Jain Journal 1967 04

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 36

THE VAJJIS—THE CLAN OF
MAHAVIRA
HEMCHANDRA RAYCHAUDHURI
The Vajjis, according to Professor Rhys Davids and Cunningham, included eight confederate clans (atthakula), of whom the Videhans, the Licchavis, the Jnatrkas and the Vajjis proper were the most important. The identity of the remaining clans remains uncertain. It may, however, be noted here that in a passage of the Sutraktānga, the Ugras, the Bhogas, the Aiksvakas and the Kauravas are associated with the Jnatrs and the Licchavis as subjects of the same ruler and members of the same assembly). The Anguttara Nikāya', too, refers to the close connection of the Ugras with Vesali or Vaisali, the capital of the Vajjian confederation.
The Videhans had their capital at Mithila which is identified by some scholars with the small town of Janakpur just within the Nepal border. But a section of them may have settled in Vaisali. To this section possibly belonged the princess Trisala, also called Videhadatta, the mother of Mahavira.
The Licchavis had their capital at Vesali (Vaisali) which has been identified with Besarh (to the east of the Gandak) in the Muzaffarpur district of Bihar. Vesali is probably identical with the charming city called Visala in the Rāmāyaṇa* :
visālām nagarim ramyām divyām svargopamām tada
1 Sacred Books of the East, XLV, 339. Cf. Hoernle, Uvasagadasao, II, p. 139, fn. 304.
149; IV. 208.
3 It is, however, possible that the designation Videhan was also used in a geogra. phical sense to mean all ksatriya families of Videha or North Bihar irrespective of their connection with the royal line of Mithila. It is significant that the Acaranga Sutra (II, 15, n. 17; SBE, XXII, Introduction) places the sannivesa of Kundagrama near Vaisali in Videha.
4 Adi Kanda, 45, 10