Amongst the kings who patronised the new teaching were Prasenajit, king of Koshala, and Magadha’s Bimbisara. In the Koshalan capital of Sravasti the Buddha delivered numerous discourses and, since his own Sakya republic had been overrun by Koshala and remained under its suzerainty, he may have felt some allegiance to Prasenajit. But it was Bimbisara’s patronage that would prove crucial. When the Buddha died (at Kushinara in the Malla republic), it was Bimbisara’s Magadha which made good its claim to most of his hotly contested relics and, immediately afterwards, it was in the Magadhan capital of Rajagriha that the first Buddhist council was convened. Magadha’s economic expansion provided a social ambience particularly favourable to Buddhism. In the wake of Magadha’s political expansion Buddhism would prevail over most of the other heterodox sects (although not brahmanical orthodoxy) and spread throughout the subcontinent.
Meanwhile, Bimbisara had predeceased the Buddha. His long reign came to an end when Ajatashatru, one of his sons, either seized the throne and starved his father to death or was nominated his successor so that the aged Bimbisara, having renounced the throne, could starve himself to death. Both practices appear to have been standard. But Ajatashatru’s elevation was not uncontested and his conduct not unchallenged. He was soon involved in warfare with both Koshala and a powerful coalition of republics headed by the Licchavis. Magadha was about to take another giant stride towards hegemony in the middle Ganga region.
The trouble with Koshala seems to have arisen over a piece of land in the vicinity of Varanasi. It had passed to Bimbisara as the dowry of his Koshalan bride. When she died of grief over Bimbisara’s death, Prasenajit of Koshala, her father, revoked the grant of this land and resumed control of it. Ajatashatru endeavoured to retake it but seems at first to have been defeated. His claim to the disputed enclave was, however, enhanced when the aged Prasenajit, falling prey to the usurpation of his own son, headed for Magadha as a supplicant. Alone but for a devoted servant, the old king reached the walls of Rajagriha and there, while waiting overnight for the gates to open, died of exhaustion and exposure. Despite their past differences, Ajatashatru of Magadha promptly honoured the memory of this Indian Lear and vowed to avenge his treatment by the Koshalans. But he bided his time, first dealing with another major threat to his kingdom and then benefiting from the chance annihilation of the Koshalan army; encamped in the dry bed of the river Rapti, it had been suddenly overwhelmed by a flash flood. Thereafter, although the sources are silent on the details, Ajatashatru seems to have overrun Koshala, which promptly disappears from the record.
This important conquest was made possible by a decisive Magadhan victory in the protracted struggle with its other principal neighbour, namely the Licchavi republic. The Licchavis, with their capital at Vaisali wherein lived those innumerable Licchavi rajas, headed a confederation of republics to the north of Magadha. As with the defeated Sakyas, their defiance has been seen as part of a last stand by the ‘knights-raja’ of the republican gana-sanghas of the east against the professional armies of the centralised monarchies of the Ganga valley. Here again, though, Magadha’s problem seems to have started back in the reign of Bimbisara and to have been greatly complicated by an affair of the heart.
As one might expect in a republic, the beautiful Amrapali (or Ambarapali) was not a princess. In fact she was a courtesan whose physical perfection and outstanding skills had secured her elevation to the status of a national asset. In other republics an elaborate beauty contest was held to select the principal courtesan, and this may also have been the case in Vaisali. But Amrapali, as befitted one of the Buddha’s most devoted future followers, was shrewd as well as comely. Though her favours were supposedly reserved exclusively for those 7707 (or ‘twice 84,000’) Licchavi ‘knights-raja’, she also wielded great political influence and became, in effect, Vaisali’s ‘first lady’. It was therefore a crushing blow to Licchavi self-esteem when it was discovered that, in the midst of desultory fighting with Magadha, the Magadhan king had entered Vaisali in disguise and, undetected, had there enjoyed a week’s dalliance in Amrapali’s delectable company. Bimbisara had to be made to pay for his indiscretion, and the Licchavis had duly multiplied their attacks on Magadhan territory.
