Shakya
Shakya (Sanskrit:Śākya, Devanagari: शाक्य and Pāli:Sākya) was an ancient tribe (janapada) of Nepal and India in the 1st millennium BCE.[1] In Buddhist texts the Shakyas, the inhabitants of Shakya janapada, are mentioned as a Kshatriya clan of Gotama gotra.[2][3]
The most famous Shakya was Gautama Buddha, a member of the ruling Gautama clan of Lumbini, who is also known as Shakyamuni Buddha, "sage of the Shakyas", due to his association with this ancient kingdom.
The Hindu Puranas mention Shakya as a king of Ikshvaku dynasty, son of Sanjaya and father of Shuddhodana.[4]
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[edit] History
The Shakyas were settled in the territory bounded by the Himalayas in the north, The Rohini (the present-day Kobana, a tributory of the Rapti) in the east and the Rapti in the south. Some Buddhist texts, Mahāvastu, Mahavamsa and Sumangalavilasini give accounts of the Śākyas.[2]
Indologist Michael Witzel has suggested that the similarity of the name Śākya and Śaka (the Indian and Persian name for the Scythians) is no coincidence. He thinks the Śākyas were "an early incursion of the Scythians" into India.[5] The Sākyas appear to have retained features that have other Indic or Vedic precedent such as burial mounds (stūpas), which are referred to in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa as "demonic" (ŚB 12.8.1.5), and are similar to the Kurgan mounds in Central Asia. Witzel has also suggested, informally, that the idea of being judged on the basis of your actions in life comes into India from Zoroastrianism. Certainly karma has no Vedic precedent, and Johannes Bronkhorst has argued that Brahmins were assimilating the idea of karma from another possible connection with Iran is the division of the person into body, speech and mind by Buddhists, which has no Vedic precedent but is prominent in Zoroastrianism.[6] However by the time we know of them the Śākyas have been thoroughly Indianised.
The Sākyas were one of a number of small tribes—Kāmāla, Malla, Vṛji, Licchavi, etc—who do not appear in the Ṛgveda. Pāṇini (ca 5th century BCE) knows the Mallas and Vṛji as desert tribes in Rajasthan, and Alexander's ambassadors met a tribe called Malloi in the same region. They appear to have enter India from the west some time after the Vedas were completed (ca. 1000 BCE) and then migrated east well before the time of the Buddha (ca. 480-400 BCE). An abrupt climate change ca. 850 BCE caused Western India to have an arid period which may have been what set off the migration. This also coincides with a moist period on the Central Asia Steppes and a massive expansion of the Sycthian culture from the region of Tuva westwards to the Black Sea.[7]
By the time of the Buddha the Śākya nation had been subsumed into the Kingdom of Kosala under King Pasenadi.
[edit] The accounts of Buddhist texts
In several places in the Pāli Canon, including the Ambaṭṭha Sutta (D.i.92), the progenitors of the Śākyas are related to King Okkāka. Pāli Okkāka is identified with the Sanskrit Ikṣvāku, who is known from Purāṇic stories, and in Jainism he is an ancestor to all of the Tirthaṅkaras. The king banishes his elder brothers from his kingdom and they make their home on the slopes of the Himalayas. But they can find no one suitable to marry, so they take their own sisters as wives, and these incestuous relationships give birth to the Śākyas. Given the prejudice against incest in India society generally it is remarkable that this detail was preserved, and this suggests that it might have a grain of truth. If so it points to Iran "there is good evidence for this practice called xᵛaētuuadaθa, so-called next-of-kin or close-kin marriage."[8]
The Śākyas are mentioned in later Buddhist texts as well including the Mahāvastu (ca. late 2nd century BCE), Mahāvaṃsa and Sumaṅgalavilāsinī (ca. 5th century CE), mostly in the accounts of the birth of the Buddha, as a part of the Adichchabandhus (kinsmen of the sun)[2] or the Ādichchas (solar race) and as descendants of the legendary king Ikṣvāku (Pāli: Okkāka)
