¹. One route from Ujjenī to Kosambī lay through Vedisa, and other places whose names are given but of which nothing else is at present known². There were already in the time of the Buddha four establishments or settlements of the Order in or near Kosambī, each of them a group of huts under trees. One of them was in the *ārāma* or pleasaunce of Ghosita, two more in similar parks, and one in Pāvāriya's Mango Grove³. The Buddha was often there, at one or other of these settlements; and discourses he held on those occasions have been handed down in the Canon. King Udena was at first indifferent or even unfriendly. On one occasion, in a fit of drunken jealousy he tortured a leading member of the Order, Piṇḍola Bhāradvāja, by having a basket full of brown ants tied to his body⁴. But long afterwards, in consequence of a conversation he had with this same man Piṇḍola, he professed himself a disciple. We have no evidence that he progressed very far along the path; but his fame has lasted in a curious way in Buddhist legends. For instance there is an early list of the seven Con-natals (*sahajātā*), persons born on the same day as the Buddha⁵. The details of the lists differ; and already in the Lalita-vistara it has grown into several tens of thousands, still arranged however in seven groups⁶. Many centuries afterwards we find the name of Udena appearing in similar lists recurring in Tibetan and Chinese books⁷.

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⁵ *Udāna* VII, 10; *Saṁyutta* IV, 110–113.

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⁶ *Vinaya* II, 127; IV, 198; *Majjhima* II, 97; *Jātaka* III, 157.

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⁷ *Peta-vatthu Commentary* 140.

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⁸ In Norman's *Dhammapada Commentary* I, 161–230.

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⁹ *Divyāvadāna* 515–544. (Ed. Cowell and Neil.)

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¹⁰ For different views see T. Watters, *On Yuan Chwang*, I. 366–9 and Chapter XXI, p. 524, *infra*.

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¹ *Buddhist India*, p. 36.

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² *Sutta Nipāta*, 1011.

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³ *Vin.* IV, 16; *Sum.* 319.

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⁴ *Jātaka* IV, 375.

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⁵ See Rh.D., *Buddhist Birth Stories*, note on p. 68.

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⁶ *Lalita-vistara* ed. Rajendralal Mitra, p. 109.

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⁷ Rockhill, *Life*, 16, 17; T. Watters, *On Yuan Chwang*, I, 368.

The First Great Gap

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The passages referred to above tell us a good deal of the political condition of India during the Buddha's life, and enable us to draw certain conclusions as to previous conditions for some time before the birth of the Buddha. There are also one or two passages in the Canon which must refer to dates after the Buddha's death. Perhaps the most remarkable is the verse in the Pārāyana (a poem now included in the Sutta Nipāta) which, referring to a time when the Buddha was alive, calls Vesālī a Magadha city⁸. Now we know from the *Mahā-parinibbāna Suttanta* that (at the time when that very composite work was put together in its present shape) Vesālī and the whole Vajjian confederacy was considered to have remained independent of Magadha up to the end of the Buddha's life¹. If therefore the reading in our text of the Pārāyana be correct, the expression 'Magadha city' must be taken in the sense of 'now a Magadha city,' and as alluding to the conquest of Vesālī as described above, p. 185. But it is apparently the only passage in the Canon which takes cognisance of that event. Again in the Aṅguttara we have a *sutta*² in which a king Muṇḍa, dwelling at Pāṭaliputta, is so overwhelmed with grief at the death of his wife Bhaddā that he refuses to have the cremation carried out according to custom. But after a simple talk with a *thera* named Nārada he recovers his self-possession. We learn from the chronicles that King Muṇḍa was the grandson of Ajātasattu and began to reign about the year 40 a.b.³ It is a fair inference from this episode that Pāṭaliputta had already at that time become the capital of Magadha. Nārada is said to have lived in the Kukkuṭārāma, no doubt consisting of a few huts or cottages scattered under the trees in the pleasaunce so called. It was a well-known resting-place for the Buddhist Wanderers, and Asoka is said to have built a monastery on the site of it⁴.

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⁸ *Sutta Nipāta*, 1013.

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¹ *Dialogues*, ii, 78–80.

