Republics in Ancient India, c. 1500 B.C.–500 B.C. c10.s3.43

c10.s3.43

It is clear from the *Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa*, that the river Sadānīrā formed the western boundary of Videha and separated it from Kosala, but there is no absolute certainty about the identification of the river.³ However, most scholars now believe that it was the Gaṇḍak.⁴ The same text⁵ gives us other boundaries, the Kauśiki (Kosi) to the east, the Ganges to the south and the Himālayas to the north.⁶ This boundary seems only an approximation and it seems to refer to what was the Videhan kingdom before the establishment of the republic. During or just before the lifetime of the Buddha it ceased to be a kingdom and became a part of the Vajjian Confederacy.⁷ As we have seen, it was the territory of the republican Licchavis which lay along the northern bank of the Ganges, while the Videhan republic lay further north, along the foothills of the Himālayas or what is now the Nepalese Terāi. The eastern and western boundaries of the Videhan territory were probably the same even during its republican period. But the Kosalan kingdom no longer bordered on its west and the Mallas appear to have occupied the tract along the Sadānīrā.⁸