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Chapter 2 – The Clans and Nations

It is much the same with the clans. We have a good deal of information, which is, however, at the best only fragmentary, about three or four of them. Of the rest we have little more than the bare names.

More details are given, very naturally, of the Sakiya clan than of the others. The general position of their country is intimated by the distances given from other places32. It must have been just on the border of Nepalese and English territory, as is now finally settled by the recent discoveries of the tope or burial-mound put up by the Sakiyas over the portion they retained of the relics from the Buddha’s funeral pyre, and of Asoka’s inscription, in situ, recording his visit to the Lumbini garden in which the Buddha was born33. Which of the numerous ruins in the immediate vicinity

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of these discoveries are those of Kapilavastu, the chief town of the clan, and which are the remains of the other townships belonging to them, will be one of the questions to be solved by future exploration34. Names of such townships mentioned in the most ancient texts are Catuma, Samagama, Khomadussa, Silavati, Metalupa, Ulumpa, Sakkara, and Devadaha.

It was at the last-mentioned place that the mother of the Buddha was born. And the name of her father is expressly given as Anjana the Sakiyan35. When, therefore, we find in much later records the statements that she was of Koliyan family; and that Prince Devadaha, after whom the town was so named, was a Koliyan chief, the explanation may well be that the Koliyans were a sort of subordinate subdivision of the Sakiya clan.

The existence of so considerable a number of market towns implies, in an agricultural community, a rather extensive territory. Buddhaghosa has preserved for us an old tradition that the Buddha had eighty thousand families of relatives on the father’s side and the same on the mother’s side36. Allowing six or seven to a family, including the dependents, this would make a total of about a million persons in the Sakiya territory. And though the figure is purely traditional, and at best a round

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number (and not uninfluenced by the mystic value attached to it), it is, perhaps, not so very far from what we might expect.

The administrative and judicial business of the clan was carried out in public assembly, at which young and old were alike present, in their common Mote Hall (santhagara) at Kapilavastu. It was at such a parliament, or palaver, that King Pasenadi’s proposition (above, p. I) was discussed. When Ambattha goes to Kapilavastu on business, he goes to the Mote Hall where the Sakiyas were then in session37. And it is to the Mote Hall of the Mallas that Ananda goes to announce the death of the Buddha, they being then in session there to consider that very matter38.

A single chief – how, and for what period chosen, we do not know – was elected as office-holder, presiding over the sessions, and, if no sessions were sitting, over the State. He bore the title of raja, which must have meant something like the Roman consul, or the Greek archon. We hear nowhere of such a triumvirate as bore corresponding office among the Licchavis, nor of such acts of kingly sovereignty as are ascribed to the real kings mentioned above. But we hear at one time39 that Bhaddiya, a young cousin of the Buddha’s, was the raja; and in another passage, Suddhodana, the Buddha’s father (who is elsewhere spoken of as a simple citizen, Suddhodana the Sakiyan), is called the raja.

A new Mote Hall, built at Kapilavastu, was

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finished whilst the Buddha was staying at the Nigrodharama (the pleasaunce under the Banyan Grove) in the Great Wood (the Mahavana) nearby. There was a residence there, provided by the community, for recluses of all schools. Gotama was asked to inaugurate the new hall, and he did so by a series of ethical discourses, lasting through the night, delivered by himself, Ananda, and Moggallana. They are preserved for us in full at M. 1. 353, foll., and S. 4. 182, foll.

Besides this Mote Hall at the principal town we hear of others at some of the other towns above referred to. And no doubt all the more important places had such a hall, or pavilion, covered with a roof, but with no walls, in which to conduct their business. And the local affairs of each village were carried on in open assembly of the householders, held in the groves which, then as now, formed so distinctive a feature of each village in the long and level alluvial plain. It was no doubt in this plain, stretching about fifty miles from east to west, and thirty or forty miles to the southward from the foot of Himalaya Hills, that the majority of the clan were resident.

