The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c19.s4.18

v1.c19.s4.18

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.