the discovery of the fraud that, having determined to wreak
his vengeance on the Sakiyas, he, on coming to the throne,
invaded their country, took their city, and put to death a
great number of the members of the clan, without distinction
of age or sex. The details of the story have not been found
as yet in your oldest records. ¹⁷ But the main circumstances
of the war against the clan is very early alluded to, and
is no doubt a historical fact. It is said to have preceded
only by a year or two the death of the Buddha himself.

The beginning of this story, on the other hand, seems
very forced. Would family of patricians in one of the Greek
republics have considered a marriage of one of their daughters
to a neighbouring tyrant beneath their dignity? And in
the present case the tyrant in question was the acknowledged
suzerain of the clan. ¹⁸ The Sakiyas may have considered
the royal family of Kosala of inferior birth to themselves.
There is mention, in several passages, of the pride of the
Sakiyas. ¹⁹ But, even so, we cannot see, in the present state
of our knowledge, why they should object. We know that
the daughter of one of the chiefs of a neighbouring clan,
equally free and equally proud, the Licchavis of Vesali,
was married to Bimbisara, king of Magadha. ²⁰ It is, further-
more, almost certain that the royal family at Savatthi was
simply one of the patrician families who had managed to
secure hereditary consulship in the Kosala clan. For the
chiefs among the Kosalas, apart from the royal family, and
even the ordinary clansmen (the kulaputta), are designated
by the very term (rajano, kings), which is applied to the
chiefs and clansmen of those tribes which had still remained
aristocratic republics. ²¹ And it is precisely in a very natural
tendency to exaggerate the importance of the families of
their respective founders that the latter records, both of the
Jains and of the Buddhists, differ from the earlier ones.
It is scarcely probable, therefore, that the actual originating
cause of Vidudabha's invasion of the Sakiya territory was
exactly as set out above. He may have used the arrogance
of the Sakiyas, perhaps, as a pretext. But the real reasons
which induced Vidudabha to attack and conquer his relatives,
the Sakiyas, were, most likely, the same sort of political motives
which later on induced his cousin, Ajatasattu of Magadha,
to attack and conquer his relatives, the Licchavis of Vesali.

We hear already of Ajatasattu's intention to attack them
in the opening sections of the Book of the Great Decease, ²²
and the Buddha is represented ²³ as making the not very
difficult forecast that eventually, when the Licchavis had been
weakened by luxury, he would be able to carry out this
intention. But it was not till more than three years afterwards
that, having succeeded, the treachery of the brahmin Vassakara,

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