DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

152 LICCHAVIS AND SAKYANS [6.2
Malla and Licchavi are bracketed together as low mixed castes, both
the offspring of vratya ksatriyas. This proves that they did not follow
brahmin ritual. There is no mention of their indulgence in vedic sacrifice.
The Licchavi capital of Vesali is the modern Basarh (Muzzaffarpur).
The corrupted form nicchavi by which they -were sometimes known
was applied to the district of Tirhut. Their traditional number of
7077 spread over their whole territory. Because they collected tribute
individually, the sabha assembly and dispensation of justice was more
and more neglected. The name survived in the region for about a thousand
years after the Buddha. The first Gupta emperor married a Licchavi
princess Kumaradevi about A. D. 320 ; coins were struck in their joint
names — a most unusual procedure unless the Guptas were very
proud of the alliance, for no Licchavi coins are known. The ‘Buddha’s
own people, the Sakyans, were a small tribe just beyond the present
Nepal frontier. Their pride of ancestry survived the loss of
independence, for they were under the suzerainty of the Kosalan king
Pasenadi (Prasenajit) who had powers of life and death in extreme
cases. The Sakyans were otherwise left to their own devices, as petty
ksatriyas who did not disdain to set their hands to the plough. Their
king was a chieftain elected from the leading families in rotation for an
unspecified term. There is no record of a king for either the Mallas or the
Vajjians except a supposed war-leader, Cedaga, who led the confederacy
against Ajatasatru. Vincent Smith wanted to make the Sakyan’s non-
Aryans, “ sturdy hillmen “ from Nepal. This is meaningless as’ Aryan’
had already come to mean a way of living which the Sakyans followed,
while their language was certainly Aryan. The Pali form of the name
is Sakka; this occurs at the time of the Buddha in the Elamite version
of the inscriptions of Darius, the Persian being Saka, the Babylonian
Gimirri (? Cimri). There were three classes of the Sakas in the Persian
empire : tigrakhoda (with pointed helmets); homavraga, ‘Amyrgian’ in
Greek, but apparently following some homa ceremony ; and Saka tyey
taradraya, ‘ Sakas beyond the ocean’. They have been identified
with Scythians ; but the possibility of some connection with the Sakyans
is not entirely to be denied.