________________ 436 Homage to Vaisali carried his victorious arms to their natural limit, the foot of the mountains, and that from this time the whole country between the Ganges and the Himalayas became subject, more or less directly, to the suzerainty of Magadha. From this time too dates the foundation of Pataliputra (Patna), as the victor erected a fortress at the village of Patali on the Ganges to curb his Licbcbhavi opponents; and the foundations of a city Destling under the shelter of the fortress were laid by his grandson Udaya (cir. 434 B. C.). Jainism At the very dawn then of Indian history we catch glimpses of Muzaffarpur as the home of the powerful Lichchhavi clan, the capital of wbich was the splendid city of Vaisali. Here the religious ferment which so deeply moved the hearts of the dwellers in the Gangetic valley during the sixth century B.C, seems to bave centred and Vaisali is intimately connected with the life and teachings both of Buddha and of Mahavira, the founder of Jainism. Like Buddha. Vardhamana*, surdamed Mahavira, who erected the fabric of the Jain system upon the foundation laid by Parsvanatha, was of high aristocratic descent, as his father Siddhartha was the head of the Nata or Naya clan of Ksbattriyas who were settled in the Kollaga suburb of the flourishing town of Vaisali. Mahavira is consequently occasionally called the Vesaliya or the man of Vaisali, and in the books of the rival order of the Buddhists he is designated she Nataputta, i. e., the son of the Nata clan of Kshattriyas. Vaisali consisted of tbree distinct [14] portions, called Vaisali, Kundagama, and Vaniyagama, which formed in the main the quarters inhabited by the Brabman, Kshattriya and Baniya castes respectively; at the present day it has entirely disappeared, but the sites of its three component parts are still marked by the villages of Basarh, Basukund, and Baniya. While it existed, it had a curious political constitution. It was an oligarchic republic, its government being vested in a Senate, composed of the heads of the resident Kshattriya clans, and presided ever by an officer who had the title of King and was assisted by a Viceroy and a Commander-in-Chief. Siddhartha was married to a daughter of Cbetaka, the then governing King of the republic; and their son Mahavira was born in or about 599 B. C. He was, therefore, a very highly connected personage, which accounts for the fact that, like his rival Buddba, he addressed himself in the earlier years of his ministry chiefly to the members of the aristocracy and to his fellow-castemen, the Jainism and Buddhism, by Dr. Hoerole, Calcutta Review, April 1898.
