Hindu Polity: A Constitutional History of India in Hindu Times c14.69

c14.69

§ 51. The Videhas and the Lichchhavis were, according to Buddhist documents, united in a league and they were together called the Saṃvajjis (lit., 'the Vajjians *together*').⁶ The two Vajji republics, however, were not confined to their own federation. The Lichchhavis once had formed a federation with their neighbours, the Mallas, according to a Jaina Sūtra.¹ The confederacy existed in the year when the Mahāvīra died (c. 545² or 527 B.C.). The Federal Council was composed of eighteen members, nine ‘Lēchchhakis’ and nine ‘Mallakis’.³ The members of the Federal Council are designated ‘Gaṇa Rājās.’ Probably it was to a federal council of this class that the technical term Rājaka of Amarasimha (§§25, 47) originally applied. These ‘eighteen confederate kings’ as Dr. Jacobi makes them, are placed by the Jaina Sūtra, in the Kāśī-Kosala area. At the time of the death of the Mahāvīra, the empire of Kosala was called the Kāśī-Kosala.⁴ The Jaina Sūtra is much younger in date than the Pāli Canon, and if the Jaina book has not made a mistake in its location, its description would imply that the Federal Council was in some sort of political alliance with the Kosalan monarchy, for there is no evidence of a Kosalan suzerainty. The republics were certainly on bad terms with Magadha, and Magadha was the deadly rival of Kosala; according to the Aṭṭha-kathā, the Vaiśālians lost one great battle with Ajātaśatru, Emperor of Magadha. The leagues naturally were formed to oppose the great powers between whom they were situated.