The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c19.s6.1

v1.c19.s6.1

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.