Aṅga

Campā

Aṅga occupied the country around modern Bhagalpur, on the south bank of the Ganga where the river turns toward the Bengal delta. Its capital Campā is one of the six great cities of the early Buddhist texts and a river port of consequence: the Jātakas describe merchants sailing from it downriver and out to sea, and its position at the head of the delta traffic accounts for much of the kingdom's wealth.

Campā is also a major site in the Jain tradition, associated with the twelfth tīrthaṅkara Vāsupūjya and with several of Mahāvīra's rain retreats.

Annexation

The Buddhist chronicles record a war between Aṅga and Magadha in which Bimbisāra, while still a prince, defeated and killed the Aṅgan king Brahmadatta and annexed the kingdom. It was Magadha's first substantial conquest and set the pattern for the following century: an eastern kingdom with a river capital, absorbed rather than reduced to tribute, its resources folded into the Magadhan base.

Aṅga did not re-emerge as a state. The name survived as a regional designation, and Campā continued as a city into the medieval period.

In the Mahābhārata

The epic makes Aṅga the kingdom Duryodhana confers on Karṇa, so that a man of unknown birth can be made a king on the spot and admitted to the archery contest. The gift is a piece of political theatre within the story rather than a claim about the kingdom, but it is the form in which most readers first meet the name.