Shakya
Shakya was an ancient Indo-Aryan tribe of north-eastern South Asia whose existence is attested during the Iron Age. The Shakyas were organised into a Gaṇasaṅgha|, known as the Shakya Republic. The Shakyas were on the periphery, both geographically and culturally, of the eastern Indo-Gangetic Plain in the Greater Magadha cultural region.
Location
The Shakyas lived in the Terai – an area south of the foothills of the Himalayas and north of the Indo-Gangetic Plain with their neighbors to the west and south being the kingdom of Kosala, their neighbors to the east across the Rohni River being the related Koliya tribe, while on the northeast they bordered on the Mallakas of Kushinagar. To the north, the territory of the Shakyas stretched into the Himalayas until the forested regions of the mountains, which formed their northern border.The capital of the Shakyas was the city of Kapilavastu.
Etymology
The name of the Shakyas is attested primarily in the Pali forms and, and the Sanskrit form.The Shakyas' name was derived from the Sanskrit root meaning "to be able", "worthy", "possible", or "practicable".
The name of the Shakyas was also derived from the name of the or tree, which Bryan Levman has identified with either the teak or sāla tree, which is ultimately related to word wikt:शाखा#Sanskrit|, meaning 'branch', and was connected to the Shakyas' practice of [|worshipping] the or tree.
History
Origins
Munda origin
The Shakyas were an eastern ethnic group on the periphery, both geographically and culturally, of the eastern Gangetic plain in the Greater Magadha cultural region. The origins of the Sakyas is unclear, and they were "possibly" an Aryanized non-Aryan tribe, or of "mixed origin", consisting primarily an indigenous lineage with a possible minority of Aryan ancestry.Shakya legends link their ancestry to Okkāka, whose name is of Munda origin, and E. J. Thomas argued they were mainly of Kol or Munda origin. The Shakyas were closely related to their eastern neighbours, the Koliya tribe, with whom they intermarried.
Alternative Central-Asian origin hypothesis
and Christopher I. Beckwith have equated the Shakyas with Central Asian nomads who were called Scythians by the Greeks, Saka|s by the Achaemenid Persians, and by the Indo-Aryans. These scholars have suggested that the people of the Buddha were Saka soldiers who arrived in South Asia in the army of Darius the Great during the Achaemenid conquest of the Indus Valley, and saw in Scytho-Saka nomadism the origin of the wandering asceticism of the Buddha.Scholars criticize the Scythian hypothesis due to a lack of evidence, with Bryan Levman maintaining that the Shakyas were native to the north-east Gangetic plain and unrelated to the Iranic Sakas. Johannes Bronkhorst also criticises the Scythian hypothesis, stating that Beckwith's argument rests on the term "Śākamuni" which does not appear in any Mauryan-era inscriptions or the Pali Canon.
Statehood
By the sixth century BCE, the Shakyas, the Koliyas, Moriyas, and Mallakas lived between the territories of the Kauśalyas to the west and the Licchavikas and Vaidehas to the east, thus separating the Vajjika League from the Kosala kingdom. By that time, the Shakya republic had become a vassal state of the larger Kingdom of Kosala.During the fifth century itself, one of the members of the ruling aristocratic oligarchy of the Shakyas was Suddhodana. Suddhodana was married to the princess Māyā, who was the daughter of a Koliya noble, and the son of Suddhodana and Māyā was Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha and founder of Buddhism.
During the life of the Buddha, an armed feud opposed the Shakyas and the Koliyas concerning the waters of the river Rohiṇī, which formed the boundary between the two states and whose water was needed by both of them to irrigate their crops. The intervention of the Buddha finally put an end to these hostilities.
After the death of the Buddha, the Shakyas claimed a share of his relics from the Mallakas of Kusinārā on the grounds that he had been a Shakya.
Conquest by Kosala
Shortly after the Buddha's death, the Kauśalya king Viḍūḍabha, who had overthrown his father Pasenadi, invaded the Shakya and Koliya republics, seeking to conquer their territories because they had once been part of Kosala. Viḍūḍabha finally triumphed over the Shakyas and Koliyas and annexed their state after a long war with massive loss of lives on both sides. Details of this war were exaggerated by later Buddhist accounts, which claimed that Viḍūḍabha exterminated the Shakyas in retaliation for having given in marriage to his father the slave girl who became Viḍūḍabha's mother. In actuality, Viḍūḍabha's invasion of Shakya might instead have had similar motivations to the conquest of the Vajjika League by Viḍūḍabha's relative, the Māgadhī king Ajātasattu, who, because he was the son of a Vajjika princess, was therefore interested in the territory of his mother's homeland. The result of the Kauśalya invasion was that the Shakyas and Koliyas merely lost political importance after being annexed into Viḍūḍabha's kingdom. The Shakyas nevertheless soon disappeared as an ethnic group after their annexation, having become absorbed into the population of Kosala, with only a few displaced families maintaining the Shakya identity later. The Koliyas likewise disappeared as a polity and as a tribe soon after their annexation.The massive life losses incurred by Kosala during its conquest of Shakya and Koliya weakened it significantly enough that it was itself soon annexed by its eastern neighbour, the kingdom of Magadha, and its king Viḍūḍabha was defeated and killed by the Māgadhī king Ajātasattu.
