Bimbisara
The most remarkable king of the Haryanka line was Srenika or Bimbisara, who was anointed king by his father while yet a boy of fifteen. The event took place, according to Ceylonese tradition, sixty years before the Parinirvana, or the death of the Buddha. The Parinirvana happened in 544 BC. according to a Ceylonese reckoning and in 486 B.C. according to a Cantonese tradition Of A.D. 489. The date 544 B.C. can, however, hardly be reconciled with a statement in the Ceylonese Chronicles that Asoka Maurya, who is known to have flourished in the third century B.C., was consecrated two hundred and eighteen years after the Buddha had passed into Nirvana. This fact and certain Chinese and Chola synchronisms led Geiger and a few other scholars to think that the era of 544 B.C. is a comparatively modern fabrication and that the true date of the death of the Buddha is 483 B.C.-a result closely approaching that to which the Cantonese tradition leads us.
The Chinese account of embassies which King Meghavarna sent to Samudra Gupta and King Kia-che (Kassapa) sent to China in A.D. 527 also speaks in favour of the date 486 B.C. or 483 B.C. for the Parinirvana. Geiger’s date, however, is not explicitly recognised by tradition. The Cantonese date, therefore, may be accepted as a working hypothesis for the Asokan and pre-Asokan periods. The date of Bimbisara’s accession, according to this reckoning, would fall about 545 B.C.
From the first, Bimbisara pursued a policy of expansion. He possessed certain advantages denied to many of his contemporaries. He was the ruler of a compact kingdom protected on all sides by mountains and rivers. His capital, Girivraja, was enclosed by five hills. It was also girded with stone walls which are among the oldest extant stone structures in India. The soil of the country was rich, yielding luxuriant crops. It was made richer by the gold-bearing stream, the Hiranyavaha or the Sona, which unites with the Ganges near Patna. The people profited by the trade that passed along the Ganges, or followed the land-route through the city of Gaya. In his war-elephants the eastern monarch had a fighting machine which could be used with terrible effect against his western neighbours.
The most notable achievement of Bimbisara was the annexation of the neighbouring kingdom of Anga or East Bihar, which had its capital at Champa near Bhagalpur. He also entered into matrimonial alliances with the ruling families of Kosala and Vaisali. His Kosalan wife brought a Kasi village yielding a large revenue. The Vaisali marriage ultimately paved the way for the expansion of Magadha northward to the borders of Nepal. Bimbisara organised an efficient system of administration. He is also credited by a Chinese pilgrim with having built a new city at the foot of the hills lying to the north of Girivraja, which he named Raj agriha, or the king’s house, the modern Rajgir in the Patna district. Under him Magadha became a flourishing kingdom which attracted the most enlightened men of the age. Both Vardhamana Mahavira, the last apostle of the Jainas, and Gautama Buddha, the great Master of the Buddhists, preached their doctrines during the reign of Bimbisira. Tradition affirms that in his old age the king was murdered by his son Ajatasatru.
Ajatasatru
Ajatasatru, also known as Kunika, soon found that his throne was not a bed of roses. Prasenajit of Kosala, brother of the queen-dowager, who had died of grief, resolved to avenge himself on the parricide. The republican tribes on the northern and northwestern borders of Magadha were restive and entered into a league with the enemies of Ajatasatu in Kasi- Kosala. The Magadhan king had thus to face the hostility not only of the ruler of Sravasti but also of the Vrijis of Vaisali and the Mallas of Kusinagara (Kasia in Gorakhpur) and Pava (probably Padraona on the Gandak river). To repel the Vrijis, Magadhan statesmen fortified the village of Pataligrama which stood near the confluence of the Ganges and the Sona. Thus was founded the famous fortress which, within a generation, developed into the stately city of Pataliputra, the metropolis of India for well-nigh four centuries.