There lived once upon a time a king of the Śākya, a scion of the solar race, whose name was Śuddhodana. He was pure in conduct, and beloved of the Śākya like the autumn moon. He had a wife, splendid, beautiful, and steadfast, who was called the Great Māyā, from her resemblance to Māyā the Goddess.—Buddhacarita of Aśvaghoṣa, I.1-2
The Buddhist text Mahavamsa (II, 1-24), traces the origin of the Sakyas (Śākyas) to king Okkaka (Ikshvaku) and gives their genealogy from Mahasammata, an ancestor of Okkaka. This list comprises the names of a number of prominent kings of the Ikshvaku dynasty, which include Mandhata and Sagara.[2] According to this text, Okkamukha was the eldest son of Okkaka. Sivisamjaya and Sihassara were the son and grandson of Okkamukha. King Sihassara had eighty-two thousand sons and grandsons, who were together known as the Sakyas. The youngest son of Sihassara was Jayasena. Jayasena had a son, Sihahanu, and a daughter, Yashodhara (not to be confused with prince Siddhartha's wife), who was married to Devadahasakka. Devadahasakka had two daughters, Anjana and Kaccana. Sihahanu married Kaccana, and they had five sons and two daughters, Suddhodana was one of them. Suddhodana had two queens, Maya and Prajapati, both daughters of Anjana. Siddhartha (Gautama Buddha) was the son of Suddhodana and Maya. Rahula was the son of Siddhartha and Yashodara (also known as Bhaddakaccana), daughter of Suppabuddha and granddaughter of Anjana.[4][9]
[edit] Shakya administration
According to the Mahavastu and the Lalitavistara, the seat of the Shakya administration was the saṃsthāgāra (Pali:santhāgāra) (assembly hall) at Kapilavastu. A new building for the Shakya samsthagara was constructed at the time of Gautama Buddha, which was inaugurated by him. The highest administrative authority was the Shakya Parishad, comprising 500 members, which met in the samsthagara to transact any important business. The Shakya Parishad was headed by an elected raja, who presided over the meetings.[2]
[edit] Annexation by Kosala
Viḍūḍabha, the son of Pasenadi and Vāsavakhattiyā, the daughter of a Śākya named Mahānāma by a slave girl ascended the throne of Kosala after overthrowing his father. As an act of vengeance for cheating Kosala by sending his mother, the daughter of a slave woman for marriage to his father, he invaded the Śākya territory, massacred them and annexed it.[10][11]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Dr. C George Boeree, Shippensburg University (2000). "An introduction to buddhism,". http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/buddhaintro.html. Retrieved 2011-12-07.
- ^ a b c d e Law, B.C. (1973). Tribes in Ancient India, Bhandarkar Oriental Series No.4, Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, pp.245-56
- ^ Thapar, R.(1978). Ancient Indian Social History, New Delhi: Orient Longman, ISBN 81 250 0808 X, p.117
- ^ a b Misra, V.S. (2007). Ancient Indian Dynasties, Mumbai: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, ISBN 81-7276-413-8, pp.285-6
- ^ Witzel 1997
- ^ C.A.F. Rhys Davids 1926
- ^ van Geet et al. 2004
- ^ Silk 2008: 444
- ^ Geiger, Wilhelm (tr.) (1912). "Mahavamsa, Chapter II". Ceylon Government Information Dept.,Colombo (in lakdvia.org website). http://lakdiva.org/mahavamsa/chap002.html. Retrieved 2009-10-26.
- ^ Raychaudhuri H. (1972). Political History of Ancient India, Calcutta: University of Calcutta, pp.177-8
- ^ Kosambi D.D. (1988). The Culture and Civilsation of Ancient India in Historical Outline, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, ISBN 0 7069 4200 0, pp.128-9
[edit] Bibliography
- Rhys Davids, C.A.F. 1926. ‘Man as Willer.’ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 4: 29-44.
- Silk, Jonathan A. 2008 ‘Putative Persian perversities: Indian Buddhist condemnations of Zoroastrian close-kin marriage in context.’ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 71: pp 433–464.
- van Geel, B. et. al. 2004. ‘Climate change and the expansion of the Scythian culture after 850 BC: a hypothesis.’ Journal of Archaeological Science. 31 (12) December: 1735-1742.
- Witzel, Michael. 1997. ‘The Development of the Vedic Canon and its Schools: The Social and Political Milieu.’ (Materials on Vedic Śākhās, 8) in Inside the Texts, Beyond the Texts. New Approaches to the Study of the Vedas. Harvard Oriental Series. Opera Minora, vol. 2. Cambridge 1997, 257-345
