History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c12.s6.63

c12.s6.63

There are two difficulties at least in the acceptance of the above theory. The first is a statement in the *Kalpa Sūtra* to the effect that the kings of the Licchavis instituted a festival in memory of Mahāvīra’s *nirvāṇa*.¹ This implies that they were still influential at the time of his death, and could not then have been completely overthrown by Ajātasattu-Kūṇiya. Yet the latter is said to have threatened to root out, destroy, and utterly ruin the Vajjis.² We must assume that Ajātasattu did not carry out his threats, but that the chiefs of the Vajjis were merely reduced to subordination, and allowed a degree of local autonomy. The marriage of Candra Gupta I to the Licchavi princess Kumāradevī,³ and the rise of a Licchavi dynasty in Nepal,⁴ indicate that the chief clan of the Vajjian Confederacy retained its individuality for some eight hundred years after the war with Ajātasattu.