Admittedly the detail of this story survives only in a later Tibetan source. Better known, it would surely have inspired poignant verse and operatic libretti. But from other Buddhist texts it is clear that Bimbisara did indeed incur the wrath of the Licchavis and that ‘something really harmful and injurious’6 provoked his son Ajatashatru to seek revenge. The subsequent war seems to have lasted on and off for at least twelve years. Initially it was compounded by a succession struggle between Ajatashatru and one of his brothers. The brother, who was domiciled in Anga (presumably as its governor), refused to surrender a priceless necklace. He also withheld an even more priceless elephant which had been trained to act as a shower-hose, sprinkling the ladies of the Magadhan household with a deliciously scented spray when they were bathing. No doubt both necklace and elephant were seen as in the nature of regalia. Ajatashatru’s acquisition of them was therefore essential to the legitimacy of his rule. But his brother remained defiant and, fearing attack, eventually fled to Vaisali where he secured the support of the hated Licchavis.
Another account makes the item of dispute a mountain from which oozed a highly prized, because highly scented, unguent; yet another seems to indicate a disputed island in, or port on, the Ganga, which formed the Magadha-Licchavi frontier. We know of such details because Ajatashatru saw fit to consult the Buddha about the impending hostilities and because later Buddhist commentators therefore saw fit to record them, albeit variously. Buddhist sculptors followed suit. In a relief panel from the second-century BC stupa at Bharhut (now in the Calcutta Museum) a demure and most unwarlike Ajatashatru is depicted arriving on elephant-back with a retinue of wives and then making obeisance before the throne of the Buddha. Well preserved in the hard russet sandstone of Bharhut, this eloquent scene may rate as the earliest depiction in Indian art of a genuine historical figure. Buddhist texts also mention that on his last journey north the Buddha, after his meeting with the king but before crossing the Ganga, passed a building site where a new Magadhan fort was being erected. The place was called Pataligrama. To it the Magadhan court would remove under Ajatashatru’s successor and, greatly extended and beautified, the city by the Ganga at what is now Patna would become, as Pataliputra, the metropolis of the Magadhan empire under the Mauryas.
In its infancy the fort at Pataligrama failed to overawe the Licchavis. Initially the war seems to have gone badly for Ajatashatru, who may even have been forced to seek terms. Further hostilities, as recorded in Jain sources, produced two epic battles with echoes of the great Bharata war, except that Ajatashatru eventually won both thanks to some precocious mechanisation. A new catapult capable of firing massive rocks was developed, and then a heavily armoured robot equipped with club-wielding arms and powered by some invisible means of propulsion – ‘It has been compared to the tanks used in the two great world wars.’7 Before this veritable blitzkrieg the Licchavis withdrew to their capital and prepared for a siege. Evidently even the tank made no impression on Vaisali’s fortifications. The siege dragged on, and Ajatashatru was obliged to try psychological warfare. Insinuating into the Licchavi counsels a particularly wily brahman, or suborning the city’s tutelary ascetic with an irresistible prostitute, he either reduced his enemies to discord or duped them into surrender. Magadhan forces occupied Vaisali unopposed, the Licchavi republic was finally reduced, and the 7707 rajas were dispersed, although not eliminated. When the Second Buddhist Council was convened in Vaisali some time in the latter half of the fourth century BC the city was under Magadhan control.
Thus, in the space of two reigns which conveniently straddled the long life of the Buddha, Magadha had emerged from comparative inconsequence to dominate the lower Ganga with a territorial reach that extended from the Bay of Bengal to the Nepal Himalayas. Further up the Ganga, the kingdom of Vatsya, possibly the successor state to that of the Kuru of Hastinapura, still flourished with its capital at Kaushambi (near Allahabad). So did the kingdom of Avanti, based on Ujjain (near Indore)