Story of Nation Buddhist India

SR No.: 035274
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T W Rhys Davids
Publisher: T Fisher Unwin Ltd
Publication Year: 1916
Total Pages: 356
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 88 MB

Page 39

18
BUDDHIST INDIA
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 exploration.' Names of such townships mentioned in the most ancient texts are Cătumā, Sāmagāma, Khomadussa, Silāvatī, Metalupa, Ulumpa, Sakkara, and Devadaha.
It was at the last-inentioned place that the mother of the Buddha was born. And the name of her father is expressly given as Añjana the Sākiyan. 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 Sākiya 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 side.' Allowing six or seven to a family, including the depend. ents, this would make a total of about a million persons in the Sākiya territory. And though the figure is purely traditional, and at best a round
'The old Kapilavastu was probably at Tilaura Kot. But Mr. Peppe's important discoveries at the Sākiya Tope may be on the site of a new Kapilavastu, built after the old city was destroyed hy Vidūdabha (see above, p. 11).
? Apadāna, quoted in Therig. Cy. p. 152. 3 See Dialogues of the Buddha, i. 147, note.