মগধ

মগধ

In 326 BCE, the army of Alexander approached the western boundaries of Magadha. The army, exhausted and frightened at the prospect of facing another giant Indian army at the Ganges, mutinied at the Hyphasis (the modern Beas River) and refused to march further East. Alexander, after the meeting with his officer, Coenus, was persuaded that it was better to return and turned south, conquering his way down the Indus to the Ocean.

Maurya Empire, c.250 BCE

Around 321 BCE, the Nanda Dynasty ended and Chandragupta Maurya became the first king of the great Mauryan dynasty and Mauryan Empire with the help of Chanakya. The Empire later extended over most of South Asia under King Ashoka, who was at first known as 'Ashoka the Cruel'  but later became a disciple of Buddhism and became known as 'Dharma Ashoka'. Later, the Mauryan Empire ended, as did the Shunga and Khārabēḷa empires, to be replaced by the Gupta Empire. The capital of the Gupta Empire remained Pataliputra in Magadha.


Culture

The culture of Magadha was in some ways different than the Vedic kingdoms of the Indo-Aryans. This has been argued for by Indologist Johannes Bronkhorst in his Greater Magadha: Studies in the Culture of Early India (2007) which argues for a cultural area termed "Greater Magadha" which is defined as “roughly the geographical area in which the Buddha and Mahāvīra lived and taught.

Magadha kingdom, Circa 430-320 BC, Karshapana.


Magadha kingdom coin, Circa 350 BC, Karshapana.
With regard to the Buddha, this area stretched by and large from Śrāvastī, the capital of Kosala, in the north-west to Rājagṛha, the capital of Magadha, in the south-east”.^[4] According to Bronkhorst “there was indeed a culture of Greater Magadha which remained recognizably distinct from Vedic culture until the time of the grammarian Patañjali (ca. 150 BCE) and beyond”.^[5] Vedic texts such as the Satapatha Brahmana demonize the inhabitants of this area as demonic and as speaking a barbarous speech. The Buddhologist Alexander Wynne writes that there is an "overwhelming amount of evidence" to suggest that this rival culture to the Vedic Aryans dominated the east Gangetic plain during the early Buddhist period. Orthodox Vedic Brahmins were therefore a minority in Magadha during this early period.^[6]
The Magadhan religions are termed the sramana traditions and include Jainism, Buddhism and Ājīvika. Buddhism and Jainism were the religions promoted by the early Magadhan kings of such as Srenika, Bimbisara and Ajatashatru, and the Nanda Dynasty (345–321 BCE) that followed was mostly Jain. These sramana religions did not worship the Vedic deities, practiced some form of asceticism and meditation (jhana) and tended to construct round burial mounds (called stupas in Buddhism).^[7] These religions also sought some type of liberation from the cyclic rounds of rebirth and karmic retribution through spiritual knowledge.

* সূত্র 'আকাশ তথ্য',  internet.।