MAGADHA

MAGADHA One of sixteen major states (mahajanapadas, or "great tribal regions") in North India, stretching from Bengal to the North-West Frontier province between about 770 and 450 b.c., Magadha was one of the two most powerful. (The other was Kosala, the site of Ayodhya and Kashi and adjacent to the Buddha's home, Kapilavastu.) With its capital at Rajagriha (the King's House), a city surrounded by five hills that formed a natural defense, Magadha's prosperity depended on its fertile land, favoring the cultivation of rice, its forests, which provided timber and elephants, the mineral resources of the Barabar Hills, especially iron ore and copper, and control of the eastern Gangetic trade through its command of the trade on the river Ganges. Attacking east and south, Magadha incorporated its Bengali neighbor Anga, thereby controlling the ports in Bengal and trade from the east coast. Its most renowned rulers were Bimbisara (c. 555–493 b.c.) and his son Ajatasatru (c. 459 b.c.), who murdered his father to ascend the throne. Bimbisara was the great patron of the Buddha (c. 563–483 b.c.), who won him over, according to the Pali canon, by preventing a Brahman priest from sacrificing fifty of the king's goats. Another Buddhist text talks of Ajatasatru visiting the Buddha. If Buddhism and Jainism owe their creation and survival to the business classes—the Jain leader Vardhamana Mahavira (c. 540–468 b.c.) was also born and taught in the area—then Magadha is one of the most important sites in history.

Bimbisara adopted the catapult and the chariot, enabling him to dominate the region militarily. He also formed marriage alliances with neighboring states, including a marriage into the Kosala royal family. Bimbisara started a land revenue collection system, which his successors expanded. Each village headman (gramani) was responsible for collecting taxes, which were handed over to a set of officials responsible for their transport to Rajagriha. Wasteland, which came to be considered the property of the king, was cleared in the forest, further expanding revenue. The king's customary share was reflected in the term for the monarch, shadbhagin (one-sixth). Ajatasatru continued his father's policies but also founded the city of Pataligrama (later Pataliputra, then Patna) on the south bank of the Ganges, where it became an important source of revenue as it controlled the river trade.

After the death of Ajatasatru a number of ineffectual kings ruled over Magadha, and Sisunaga founded a new dynasty which in turn was ousted by the Nandas, whose vast armies may have caused Alexander the Great's Greek army to mutiny and to refuse to march farther east than the Punjab. Maghada, with its capital at Pataliputra, was also the site of the great Mauryan dynasty (4^th–2^nd century circa b.c.), and the state once again dominated all of North India and a great deal of the south as well. It declined in the early centuries a.d. but rose again under the Guptan dynasty in the fourth century. It was finally destroyed by Muslim invaders in the twelfth century but was refounded in 1541.

Roger D. Long

See alsoAlexander the Great ; Bimbisara ; Buddhism in Ancient India ; Guptan Empire ; Jainism

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Thapar, Romila. Early India: From the Origins toA.D. 1300. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.