Thanks to his own tenacity and the Machiavellian policy of his ministers, Ajatasatru succeeded in defeating all his adversaries. The Vriji territory was annexed to the kingdom of Magadha. Kosala was humbled but not crushed, and, at a slightly later period, we hear of a Kosalan king, a son of Prasenajit, powerful enough to perpetrate a massacre of the Sakyas. Prasenajit himself had to renounce his claim to the Kasi village which had hitherto formed a bone of contention, and give his Magadhan antagonist his daughter in marriage. In religious tradition Ajatasatru is remembered as a patron of Devadatta, the schismatic cousin of the Buddha, and also as a friend of both the Jainas and the Buddhists. Both Mahavira and the Buddha are said to have died early in his reign. After the death of the latter, a Buddhist Council was held at Rajagriha which took disciplinary measures against certain prominent members of the Church and compiled the holy scriptures.
Successors of Ajatasatru
According to the Puranas, the immediate successor of Ajatasatru was Darsaka, after whom came his son Udayi. The name of Darsaka occurs also in a play named Svapna-Vasavadatta, attributed to Bhasa, which represents him as a brother-in-law and contemporary of Udayana, king of Kausambi. But Buddhist and Jain writers agree in asserting that Udayi was the son of Ajatasatru and also his successor. A Naga-dasaka is placed by the former at the end of the list of kings of Bimbisara’s line, and this ruler is identified by some with the Darsaka of the Puranas. In view of the antiquity of the Buddhist tradition, it is difficult to accept the Puranic statement about Udayi’s relationship with Darsaka and Ajatasatru as correct.
Udayi had probably to fight with the king of Avanti, but the most notable event of his reign was the foundation of the city of Kusumapura or Pataliputra nestling under the shelter of the fortress erected by the ministers of Ajatasatu.
The history of Magadha after Udayi is obscure. The Puranic Chronicles place immediately after him two kings named Nandivardhana and Mahanandin, the last of whom is said to have had a son, by a Sudra woman, named Mahapadma or Mahapadmapati Nanda, with whom began a line of Sudra or semi-Sudra kings. Buddhist writers, on the other hand, insert thirteen additional names between Udayi and Nandivardhana. They omit and mention in his place a prince named Panchamaka. According to the Buddhist account, Udayi was followed by Anuruddha, Munda, and Nagadasaka, all parricides, of whom the last was banished by the indignant citizens, who met together and anointed as their king a worthy minister known by the name of Sisunaga (Susunaga). Sisunaga was succeeded by his son Kalasoka, after whom came his sons, ten in number, of whom the ninth was Nandivardhana and the tenth Panchamaka. One Buddhist work, the Asokavadana, mentions Kakavarnin, instead of Kalasoka, amount the successors of Munda.
The most important divergence between the Buddhist and Puranic accounts is in regard to the place assigned to Sisunaga and Kakavarnin (Kakavarna) in the dynastic lists. While Buddhist writers place them long, after Bimbisira, Ajatasatru and even Udayi, and represent them as belonging to a different family, the Puranas make them head the whole list and actually refer to them as ancestors of Bimbisara and Ajatasatru. There is, however, one detail in the Puranic account which throws doubt on the credibility of the tradition it transmits, and tends to confirm the Buddhist evidence. After mentioning the successors of Pradyota, king of Avanti, whom we know to be a contemporary of Bimbisara and Ajatasatru, the Puranas say : “Sisunaga will destroy all their prestige and will be king.” This clear assertion undoubtedly supports the view that Sisunaga came long after Bimbisara and Ajatasatru, and carried on their forward policy by the absorption of the powerful kingdom of Avanti (Malwa).
Sisunaga’s successor, Kalasoka or Kakavarnin, seems to have been a ruler of some consequence. He transferred his royal residence permanently from Girivraja to Patalipurta , though Vaisali was occasionally graced by the presence of the sovereign. It was in this last city that the second great Council of the Buddhists is said to have been held in the tenth year of the king’s reign when, a century had gone by since the Parinirvana of the Buddha. The Assembly settled some disputed points of discipline and condemned the action of certain Vrijian monks who tried to introduce a relaxation of the rules. The end of Kakavarna was tragic. Tradition affirms that he had a dagger thrust into his throat in the vicinity of a city which may have been Pataliputra, Vaisali or some other important city in the empire. His sons were probably young and inexperienced and soon made room for a man of sterner stuff.