Vatsa

Kauśāmbī

The Vatsa kingdom lay around the junction of the Ganga and the Yamuna, and its capital Kauśāmbī — excavated at Kosam, near Allahabad — is one of the largest fortified sites of the early historic period, ringed by a massive rampart. Its position on the river routes made it a commercial centre of the first rank, and it appears throughout the Buddhist texts as a place of monasteries and merchants.

Kauśāmbī also carries one of the Aśokan pillar inscriptions, addressed to the local officers on the subject of schism in the monastic order.

Udayana

King Udayana of Vatsa, a contemporary of the Buddha in the Buddhist chronology, had a long afterlife in literature. The story of his abduction of Vāsavadattā, daughter of Pradyota of Avanti — he is captured, teaches her the lute, and elopes on an elephant — is told in the Kathāsaritsāgara and dramatised by Bhāsa in two surviving plays, and Harṣa's Ratnāvalī takes up his later career.

The historical Udayana is much harder to see than the literary one. What the sources agree on is that Vatsa was a substantial power under him and that it stood in an uneasy relation with Avanti to its southwest.

End

Vatsa was eventually absorbed, apparently first into Avanti's orbit and then into Magadha's as the latter overran its rivals in the fourth century BCE. Kauśāmbī remained occupied and prosperous for centuries afterwards and issued its own coinage under local Mitra rulers in the period between the Mauryas and the Kushans.