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TRIBES IN ANCIENT INDIA had made. It is said in the Si-yu-ki that in the city of Kaušāmbi, within an old palace, there was a large vihāra about 60 feet high, containing a figure of the Buddha carved out of sandal wood above which was a stone canopy. It was the work of the King U-to-yen-na (Udayana). By its spiritual qualities it produced a divine light, which from time to time shone forth. The princes of various countries had used their power to try to carry off this statue, but although many men tried, none could move it. They therefore worshipped copies of it, and pretended that their likeness was a true one, the original of all such figures. The Petavatthu records the erection of a vihāra by one Uttara, a wood-carver, in the service of King Udayana. The figure was known to have been made for King Udayana by a distinguished artist of the time. But nowhere in the earlier tradition is Udayana mentioned as the builder of any such temple or statue.
Immediately prior to the rise of Buddhism, there were four powerful monarchies in N. India, each of which was enlarged by the annexation of a neighbouring territory. Thus Anga was annexed to Magadha, Kāśi to Kośala, Bharga to Vatsa, and Sūrasena to Avanti. The kingdom of Vatsa must have served as a buffer State between Magadha and Avanti on the one hand, and Kośala and Avanti on the other. Bhāsa in his Svapnavāsavadattā tells us that an upstart named Aruņi ousted Udayana and seized the throne of Vatsa.5
As in earlier days, so during the reign of Asoka in the third century B.C., Kausāmbi stood on the high road connecting Vidisā and Ujjayinī with Benares and Pātaliputra. Asoka appears to have been an overlord of Vatsa, and to have placed its administration in charge of Mahāmātras with their headquarters at Kaušāmbi. Kaušāmbi was probably the place of residence of Asoka's second queen Kāluvāki, and her son Prince Tivala; the edict on her donations was promulgated only at Kauśāmbi.
However that may be, Vatsa was finally absorbed into the Magadhan empire,& probably during the reign of Siśunāga. We may infer from the inscriptions at Pabhosā that in the second century
1 Beal, Records of the Western World, Vol. I, Intro., p. xx. 2 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 235.
3 This Uttara had friendly relations with Mahākaccāvana and various Buddhist Theras, but his mother was a believer in false doctrines, see Paramatthadīpani on the Petavatthu, pp. 140-4; cf. also B. C. Law, The Buddhist Conception of Spirits, and Ed., pp. 89-90.
4 Watters, On Yuan Chwang, I, p. 368. 5 Svapnavāsavadattā, Sukthankar's trsl., p. 64. 6 Bhandarkar, Carmichael Lectures, 1918, pp. 81 and 84.
