Lord Mahavira

Author(s): Bool Chand
Publisher: Jain Cultural Research Society

Page 20

1.12) (1) Anga, covering possibly the Patna and Monghyr districts, (2) Magadha, covering the. Patna and Gaya (3) Kasi, covering Benares, Ghazipur and Mirzapur districts, (4) Vajji, covering Muzaffarpur, Saran and Champaran districts of north Behar, (5) Kosala, possibly covering the Lucknow and Fyzabad districts, (6) Mala, possibly covering the Gorakhpur district, CO Vamsa (or CH ), covering the modern Allahabad and Banda districts, (8) Cheti, possibly the present Canwpore and Unao districts, (9) Panchala, which may be identified with modern Rohilkhand, (10) Kuru, covering the Aligarh, Meerut, Delhi and Karnal districts, (11) Matsya, possibly covering the present Gurgaon district along with portions of Alwar and Jaipur states, (12) Surasena, possibly covering the Muttra district and portions of Bharatpore and Jaipur, states, (13) Asuraka, on the Godaveri, (14) Avanti, which seems to be just another name for Malwa, (15) Gandhara, presumably covering the north-west districts of the Punjab as far as Peshawar and adjoining districts, and (16) Kamboja, which may possibly be identified with the modern districts of Kabul and Jalalabad. These sixteen names are given in several places in the Buddhist text; Anguttara-Nikaya and partially repeated in the Samskrit work Mahavastıl. The Jain text Bhagawati, which also enumerates sixteen names, described the delimitation of states at a somewhat later period ; the geographical margins of the States mentioned there is much wider.
Among these states four seem to have been particularly powerful Kosala with its capital at Sravasti, Avanti with its capital at Ujjaini, Vamsa (or Vatsa) with its capital at Kausambhi, and Magadha with its capital at Rajgriha; and the period was marked by per- ' petual military contests between them. Ultimately Magadha, under its king Bimbisara (or Srenika), rose to the position of paramountcy. It is possible that the big states included certain more or less autonomous clan: or tribal areas, which enjoyed a form of