The clan subsisted on the produce of their rice-fields and their cattle. The villages were grouped round the rice-fields, and the cattle wandered through the outlying forest, over which the peasantry, all Sakiyas by birth, had rights of common. There were artisans, probably not Sakiyas, in each village; and men of certain special trades of a higher standing; the carpenters, smiths, and potters for instance, had villages of their own. So also had the brahmins,

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whose services were in request at every domestic event. Khomadussa, for instance, was a brahmin settlement. There were a few shops in the bazaars, but we do not hear of any merchants and bankers such as are mentioned as dwelling at the great capitals of the adjoining kingdoms. The villages were separated one from another by forest jungle, the remains of the Great Wood (the Maha Vana), portions of which are so frequently mentioned as still surviving throughout the clanships, and which must originally (not so very long, probably, before the time under discussion) have stretched over practically the whole level country between the foot of the mountains and the Great River, the Ganges. After the destruction of the clans by the neighbouring monarchies this jungle again spread over the country. From the fourth century onwards, down to our own days, the forest covered over the remains of the ancient civilisation.

This jungle was infested from time to time by robbers, sometimes runaway slaves40. But we hear of no crime, and there was not probably very much, in the villages themselves – each of them a tiny self-governed republic. The Koliyan central authorities were served by a special body of peons, or police, distinguished, as by a kind of uniform, from which they took their name, by a special headdress. These particular men had a bad reputation for extortion and violence41. The Mallas had similar officials42, and it is not improbable that each of the clans had a somewhat similar set of subordinate servants.

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A late tradition tells us how the criminal law was administered in the adjoining powerful confederate clan of the Vajjians, by a succession of regularly, appointed officers, – “Justices, lawyers, rehearsers of the law-maxims, the council of representatives of the eight clans, the general, the vice-consul, and the consul himself.” Each of these could acquit the accused. But if they considered him guilty, each had to refer the case to the next in order above them, the consul finally awarding the penalty according to the Book of Precedents. We hear of no such intermediate officials in the smaller clans; and even among the Vajjians (who, by the by, are all called “rajas” in this passage), it is not likely that so complicated a procedure was actually followed43. But a book of legal precedents is referred to elsewhere44, and (tables of the law also45. It is therefore not improbable that written notes on the subject were actually in use.

The names of other clans, besides the Sakiyas, are:

2. The Bhaggas of Sumsumara Hill.

3. The Buns of Allakappa.

4. Kalamas of Kesaputta.

5. The Koliyas of Rama-gama.

6. The Mallas of Kusinara.

7. The Mallas of Pava.

8. The Moriyas of Pipphalivana.

9. The Videhas of Mithila. = The Vajjians.

10. The Licchavis of Vesali. = The Vajjians.

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There are several other names of tribes of which it is not yet known whether they were clans or under monarchical government. We have only one instance of any tribe, once under a monarchy, reverting to the independent state. And whenever the supreme power in a clan became hereditary, the result seems always to have been an absolute monarchy, without legal limitations of any kind.

The political divisions of India at or shortly before the time when Buddhism arose are well exemplified by the stock list of the Sixteen Great Countries, the Sixteen Powers, which is found in several places in the books46. It is interesting to notice that the names are names, not of countries, but of peoples, as we might say Italians or Turks. This shows that the main idea in the minds of those who drew up, or used, this old list was still tribal and not geographical. The list is as follows:–

1. Anga

2. Magadha

3. Kasi

4. Kosala

5. Vajji

6. Malla

7. Ceti

8. Vamsa

9. Kuru

10. Pancala

11. Maccha

12. Surasena

13. Assaka

14. Avanti

15. Gandhara

16. Kamboja

1. the Angas dwelt in the country to the east of Magadha, having their capital at Champa, near the

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Modern Bhagalpur. Its boundaries are unknown. In the Buddha’s time it was subject to Magadha, and we never hear of its having regained independence. But in former times47 it was independent, and there are traditions of wars between these neighbouring countries. The Anga raja in the Buddha’s time was simply a wealthy nobleman, and we only know of him as the grantor of a pension to a particular brahmin48.

2. The Magadhas, as is well known, occupied the district now called Behar. It was probably then bounded to the north by the Ganges, to the east by the river Champa, on the south by the Vindhya Mountains, and on the west by the river Soria. In the Buddha’s time (that is, inclusive of Anga) it is said to have had eighty thousand villages49 and to have been three hundred leagues (about twenty-three hundred miles) in circumference50.

