Republics in Ancient India, c. 1500 B.C.–500 B.C. c13.s3.22

c13.s3.22

We do not, of course, subscribe to the miraculous death of Viḍūḍabha as described in the sources. Neither may the *argumentum ex silentio* necessarily be applicable to the fact that no allusion to Ajātasattu's attack is made. On the one hand we hear nothing of Viḍūḍabha or his successors from the early Pāli texts, while on the other the late Tibetan tradition records his miraculous death with his minister soon after they had annihilated the Sakyas. We are inclined to suggest that what the Tibetan tradition alludes to is the historical fact of Viḍūḍabha’s death at the hands of Ajātasattu, who probably attacked the greatly weakened Kosalan king after the Kosalan-Sakyan war. It was the Magadhan king who dealt the deathblow to the Kosalan kingdom and consequently incorporated it into the expanding Magadhan empire.