Dictionary of Pali Proper Names v1.c12.3397

v1.c12.3397

Koliyā, Koliyā.—One of the republican clans in the time of the Buddha. The Koliyā owned two chief settlements—one at Rāmagāma and the other at Devadaha. The Commentaries¹ contain accounts of the origin of the Koliyas. We are told that a king of Benares, named Rāma,² suffered from leprosy, and being detested by the women of the court, he left the kingdom to his eldest son and retired into the forest. There, living on woodland leaves and fruits, he soon recovered, and, while wandering about, came across Piyā, the eldest of the five daughters of Okkāka, she herself being afflicted with leprosy. Rāma, having cured her, married her, and they begot thirty-two sons. With the help of the king of Benares, they built a town in the forest, removing a big kola-tree in doing so. The city thereupon came to be called Kolanagara, and because the site was discovered on a tiger-track (vyagghapatha) it was also called Vyagghapajjā. The descendants of the king were known as Koliyā. According to the Kuṇālā Jātaka,³ when the Sākyans wished to abuse the Koliyans, they said that the Koliyans had once "lived like animals in a Kola-tree," as their name signified. The territories of the Sākyans and the Koliyans were adjacent, separated by the river Rohiṇī. The khattiyas of both tribes intermarried,⁴ and both claimed relationship with the Buddha. A quarrel once arose between the two tribes regarding the right to the waters of the Rohiṇī, which irrigated the land on both sides, and a bloody feud was averted only by the intervention of the Buddha. In gratitude, each tribe dedicated some of its young men to the membership of the Order, and during the Buddha's stay in the neighbourhood, he lived alternately in Kapilavatthu and in Koliyanagara.⁵