3. The Kasis are of course the people settled in the district round Benares. In the time of the Buddha this famous old kingdom of the Bharatas had fallen to so low a political level that the revenues of the township had become a bone of contention between Kosala and Magadha, and the kingdom itself was incorporated into Kosala. Its mention in this list is historically important, as we must conclude that the memory of it as an independent state was still fresh in men’s minds. This is confirmed by the very frequent mention of it as such in the Jatakas, where it is said to have been over two

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thousand miles in circuit51. But it never regained independence; and its boundaries are unknown.

4. The Kosalas were the ruling clan in the kingdom whose capital was Savatthi, in what is now Nepal, seventy miles north-west of the modern Gorakhpur. It included Benares and Saketa; and probably had the Ganges for its southern boundary, the Gandhak for its eastern boundary, and the mountains for its northern boundary. The Sakiyas already acknowledged, in the seventh century B.C., the suzerainty of Kosala.

It was the rapid rise of this kingdom of Kosala, and the inevitable struggle in the immediate future between it and Magadha, which was the leading point in the politics of the Buddha’s time. These hardy mountaineers had swept into their net all the tribes between the mountains and the Ganges. Their progress was arrested on the east by the free clans. And the struggle between Kosala and Magadha for the paramount power in all India was, in fact, probably decided when the powerful confederation of the Licchavis became arrayed on the side of Magadha. Several successful invasions of Kasi by the Kosalans under their kings, Vanka, Dabbasena, and Kamsa, are referred to a date before the Buddha’s time. And the final conquest would seem to be ascribed to Kamsa, as the epithet “Conqueror of Benares” is a standing addition to his name52.

5. The Vajjians included eight confederate clans,

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of whom the Licchavis and the Videhans were the most important. It is very interesting to notice that while tradition makes Videha a kingdom in earlier times, it describes it in the Buddha’s time as a republic. Its size, as a separate kingdom, is said to have been three hundred leagues (about twenty-three hundred miles) in circumference53. Its capital, Mithila, was about thirty-five miles north-west from Vesali, the capital of the Licchavis. There it was that the great King Janaka ruled a little while before the rise of Buddhism54. And it is probable that the modern town of Janak-pur preserves in its name a memory of this famous Rajput scholar and philosopher of olden time.

6. The Mallas of Kusinara and Pava were also independent clans, whose territory, if we inay trust the Chinese pilgrims, was on the mountain slopes to the east of the Sakiya land, and to the north of the Vajjian confederation. But some would place it south of the Sakiyas and east of the Vajjians.

7. The Cetis were probably the same tribe as that called Cedi in older documents, and had two distinct settlements. One, probably the older, was in the mountains, in what is now called Nepal55. The other, probably a later colony, was near Kosambi to the east56 and has been even confused with the land of the Varpsa, from which this list makes them distinct57.

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8. Vamsa is the country of the Vacchas, of which Kosambi, properly only the name of the capital, is the more familiar name. It lay immediately to the north of Avanti, and along the banks of the Jumna.

9. The Kurus occupied the country of which Indraprastha, close to the modern Delhi, was the capital; and had the Panchalas to the east, and the Matsyas to the south. Tradition gives the kingdom a circumference of two thousand miles58. They had very little political importance in the Buddha’s time. It was at Kammassa-dhamma in the Kuru country that several of the most important Suttantas – the Maha Satipatthana, for instance, and the Maha Nidana – were delivered. And Ratthapala was a Kuru noble59.

10. The two Paricalas occupied the country to the east of the Kurus, between the mountains and the Ganges. Their capitals were Kampilla and Kanoj.

11. The Macchas, or Matsyas, were to the south of the Kurus and west of the Jumna, which separated them from the Southern Pancalas.

12. The Surasenas, whose capital was Madhura, were immediately south-west of the Macchas, and west of the Jumna.

13. The Assakas had, in the Buddha’s time, a settlement on the banks of the Godhavari60. Their capital was Potana, or Potali61. The country is mentioned with Avanti in the same way as Anga is with Magadha62, and its position on this list, between Surasena and Avanti, makes it probable that, when

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the list was drawn up, its position was immediately north-west of Avanti. In that Case the settlement on the Godhavari was a later colony; and this is confirmed by the fact that there is no mention of Potana (or Potali) there. The name of the tribe is also ambiguous. Sanskrit authors speak both of Arnaka and of Agvaka. Each of these would be Assaka, both in the local vernacular and in Pali. And either there were two distinct tribes so called, or the Sanskrit form Agvaka is a wrong reading, or a blunder in the Sanskritisation of Assaka.

