Licchavi, also spelled Lichchhavi, a
people of northern India. They settled (6th–5th century bce) on the north bank of the Ganges (Ganga) River in what is now Bihar state;
their capital city was at Vaishali. The Licchavis were renowned for their
republican government, which had a general assembly of the heads of the leading
Kshatriya-caste families. They were, for a time, of considerable importance and
rivaled the rising power of Magadha, forming a
confederacy with other tribal groups (the so-called Vrijjian, or Vaijjian,
confederacy).
The
Licchavis remained influential in northern India and Nepal until about the 4th
century ce. In
Nepal a Licchavi dynasty is commemorated in a dating system, the Licchavi era, that
began in 110 ce.
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| Ancient India |
Vaishali was the capital city of the Licchavi, world's first republic,
in the Vajjian
Confederacy (Vrijji) mahajanapada, around the 6th century BC. It was
here in 599 BCE the 24th Jain Tirthankara,
Bhagwan Mahavira was born and brought up in
Kundalagrama in Vaiśālī republic, which makes it a pious and auspicious
pilgrimage to Jains.
Also Gautama
Buddha preached his
last sermon before his death in ca 483 BCE, then in 383 BCE the Second Buddhist council was convened here by King Kalasoka,
making it an important place in both Jain and Buddhist religions.
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| Ānanda Stupa, with an Asokan pillar at Kolhua, Vaiśālī |
At the time of the Buddha,
Vaiśālī, which he visited on many occasions, was a very large city, rich and
prosperous; crowded with people and with abundant food. There were 7,707
pleasure grounds and an equal number of lotus ponds. Its courtesan, Amrapali,
was famous for her beauty, and helped in large measure in making the city
prosperous. The city had three
walls, each one gāvuta away from the other, and at three places in the walls
were gates with watch towers. Outside the town, leading uninterruptedly up to
the Himalaya,
was the Mahavana, a large,
natural forest. Nearby were other forests, such as Gosingalasāla.
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| The Budha Stupa in Vaishali |
The city finds
mention in the travel accounts of Chinese explorers, Faxian (4th century CE) and Xuanzang (7th century CE), which were later
used in 1861 by British archaeologist Alexander Cunningham to first identify Vaiśālī with the
present village of Basrah in Vaishali
District, Bihar.
Vaishali derives its
name from King Vishal of the Mahabharata age. Even before the advent of Buddhism and Jainism, Vaishali was the
capital of the vibrant republican Licchavi state since before the birth of Mahavira (c. 599 BC), which suggests that it
was the first republic in the world, similar to those later found in ancient
Greece. In that period, Vaishali was an ancient metropolis and the capital city of the republic of the Vaishali state,
which covered most of the Himalayan Gangetic region of present-day Bihar state, India. Very little is known
about the early history of Vaishali. The Vishnu Purana records 34 kings of Vaishali, the first being Nabhaga, who is believed to have abdicated his throne over a matter of human rights and believed to have declared: "I
am now a free tiller of the soil, king over my acre." The last among the
34 was Sumati, who is considered a
contemporary of Dasaratha, father of the Hindu god, Lord Rama.
.JPG)
