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THE MAGADHAS
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Bimbisāra is said to have built the new Rājagrha, the outer town to the north of the ring of hills encircling the ancient fort. We shall return later to the history of Rājagrha.
King Bimbisāra annexed Anga to his kingdom. Anga was a small kingdom to the east, corresponding to the modern district of Bhagalpur and probably including Monghyr.1 The Jātaka stories contain several references to Anga both as an independent kingdom and as a vassal of Magadha. It is stated in one Jātaka story that at one time the king of Benares conquered Anga and Magadha, 2 and in another that the Magadhan kingdom once came under the suzerainty of Anga.3 The Campeyya Jātaka records a fight between the two neighbouring countries of Anga and Magadha. The river Campā flowed between Anga and Magadha, and a Nāga king named Campeyya used to live in that river. From time to time Anga and Magadha were engaged in battle. Once the Magadhan king was defeated and pursued by the army of Anga, but he escaped by jumping into the river Campā. Again, with the help of the Nāga king, he defeated the king of Anga, recovered his lost kingdom, and conquered Anga as well. He became intimately associated with the Anga king and used to make offerings to him on the bank of the river Campā every year with great pomp.4
While this story is evidently fanciful, the Mahāvagga 5 offers reasonable evidence to prove that Anga came under Bimbisāra's sway, while the Sonadanda Suttanta of the Dīgha Nikāya, by mentioning the bestowal of Campā, the capital of Arga, as a royal fief on the Brahman Sonadaņda, indirectly proves the same. The Jaina works? tell us that a Magadhan prince governed Anga as a separate province with Campā as its capital. During Bimbisāra's lifetime, his son Ajātaśatru acted as Viceroy at Campā.
The annexation of Anga was the turning point in the history of Magadha. As V. A. Smith says, it marked 'the first step taken by the kingdom of Magadha in its advance to greatness and the position
1 Smith, Early History of India, 4th Ed., p. 32. 2 Jataka (Fausböll), V, 316.
3 Ibid., VI, 272. See also Ray Chaudhuri, Political History of Ancient India, 4th Ed., p. 91.
4 Jātaka (Fausböll), IV, pp. 454-5. In the Mahāvastu (I, pp. 288ff.) a story is narrated of how once Rājagrha was suffering from a very severe pestilence. The king sent to the king of Anga for a bull with supernatural powers, owing to which the Anga kingdom was prosperous and healthy. This bull was lent by the king of Anga, and when it was brought within the boundary limits of the Magadhan capital, all pestilences due to attack by superhuman beings vanished. 5 S.B.E., XVII, p. I.
6 Dīgha Nikāya, I, pp. IIIff. 7 Hemchandra, Sthavīrāvalī-charita; cf. the Bhagavati Sūtra and the Nirayāvali Stra.