14. Avanti, the capital of which was Ujjeni, was ruled over by King Cana Pajjota (Pajjota the Fierce) referred to above. The country, much of which is rich land, had been colonised or conquered by Aryan tribes who came down the Indus valley, and turned west from the Gulf of Kach. It was called Avanti at least as late as the second century A.D.63, but from the seventh or eighth century onwards it was called Malaya.

15. Gandhara, modern Kandahar, was the district of Eastern Afghanistan, and it probably included the north-west of the Panjab. Its capital was Takkasila. The King of Gandhara in the Buddha’s time, Pukkusati, is said to have sent an embassy and a letter to King Bimbisara of Magadha64.

16. Kamboja was the adjoining country in the extreme north-west, with Dvaraka as its capital.

From the political point of view this list is curious. Some names we should expect to find – Sivi, for instance,

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and Madda and Sovira, and Udyana and Virata – are not there. The Mallas and the Cetis occupy a position much more important than they actually held in the early years of Buddhism. Vesali, soon to become a “Magadha town65,” is still independent. And Anga and Kasi, then incorporated in neighbouring kingdoms, are apparently looked upon as of equal rank with the others. It is evident that this was an old list, corresponding to a state of things existent some time before, and handed on by tradition in the Buddhist schools. But this only adds to its interest and importance.

Geographically also the list is very suggestive. No place south of Avanti (about 23° N.) occurs in it; and it is only at one place that the list goes even so far to the south as that. Not only is the whole of South India and Ceylon ignored in it, but there is also no mention of Orissa, of Bengal east of the Ganges, or even of the Dekkan. The horizon of those who drew up the list is strictly bounded on the north by the Himalayas, and on the south (except at this one point) by the Vindhya range, on the west by the mountains beyond the Indus, and on the east by the Ganges as it turns to the south.

The books in which the list has been preserved have preserved also abundant evidence of a further stage of political movement. And in geographical knowledge they look at things from an advanced point of view. They know a very little farther south at the one point where the old list goes farthest in that direction.

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The expression Dakkhinapatha which occurs in an isolated passage in one of our oldest documents66 cannot indeed possibly mean the whole country comprised in our modern phrase the Dekkan. But it is used, in the very passage in question, as descriptive of a remote settlement or colony on the banks of the upper Godhavari67. The expression does not occur in any one of the Four Nikayas. When it appears again, in a later stage68, it seems still to refer only, in a vague way, to the same limited district, on the banks of the Godhavari. And it is coupled with Avanti, the Avanti of the ancient list.

The expression, in its form, is curious. It means “the Southern Road,” a strange name to apply to any fixed locality. Already in a Vedic hymn69 though it is one of the latest, we hear of a banished man going along the “path of the South.” No doubt at different times different points on that path had been reached. In the Buddha’s time the most southerly town is given (at S. N. 1011) as Patitthana, the place afterwards called Paithana, and Baithana by the Greeks (73° 2´ E. by 21° 42´ N.). And the extreme southerly point reached at all is the hermitage on the Godhavari, about 20° N70.

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One place still farther south may possibly be referred to incidentally as known in the Buddha’s time. A teacher of olden time named Tagarasikhin, is several times mentioned71. Sikhin is otherwise known as a name, and the distinctive epithet Tagara may possibly be local, and mean “of Tagara,” the modern Ter, 76° 12´ E. by 18°, 19´ N72. But the point is very doubtful, the place is not mentioned elsewhere, and I think another explanation of the name is more likely.

Besides this extension in the Dekkan, the Nikayas speak also of sea voyages out of sight of land73 and they mention the Kalinga forest74, and the settlement on the coast there, with its capital Dantapura75. The Vinaya has a probable reference to Bharukaccha76, And the Udana one to Supparaka77. These points, taken together (and no doubt others can be traced), show a marked advance in geographical knowledge. But it is suggestive to notice that the advance is limited, and that there is still no reference whatever either to South India or to Ceylon, which play so great a part in the story of the Ramayana78.

These geographical considerations are of very considerable importance for the history of later

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Vedic and early Sanskrit literature. They go far to confirm Professor Bhandarkar’s recent views as to the wholesale recasting of brahmin literature in the Gupta period. If Apastamba, for instance, as Hofrath Dr. Bühler thought, and Hiranya-Kesin, wrote in the south, below the Godhavari, then they must be later than the books whose evidence we have been considering.