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² *A.* iii, 57–63.

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³ *Mahāvaṃsa* iv, 2, 3; *Divyāvadāna* 369.

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⁴ *S.* v, 171; *A.* v, 342; *M.* i, 350; *Divy.* 368, 434; T. Watters, *On Yuan Chwang*, ii, 98, 99.

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The long poem of old Pārāpariya, a *laudator temporis acti*, on the decay of religion since the death of the Master⁵, adds nothing to political history. So also the edifying ghost-story recorded in the Peta-vatthu (ii, 10) can only, at most, give us the name of a sort of public-works officer at Kosambī shortly after the Buddha's death.

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⁵ *Thera-gāthā*, 920–948.

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These few details are all that we can glean from the Theravāda Canon concerning the history of India for more than a hundred and sixty years. And the chroniclers and commentators do not add very much more. They have preserved indeed a dynastic list of the kings of Magadha with regnal years of most of the kings. The list is as follows:

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| Ajātasattu | reigned | 32 years |
| Udāyi-bhadda | ” | 16 ” |
| .Anuruddha / Muṇḍa | ” | 8 ” |
| Nāgadāsaka | ” | 24 ” |
| Susunāga | ” | 18 ” |
| Kālāsoka | ” | 28 ” |
| His 10 sons | ” | 22 ” |
| Nine Nandas | ” | 22 ” |
| Chandagutta | ” | 24 ” |

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There are other lists extant, not so complete, and not always with the regnal years given, in Jain, Hindu, or Buddhist Sanskrit works. They have been carefully compared and discussed by W. Geiger, in a very reasonable and scholarly way¹. He comes to the conclusion that, on the whole, the above list is better supported than the others. This may well be the case; but at the same time it must be confessed that the numbers seem much too regular, with their multiples of six and eight, to be very probably in accordance with fact. And we are told nothing at all of any of the other kingdoms in India, or even of the acts of the kings thus named, or of the extent of the growing kingdom of Magadha during any of their reigns. The list gives us only the bare bones of the skeleton of the history of one district.

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¹ *Mahāvaṃsa* (English translation), Intr. pp. xl-xlvi.

Chandagutta

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When the curtain rises again we have before us a picture blurred and indistinct in detail, but in its main features made more or less intelligible by what has been set out above.

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India, as shown in the authorities there quoted, appeared as a number of kingdoms and republics with a constant tendency towards amalgamation. This process had proceeded further in Kosala than elsewhere; that great kingdom being by far the most important state in Northern India, and very nearly if not quite as large as modern France. It occupied the very centre of the territories mentioned in those authorities; it had its capital near the borders of what is now Nepāl; and it included all the previous states or duchies between the Himālayas on the north and the Ganges on the west and south. The original nucleus of this great kingdom was the territory now the seat of the Gurkhas, and these Kosalans were almost certainly, in the main at least, of Āryan race. For the heads of houses among them (the *gahapatis*) are called *rājāno*, the same as the clansmen (the *kula-puttā*) in the free republics. Of the surrounding kingdoms Magadha, though much smaller, was the most progressive. It had just absorbed Aṅga, and at the last moment we saw it attacking, and with success, the powerful Vajjian confederation. The rise of this new star in the extreme South-East was the most interesting factor in the older picture.

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The new picture as shown in the Ceylon chronicles and in the classical authors (especially those based on the statements in the *Indika* of Megasthenes) show us Magadha triumphant. All the kingdoms, duchies, and clans have lost their independence. Even the great Kosalan dominion has been absorbed. And for the first time in the history there is one paramount authority from Bengal to Afghānistān, and from the Himālayas down to the Vindhya range.

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We shall probably never know how these great changes, and especially the fall of Kosala, were brought about. And we have no information as to the degree in which the various local authorities retained any shadow of power. Were the taxes fixed by the central power and collected by its own officers? Or were the local rates maintained and collected by a local authority? If the latter, were the actual sums received paid over to the central office at Pāṭaliputta, or was a yearly tribute fixed by the paramount power? On these and similar questions we are still quite in the dark. But our two sets of authorities, which are quite independent of one another, agree in the little they do tell us.

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