Tribes in Ancient India c32.150

c32.150

Cunningham points out on the authority of Hsüan Tsang that five centuries after Buddha or one century after Kaniṣka, Vikramāditya, king of Śrāvastī, became a persecutor of the Buddhists, and the famous Manorhita, author of the Vibhāsaśāstra, committed suicide after being defeated in argument by the Brāhmaṇas. During the reign of Vikramāditya’s successor, the Brāhmaṇas were overcome by Vasubandhu, the eminent disciple of Manorhita. In the third century A.D., Śrāvastī seems to have been under the rule of its own kings, for we find Khīradhāra and his nephew mentioned as rājās between A.D. 275 and 319. Still later, Śrāvastī was a dependency of the powerful Gupta dynasty of Magadha, as the neighbouring city of Sāketa is especially said to have belonged to the Guptas. From this time Śrāvastī gradually declined.