The consideration of this question has been hindered by a generally accepted hypothesis which does not fit the facts. It is supposed that the course of Aryan migration lay along the valleys of the Ganges and the Jumna. It cannot have been so simple. We must postulate at least two other lines of equal importance – one down the Indus, round the Gulf of Cutch, and so up to Avanti; and another along the foot of the mountains from Kashmir, by way of Kosala, to the Sakiya country, and so on through Tirhut to Magadha and Anga. There is a great deal more evidence available, both in literature and in the conclusions to be drawn from language, as to tribal migration in India than has yet been collected or analysed. Mr. Grierson, for instance, has only just recently pointed out the important fact that, even now, the dialects of Rajasthan have a close resemblance to the dialects spoken along the Himalayas not only in Nepal but as far west, at least, as Chamba. This would tend

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to show that their ancestors must have been living close together when they began their wanderings to the east and the south respectively. Both started from the Northern Panjab, and probably neither migration followed the Ganges route79.

These children of hillmen tended to cleave to the hills; and, like mountaineers all the world over, were generally distinguished by a sturdy independence, both in politics and religion. Widely separated, they were always sympathetic; and any forward movement; such as Buddhism, readily found supporters among them.

Another point on which this geographical evidence throws light is the date of the colonisation of Ceylon. That cannot have taken place in any considerable degree before the period in which the Nikayas were composed. We know it had become a well-established fact at the time of Asoka. It must have happened, therefore, between these two dates; and no doubt nearer to the earlier of the two. The Ceylon chronicles, therefore, in dating the first colony in the very year of the Buddha’s death (a wrong synchronism which is the cause of much confusion in their early chronology) must be in error.

It would be of great assistance on several questions if we could form some conclusion as to the number of inhabitants in Northern India in the seventh century, B.C.; though any such conclusion would necessarily be of the vaguest description. To judge from the small numbers of the great cities, and from the wide extent of forest and wilderness,

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mentioned in the books, it cannot have been very large. Perhaps the whole territory may have contained fifteen to twenty millions. In the fourth century, B.C., the confederation formed to oppose, Alexander was able to muster an army of four hundred thousand. And in the third century, B.C., Megasthenes describes the army of Magadha as then consisting, in peace time, of two hundred thousand foot, three hundred elephants, and ten thousand chariots.

The following is a list of the principal cities existing in India in the seventh century B.C.

Ayojjha (from which the Anglo-Indian word Oudh is derived) was a town in Kosala on the river Sarayu. The city owes all its fame to the fact that the author of the Ramayana makes it the capital at the date of the events in his story. It is not even mentioned in the Mahabharata; and was quite unimportant in the Buddha’s time. There is another Ayojjha in the extreme west; and a third is said (wrongly, I think) to have been situate on the Ganges80.

Baranasi (Benares) on the north bank of the Ganges, at the junction between it and the river Barana. The city proper included the land between the Barana and a stream called the Asi, as its name suggests. Its extent, including the suburbs, is often stated to have been, at the time when it was the capital of an independent kingdom (that is, some

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time before the rise of Buddhism) twelve leagues, or about eighty-five miles. Seeing that Megasthenes gives the circuit of the walls of Pataliputta, where he himself lived, as 220 stadia (or about twenty-five miles), this tradition as to the size of the city, or rather county, Benares at the height of its prosperity seems by no means devoid of credit. Its Town Hall was then no longer used as a parliament chamber for the transaction of public business. Public discussions on religious and philosophical questions were carried on in it81.

Champa, on the river of the same name, was the ancient capital of Anga. Its site has been identified by Cunningham with the modern villages of similar names twenty-four miles east of Bhagalpur; and is stated to have been sixty leagues from Mithila82. It was celebrated for its beautiful lake, named after Queen Gaggara, who had had it excavated. On its banks was a grove of Champaka trees, well known for the fragrant odour of their beautiful white flowers. And there, in the Buddha’s time, wandering teachers were wont to lodge83. The Indian colonists in Cochin China named one of the most important of their settlements after this famous old town84. And the Champa in Anga was again, in its turn, so named after the still older Champa in Kashmir.

Kampilla, the capital of the Northern Pancalas. It was on the northern bank of the Ganges, about long. 79° W., but its exact site has not yet been decided with certainty.

