Period of Social Reform

¤ Period of Social Reform

By the sixth century BC things had become complicated and rigid enough for socio-religious reformers like the Buddha and Mahavira to want change. The priestly class, as happened the world over, became increasingly the real masters in the socio-economic-political scheme of affairs. Rituals became rigid, sacrifices elaborate and religion increasingly expensive.


¤ Rising of Diverse Religions

Buddhism and Jainism were instant hits with the populace and became powerful clannish minorities while the bulk of the people remained with Aryanism. Not for long, however. As the two new religions which had extremely charismatic leaders and very zealous followers caught the people's imagination, the influence of both faiths spread enough for kings to profess and actively promote them.

While the Buddha was expounding on the metaphysics of life, kings were going about the usual business of going after more power, more money and more land. A fierce battle of domination (upon which, it is said, that the Mahabharata might have been based; see Indraprastha under Delhi History) was waging, of which Magadha (roughly the region of the present Bihar) emerged as the clear leader.
From now on Magadha, with its capital Patliputra (the present Patna), became the power that be in the Indian sub-continent (India, of course, was not recognized as a unit yet). The kings of Magadha were to remain the mightiest all through out the period of Ancient Indian history, and their kingdom, at its peak, stretched from Afghanistan in the northwest to deep into the present Andhra Pradesh-Karnataka region.


¤ Bimbisara- The Magadhan Ruler of Sisunga Dynasty

The first important Magadhan king who emerges into the limelight was Bimbisara (544-491 BC) of the Sisunga dynasty. He was an extremely polished diplomat and crafty statesman.
While the earlier rulers had brought Magadha out of clear and present danger, it was Bimbisara who consolidated and increased that power and really gave it the identity of a kingdom.
Through some clever marital and martial policies he pushed the frontiers of Magadha over, according to a source, eighty thousand villages. Bimbisara was a contemporary of the Buddha and met him twice, thanks to his wife Khema's reverence for the teacher. We learn that when he met him the second time, in Rajgriha (which is an important Buddhist pilgrimage today), Bimbisara converted to Buddhism.


¤ Assasination of Bimbisara

Apparently Bimbisara was assasinated by his impatient son Ajatsatru, who was a good friend of the Buddha's cousin Devadutta. This Devadutta, not to be judged by his cousin's credentials, was very much a blot on his family name and talked Ajatsatru into killing his father in the first place.

However, there is evidence that his crime weighed on Ajatsatru's mind, and in the end he confessed his crime to the Buddha before converting to Buddhism. Apart from this, Ajatsatru was very much his father's son and continued his imperialist policies. One particularly bitter, acrimonious and prolonged rivalry went on between him and the Lichchavi dynasty that ruled Vaishali (in Bihar), which he eventually managed to conquer.

Ajatsatru was obviously a colorful character and a man of sentiment. There are tales of his passionate affair with the chief courtesan of Vaishali, called Amrapali. Then, when the Buddha attained parinirvana (nirvana from all births and bonds), Ajatsatru insisted upon a part of his relics be buried in a stupa (shrine) that he got erected in Rajgriha. He said, "The lord was a kshatriya (the warrior caste of the Varna system), so am I. Therefore I am worthy of a share of his relics upon which I will erect a stupa."