Indian Antiquary Vol 45

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 15

JANUARY, 1916]
THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF MAGADHA
4. Beginnings of Empire-Bimbisara. The probable patronage of new religions and the expansion of Magadha dominion under the Rajas of Girivraja bore full fruit in the reign of Bimbisâra. He is named Srêniya (guildsman) in the Jaina records, and is designated a Vaisya in the Buddhist Mahavagga 10 Srêniya was a common epithet of the king and not his proper name, as it is used only by the Jainas. He married a Vaisali princess according to both the accounts, though the name of the prinoegs is given differently by the Buddhists and Jainas. The latter name her Chellanå, daughter of Chêtaka, Raja of Vaišali, while the former identify her with Vâsavi, niece of Gôpâla, The Vaisâli marriage is probably significant in this connection, Vaišali was a great commorcial centre, as shown by the clay-seals20 bearing inscriptions recently discovered there. We may naturally infer the expansion of commerce and growth of material prosperity in Magadha.
The Vaisali marriage may have been as much of political as of commercial significance. It was the seat of the Lichohhavi federation, whoso power was so great and so little curbed in the distant isolation of the doab of the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, that we find connection with it giving prominence to the founder of the Gupta dynasty in later times. Bim bisira had in his father-in-law a neighbour and ally, who could secure him immunity from disturbance on the North-Eastern frontier. By a second marriage with a Kosala princess, Bimbiså ra probably sought to disarm enmity in the west and he got a substantial cession of territory as dowry. The latter yielded a lakh a year and was given to the Queen as " bath and perfume money.21” After having strengthened his frontiers and secured allies oast and west, Bim bisâra set seriously to work at completing the conquest of the Auga kingdom, attempted unsuccessfully by his immediate predecessors. This conquest is referred to in the Champeyya Jataka. It says that the Raja of Magadha was helped in this conquest by the Nagaraja of Kampilya 2 in the Panchala country. But the details of the conquest, or the occasion therefor, cannot be made out from the records available to us. All that could be said for certain is that the Magadha kingdom extended eastwards so as to comprise also Anga, e., the modern Bhagalpur and Junger. The expansion of Magadha and its growing importance led Bimbigâra to give up the unpretentious capital of Girivraja and build the stately one of Rajagriha at the base of the hill.23
The religious movements of the time had their culmination in the reign of Bimbisâra. Magadha could not have been free at this time from the influence of the spreading religion of Vasudeva24 among the Sûrasênas in the far west. For there is mention of Baladeva and Vasudeva in the Kamsa Jalaka and of Krishna, son of Devaki, in the Brihadâranyaka Upanishad, where the scene is mostly laid in eastern Hindustan. So too the religion of the Buddhas, or men of revealed learning, had made an impression at that time, the very cousin of Buddha, Devadatta being one of their devout followers.25 To this period, also belongs the establishment of Buddhism, as the result of the systematis&tion of earlier doctrines by Siddhartha Sakya-muni, a contemporary of Bimbisara, The Mahavagga says that the king was once rebuked by the Buddha, and that he assigned the bamboo-garden to the Buddha and his disciples. According to Asvaghosa, 20
19 Mahavagga I, 50.20 Discovered by Dr. Bloch. See Arch. Sur. Rep. Eastern Circle) for 1912. 21 See the Vaddhaki-Sakara Jataka (No. 283) and the Tachchha-Sukara Jataka (No. 492).
The Panchâla kingdom must have existed in Bimbisara's time, as the Purdnas promise its extinction only in Mahapadma's reign. ( MT: Terrora-Matsya P.)
23 See Jacobi : Introduction to Vol. XXII of the S. B. E.
24 Sir R. G. Bhandarkar has shown that the religion of Vasudeva was contemporaneous with the rise of Buddhism and Jainism. It is, referred to in the Niddera, Panini and Patanjali, and in the Indike of Magasthenes. Vai navism, Saiviam and minor Religious Systems (Strassburg, 1913), pp. 3-13.
% On the Adi Buddhas, see Col. Waddell's article in the J. R. A. S., 1914. 25 Buddha-Charita XV, 100