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Kosambi, the capital of the Vatsas or Vamsas85. It was on the Jumna, and thirty leagues, say 230 miles, by river from Benares86. It was the most important entrepôt for both goods and passengers coming to Kosala and Magadha from the south and west87. In the Sutta Nipata (1010–1013) the whole route is given from a place south of Ujjen, through Kosambi to Kusinara, with the stopping-places on the way. The route from Kosambi to Rajagaha was down the river88. In the Buddha’s time there were already four distinct establishments of his Order in the suburbs of Kosambi – the Badarika, Kukkuta, and Ghosita Parks, and the Mango Grove of Pavariya89. The Buddha was often there, at one or other of these residences; and many of his discourses there have been handed down in the books.

Madhura, on the Jumna, the capital of the Surasenas. It is tempting to identify it with the site of the modern Mathura, in spite of the difference in spelling. Very ancient remains have been found there. The king of Madhura in the Buddha’s time bore the title of Avanti-putto90, and was therefore related to the royal family at Ujjeni. Madhura was visited by the Buddha91, and was the residence of Maha Kaccana92, one of his most influential disciples, to whom tradition attributes the first grammatical treatment of the Pali language, and after whom the oldest Pali grammar is accordingly named. As Madhura

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is mentioned in the Milinda (331) as one of the most famous places in India, whereas in the Buddha’s time it is barely mentioned, the time of its greatest growth must have been between these dates. It was sufficiently famous for the other Madhura, in Tinnevelly, first mentioned in the Mahavansa93, to be named after it. A third Madhura, in the extreme north, is mentioned at Jat. 4. 79, and Peta Vatthu Vannana, 111.

Mithila, the capital of Videha, and the capital therefore of the kings Janaka and Makhadeva, was in the district now called Tirhut. Its size is frequently given as seven leagues, about fifty miles, in circumference94.

Rajagaha, the capital of Magadha, the modern Rajgir. There were two distinct towns; the older one, a hill fortress, more properly Giribbaja, was very ancient, and is said to have been laid out by Maha Govinda the architect95. The later town, at the foot of the hills, was built by Bimbisara, the contemporary of the Buddha, and is Rajagaha proper. It was at the height of its prosperity during, and immediately after, the Buddha’s time. But it was abandoned by Sisunaga, who transferred the capital to Vesali; his son Kalasoka transferring it to Pataliputta, near the site of the modern Patna96. The fortifications of both Giribbaja and Rajagaha are still extant, 4½ and 3 miles respectively in circumference; the most southerly point of the walls of

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Giribbaja, the “Mountain Stronghold,” being one mile north of the most northerly point of the walls of the new town of Rajagaha, the “King’s House.” The stone walls of Giribbaja are the oldest extant stone buildings in India.

Roruka, or in later times Roruva, the capital of Sovira, from which the modern name Surat is derived, was an important centre of the coasting trade97. Caravans arrived there from all parts of India, even from Magadha98. As Ophir is spelt by Josephus and in the Septuagint Sophir, and the names of the ivory, apes, and peacocks imported thence into Palestine are Indian names, it is not improbable that Roruka was the seaport to which the authors of the Hebrew chronicles supposed that Solomon’s vessels had traded. For though the more precise naive of the port was Roruka, we know from such expressions as that used in the Milinda, p. 29, that the Indians talked about sailing to Sovira. The exact site has not yet been rediscovered, but it was almost certainly on the Gulf of Kach, somewhere near the modern Kharragoa. When its prosperity declined, its place was taken by Bharukaccha, the modern Bharoch, or by Supparaka, both on the opposite, the southern, side of the Kathiawad peninsula.

Sagala. There were three cities of this name. But the two in the far East99 were doubtless named (even if the readings in the MSS. are correct, and I doubt them in both cases) after the famous Sagala

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in the extreme north-west, which offered so brave a resistance to Alexander, and where King Milinda afterwards reigned. It lay about 32° N. by 74° E., and was the capital of the Maddas. Cunningham thought he had found the ruins of it; but no excavations have been carried out, and the exact site is still therefore uncertain.