Legacy
In Buddhism
The Buddha was given the epithet of the "Sage of the Shakyas", in Pali and in Sanskrit, by his followers.The functioning of the proceedings in the Trāyastriṃśa heaven ruled by Sakka, lord of the devas in Buddhist cosmology, are modelled on those of the Shakya santhāgāra or general assembly hall.
Descent claims
of Terai region of India and Nepal claim descent from Sakya. Significant population of Newars of Kathmandu Valley in Nepal use the surname Shakya and also claim to be the descendants of the Shakya clan with titles such as Śākyavamsa having been used in the past.According to Hmannan Yazawin, first published in 1823, the legendary king Abhiyaza, who founded the Tagaung Kingdom and the Burmese monarchy belonged to the same Shakya clan of the Buddha. He migrated to present-day Burma after the annexation of the Shakya kingdom by Kosala. The earlier Burmese accounts stated that he was a descendant of Pyusawhti, son of a solar spirit and a dragon princess.
Culture and society
Ethnicity
The Shakyas lived in what scholars presently call the Greater Magadha cultural area, which was located in the eastern Gangetic plain to the east of the confluence of the Gaṅgā and Yamunā rivers. Like the other eastern groups of the Greater Magadha region, the Shakyas were , and therefore did not subscribe to the Varna | social organisation consisting of Brahmin|s, Kshatriya|s, Vaishya|s, and Shudra|. While non-Indo-Aryan indigenous clans were given the status of s, that is of slaves or servants, indigenous clans who collaborated with the Indo-Aryan clans were the status of s. The Buddhist suttas are ambiguous on the status of the Buddha, sometimes calling him a, but mostly ignoring the system. Additionally, the populations of Greater Magadha did not subscribe to the supremacy of the s of the peoples of Āryāvarta|, and s were regarded as higher in the societies of Greater Magadha.Vedic literature therefore considered the populations of Greater Magadha as existing outside of the limits of, with the Manusmriti| grouping the Vaidehas, Māgadhīs, Licchavikas, and Mallakas, who were the neighbours of the Shakyas, as being "non-Aryan" and born from mixed caste marriages, and the Baudhayana sutras|s requiring visitors to these lands to perform purificatory sacrifices as expiation.
This negative view of the peoples of the Greater Magadha region by the Vedic peoples extended to the Shakyas, as recorded in the, according to which the s described the Shakyas as "fierce, rough-spoken, touchy and violent", and accused them of not honouring, respecting, esteeming, revering or paying homage to the s owing to their "menial origin".
Language
The Shakyans were at least bilingual, under the linguistic influence of Munda languages, as attested by many of their villages having Mundari names, and the name of the founder of their clan, which has been recorded in the Sanskrit form and the Pali form, being of Munda origin.Social organisation
Class system
The society of the Shakyas and Koliyas was a stratified one which did not subscribe to the Varna | social organisation consisting of Brahmin|s, Kshatriya|s, Vaishya|s, and Shudra|s, but instead consisted of an aristocratic class of s and a slave or servant class of s, themselves comprising at least an aristocracy, as well as land-owners, attendants, labourers, and serfs.Landholders held the title of s, literally meaning "enjoyers ", and used in the sense of "headmen".
The lower classes of Shakya society consisted of servants, in Pāli called s and s, who performed the labour in the farms.
Administrative structure
The Sakyas were organised into a Gaṇasaṅgha| similarly to the Licchavikas.The assembly
The heads of the Sakya kshatriya| clans of the formed an Assembly, and they held the title of s. The position of was hereditary, and after a 's death was passed to his eldest son, who while he was living held the title of .The political system of the Sakyas was identical to that of the Koliyas, and like the Koliyas and the other s, the Assembly met in a santhāgāra, the main of which was located at Kapilavatthu, although at least one other Sakya santhāgāra also existed at Cātuma. The judicial and legislative functions of the Assembly of the Sakyas were not distinctly separated, and it met to discuss important issues concerning public affairs, such as war, peace, and alliances. The Sakya Assembly deliberated on important issues, and it had a simple voting system through either raising hands or the use of wooden chips.