Vajji confederacy

Government by assembly

The Vajji state was a confederation — the Licchavis of Vaiśālī were the leading clan, with the Videhans, the Jñātṛkas and others attached — and its business was conducted by an assembly of clan heads rather than by a hereditary monarch. The Buddhist texts describe a santhāgāra, a moot hall, and procedures for summoning it, for reaching decisions in concord, and for judicial process through a sequence of officers.

The often-quoted passage in which the Buddha lists the seven conditions of Vajjian welfare — that they meet frequently and in full, that they act in concert, that they follow established custom, honour their elders, protect their women, maintain their shrines and support the arahants — is a description of these procedures, offered in the text as the reason the confederacy could not be defeated by force.

The gaṇa-saṅgha question

How far these polities were oligarchies of a single ruling class rather than anything broader is disputed. Membership of the assembly appears to have been confined to the heads of kṣatriya households, with a substantial dependent population outside it. The term 'republic' is therefore used with care by historians, and 'clan oligarchy' is often preferred.

What is not in doubt is that the confederacy was a real alternative to kingship, that it was recognised as such at the time, and that it was politically formidable enough to require a decade of effort to destroy.

Conquest

Ajātaśatru of Magadha set out to take the confederacy and, according to the tradition, could not do so by arms. His minister Vassakāra was sent to Vaiśālī, spent three years cultivating dissension among the clans, and reported when the assembly could no longer meet in concord; the attack followed. Magadha also built the fort at Pāṭaligrāma on the Ganga to control the crossing, and that fort became Pāṭaliputra.

Vaiśālī remained important to both the Buddhist and Jain traditions long afterwards — it was the site of the second Buddhist council, and Mahāvīra was born in a Jñātṛka family in its vicinity.