Saketa, the site of which has been identified with the ruins, as yet unexplored, at Sujan Kot, on the Sai River, in the Unao district of the modern province of Audh100. In ancient times it was an important city in Kosala, and sometimes the capital101. In the Buddha’s time the capital was Savatthi. Saketa is often supposed to be the same as Ayojjha (Oudh)102, but both cities are mentioned as existing in the Buddha’s time. They were possibly adjoining, like London and Westminster. But it is Saketa, and not Ayojjha, that is called one of the six great cities of India103. The Anjana Wood nearby Saketa is the place at which many of the Buddhist Suttas are said to have been spoken. The distance from Saketa northwards to Savatthi was six leagues, about forty-five miles104, and could be covered in one day with seven relays of horses105. But there was a broad river on the way, only to be crossed by ferry; and there are constant references to the dangers of the journey on foot.

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Savatthi, or Sravasti, was the capital of Northern Kosala, the residence of King Pasenadi, and one of the six great cities in India during the lifetime of the Buddha. Archaeologists differ as to its position; and the decision of this vexed point is one of the first importance for the early history of India, as there must be many inscriptions there. It was six leagues north of Saketa106, forty-five leagues north-west of Rajagaha107, more than one hundred north-east of Supparaka108, thirty leagues from Sankassa109, and on the bank of the Achiravati110.

Ujjeni, the capital of Avanti, the Greek Ozene, about 77° E. and 23° N. There Kaccana, one of the leading disciples of the Buddha, and also Asoka’s son Mahinda, the famous apostle to Ceylon, were born. In later times there was a famous monastery there called the Southern Mount; and in earlier times the capital had been Mahissati111. Vedisa, where the famous Bhilsa Topes were lately found, and Erakaccha, another well-known site, were in the vicinity. Vedisa was fifty leagues from Pataliputta112.

Vesali. This was the capital of the Licchavi clan, already closely related by marriage to the kings of Magadha, and the ancestors of the kings of Nepal, of the Mauryas, and of the dynasty of the Guptas. It was the headquarters of the powerful Vajjian confederacy,

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afterwards defeated, but not broken up, by Ajatasattu. It was the only great city in all the territories of the free clans who formed so important a factor in the social and political life of the sixth century B.C. It must have been a great and flourishing place. But though different guesses have been made as to its site, no one of them has yet been proved to be true by excavation. It was somewhere in Tirhut; and just three leagues, or, say, twenty-five miles, north of the Ganges, reckoned from a spot on the bank of that-river, five leagues, say thirty-eight miles, from Rajagaha113. Behind it lay the Great Forest, the Mahayana, which stretched northwards to the Himalayas. In that wood a hermitage had been built by the community for the Buddha, and there many of his discourses were delivered. And in an adjoining suburb, the founder of the Jains, who was closely related to some of the leading chiefs, was born. We hear of its three walls114, each of them a gavuta, a cow’s call, distant from the next115; and of the 7707 rajas, that is Licchavi chiefs, who dwelt there116; and of the sacred pool in which they received their consecration117. There were many shrines of pre-Buddhistic worship in and around the city, and the discovery and excavation of the site is most desirable.

The same may indeed be said of all these ancient cities. Not one of them has been properly excavated. The archaeology of India is, at present, an almost unworked field.

Footnotes

32. 60 yojanas = 450 miles, from Rajagaha; 50 yojanas = 375 miles, from Vesali; 6 or 7 yojanas = 50 or 60 miles, from Savatthi; and so on. Compare the passages quoted in Rh. D., Ancient Coins and Measures of Ceylon, p. 16.

33. J.R.A.S. 1897, 618, and 1898, 588.

34. The old Kapilavastu was probably at Tilaura Kot. But Mr. Peppé’s important discoveries at the Sakiya Tope may be on the site of a new Kapilavastu, built after the old city was destroyed by Vidudabha (see above, p. 11).

