Tribes in Ancient India c53.157

c53.157

The Mallas appear to have usually been on friendly terms with their neighbours, the Licchavis, with whom they had many ties of kinship, though, as was inevitable, there were occasional rivalries between the two States, as, for instance, the story of Bandhula, a Mallian general, shows.⁵ Bandhula drove to Vaiśālī, the Licchavi capital, where he arrogantly misused the water of a tank where the members of the king’s families were in the habit of obtaining water for ceremonial purposes. Five hundred Licchavi Rājās set forth to capture Bandhula, but the latter ‘sped a shaft and it cleft the heads of all the chariots and passed right through the five hundred kings,’—who forthwith died in gruesome circumstances.