35. Apadana, quoted in Therig. Cy. p. 152.

36. See Dialogues of the Buddha, i. 147, note.

37. Ambattha Suttanta, translated in my Dialogues of the Buddha, i. 113.

38. M.P.S. 6. 23.

39. Vin. 2. 181.

40. Vin. 4. 81.

41. S. 4. 341.

42. D. 2. 159, 161.

43. James Alwis, Introduction to Pali Grammar, p. 99; and Geo. Turnour, J.B.A.S. vii. 991.

44. Jat. 3. 292.

45. Jat. 5. 125.

46. E.g., Anguttara, 1 213; 4. 252, 256, 260; Vinaya Texts, 2. 146.

47. J.v. 316, vi. 271.

48. M. 2. 163.

49. Vin. 1. 179.

50. Sum. 148

51. Jat. 4. 442, 5. 41.

52. Vin. 1. 342; Jat. 1. 262, 2, 403, 3. 13, 168, 211, 5. 112.

53. Jat. 3. 365, 4. 316.

54. Satap. Brah. xi. 6. 2, I, etc.; Jat. 6. 3o-68, etc.

55. Jat. 5. 514, 518.

56. Vin. 1. 108; Jat. I. 360; Divy. 184–191.

57. Baden-Powell in the J.R.A.S., 1898, p. 321.

58. Jat. 5. 57, 484.

59. M. 2. 55.

60. S. N. 977.

61. Jat. 3. 3; D. 2. 235

62. Jat. 5. 319.

63. See Rudradaman’s Inscription at Junagadh.

64. Alwis, Introduction, etc., p. 73.

65. Sutta Nipata, 1013.

66. Sutta Nipata, 976.

67. The spelling of the word Alakassa, the name of this remote settlement, is doubtful. See verse 997. Spence Hardy’s Manual, p. 334, confirms the various reading Mulakassa.

68. Vin. 1. 195, 196; 2. 298.

69. Rig Veda, x. 61. 8.

70. There was an older and more famous Patitthana, also a ferry, more generally known as Payaga, on the site of the Allahabad of today. Perhaps this more southern one was named after it.

71. M. 3. 69; S. 1. 92; Ud. 5. 3; Jat. 3. 299.

72. See Mr. Fleet’s article in the J.R.A.S., 1901, p. 542; and compare Burgess, Cave Temples of India, p. 248.

73. D. 1. 222; A. 3. 368; compare Jat. 3. 267

74. M. 1. 378.

75. D. 19. 36

76. 6 Vin. 3. 39.

77. 7 Ud. 1. 10.

78. We must accept Professor Jacobi’s happy suggestion as to the mythological basis of the latter part of the Ramayana. Valmiki, in transplanting the ancient myth of the atmospheric battles from the heavens to the earth, in turning the deities of the ancient poetry into human heroes, in raising up to the level of those heroes the local deities of agriculture, naturally chose as the district where he localises so revolutionary a story a land, Lanka, with all the charm of mystery. Mystery involves knowledge, but not too much knowledge.

79. J.R.A.S., 1901, p. 808.

80. See Jat. 4. 82: Samyutta 3. 140, 4, 179 (but the reading must be corrected).

81. Jat. 4. 74

82. Jat. 6. 32

83. Dialogues of the Buddha, 1. 144.

84. I-Tsing’s Travels, p. 58.

85. Jat. 4. 25; 6. 236

86. Com. on Anguttara, 1. 25

87. Vinaya Texts, 2. 189; 3. 67, 224, 233

88. Vinaya Texts, 3. 382

89. Vin 4. 16; Sum. 319.

90. M. 2. 83.

91. A. 2. 57.

92. M. 2. 83.

93. Turnour’s edition, p. 51.

94. Jat. 3. 365; 4. 315; 6. 246, etc,

95. Vimana Vatthu Commentary, p. 82. But compare Digha, xix. 36.

96. Bigandet, 2. 115.

97. Digha, xix. 36; Jat. 3. 470.

98. Vimana, V. A. 370; Divy. 544.

99. Jat. 5. 337, and Com, on Theri Gatha, p. 127.

100. Führer, Monumental Antiquities of N.W. Provinces and Oudh, p. 275.

101. Mahavastu, 1. 348; Jat. 3. 270.

102. E.g. Cunningham’s Ancient Geography, p. 405.

103. Rh. D., Buddhist Suttas, p. 99.

104. Vinaya Texts, 2. 147.

105. Majjhima, 1. 149.

106. Vinaya Texts, 2.:47.

107. Rh. D., Buddhist Birth Stories, p. 130.

108. Divyavadana, 43.

109. Jataka, 4. 265.

110. Vinaya Texts, 2. 24, 222.

111. Digha, xix. 36.

112. Maha Bodhi Vamsa, 98.

113. Dhammapala on S.N., 2. 1.

114. Jataka, 1. 389.

115. Ib. 1. 504.

116. Ib. 1. 504, 3. 1.

117. Ib. 4. 148.

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