By: Mahamahopadhyay Haraprasad Sastri
The vast territory to the South of the Ganges and North of the Vindhya ranges extending from Mudgagiri (Monghyr) in the East to the Charanadri (Chunar) in the West is called Magadha. The tract lying between Karmanasa and Chunar, however, is often joined to Kasi on the opposite side of the river.
The word Kikata occurs once only in the Rig-Veda. III. 53 14. and as the word Kikata in later literature meant Magadha or a part of it from Ghunar to Kajgir (Vigva Kosa, from Sakti Sangama-Tantra). Many are disposed to think that the word Kikata in Rig-Veda means Magadha. The references to Kikata in later literature are the following:
These certainly refer to Magadha, but the scene of the hymn in the Rig-Veda in which the word occurs, is laid in the vicinity of the Indus (Sindhu). It is a far cry from Indus to Magadha. In the whole of the Rig-Veda, the easternmost points mentioned are, Ganga and Yamuna(Jumna), most probably their southern courses from the mountains. The word Kikata is explained once as a proper nunie by Sayaaa and a second time as Nastikas (Atheists), who have no faith in religious ceremonies. The only thing which the Rg-Veda mentions about the Kikatas is their kine, which, the hymnist regretfully mentions, are of no use in Soma sacrifice. Yet he covets them to use their milk for sacrificial purposes. It is a well-known fact that the best kine in India are to be found within a few scores of miles from the Indus in the districts of Hissar, Sirsa, Bhawalpore and Bikaner and it is most probable that these places are mentioned as Kikata and not Magadha. The theory that Pramaganda was the founder of the kingdom of Magadha and that the word Magadha is another form of "Maganda" in Pramaganda occuring in the same rk, is to say the least of it, ridiculous.
The couutry is called Magadha in the Kausitaki Aranyaka and that the Kausitakis had a close connection with this country.The Atharva-Veda has Magadhas, the plural denoting a tribe. This tribe was not very friendly to the Vedic Aryans as the Atharva-Veda thinks that Malarial Fever should be driven away to Magadhas as beyond the pale of Vedic civilization. One Sakha of the Veda joins the Angas with the Magadhas and the other Sakha joins the Kasis with them. It is from this tribe, that in the Kausitaki Aranyaka we get the name of the country as Magadha. Some think that Bagadha mentioned with Banga and Chera in the Aitareya Aranyaka is only another form of Magadha.
But this does not seem to be tenable. For, between Banga and Chera or the Dravidian people in Chota Nagpur, the whole country now Burdwan Division has in it a powerful ethnical race still called Bagdi's, which is another form of Bagadha. They form altogether an ethnos with peculiar features and peculiar colour. They are tall, stout, robust and war-like. They had a government of their own and I have reason to think that they had a language of their own, too. So, from the tribe Magadhas, the country received the name Magadha. The word Magadha means an inhabitant of Magadha, not necessarily belonging to the tribe of Magaclhas. The Magadhas are neither Brahmanas nor Sudras, and they are to be sacrificed in the Purusamedha to the god Atikrusti. The humour of the thing lies in the fact that the Magadhas made loud noise in their songs. The word Magadha later meant minstrels, who lived by singing loudly the praise of kings; and the Bhat of Rajputaaa and other provinces who claimed their descent from the Magadhas make a huge noise when they sing the praises of the donors of gifts. The noise is often intolerable.
In the Vratya chapter of the Atharva-Veda the Magadha is said to be a friend and adviser, a crony and a thunder of the Vratya (mltra, maAtm, hasa and stanayitnii) and this is the character which the Bhatas and Charanas are still maintaining in Rajputana. When the Vratyas and Magadhas are so intimately connected and when VrStyas are enjoined to give away all their property to Magadhadegiya Brahmabandhu in some of the Sutras, it becomes necessary to see who the Vratyas were. The word is often explained as Svitri-patit&k those who do not utter Gfiyatii. Those who explain the word in this way seem to have in the back of their mind, the notion that the word is derived from vrata. But it cannot be derived from the word vrata. There is no rule by which a negative can be asserted by a Taddhita suffix. So, it should be derived from the word Vrata, a horde. The word Vrata is eight times used in the Rig Veda, thrice in the family mandalas the oldest portions of the Rg-Veda, thrice in the tenth mandala, the most recent, once in the first and once in the ninth, in the sense of a horde, sometimes figuratively, as in the case of dice, but often in the sense of a collection of men in an indefinite number. The word is thrice contrasted,' so to say, with Gana connoting a definite number and once with Sarclha, an assembly. In the sixth mandala', the word is undoubtedly used in the sense of an inimical horde. In describing the armoury in the chariot, the poet says, it should be vratasah and,capable of resisting the horde; and the sixth mandala is attributed to the family of Bsi Bharadvaja. In the third attributed to Visvauiitra and in the fifth attributed to Atreya, the word undoubtedly means a horde, but may mean an enemy horde also. In the first mandala, the horse is said to be followed by chariots, men, women, and vratas as opposed to men. The ninth' speaks of five hordes. In two passages in the tenth it is figuratively used for dice and the other contains a sentence u we Avill join the vratas." The oldest use of vrata is in the sense of an inimical horde. Other passages are notopposed to this sense. In the Atharva- Veda too, the word is used in the same sense. In the Vajasaneya and Taittirlya Saiphitas, in the chapter 011. Rudra, Vratapati is used along with vrflta. European scholars think that Vratapati there means the head of a robber band. This also means an inimical horde. So the word means a horde and an inimical horde. They had their temporary setilements, for in the Panchavimsa Brahmana, they are said to sojourn in vr&tyti (vrdtydni pravasantak where pra-vas means a sojourn) and they had their patriarchs (Grhapati), and one of their Gfhapatis when purified becamethe founder of a Sakha of the Rg-Veda. But of this later on. They had no Brahmanic culture (Brahmacharya), no agriculture aiid no trade. All this stamps them as nomad hordes. Those who form the vrata, those who join the vrata and those who are stolen to the vrata are all vratyas. The Magadhas are friends, intimates, crouies and loud praisers of the Vratyas. So they must be living in the same country or in close proximity.
Thus we have in the Vedic literature the Magadhas the name of a tribe, Magadha, the name of the country inhabited by Magadhas, Magadhas, inhabitants of the Magadha country not belonging to the Magadha tribe. The country was not in good repute with the Vedic people. A Brahmin living in the Magadha country was called a Brahmabandhuo, so-called Brahmin a bad Brahmin. Even in the Puranas, the Sisunagas were called Kattra bandhus or bad Kattriyas. The Kausi takis alone were favourably disposed to the country and say in their Aranyaka that Madhyamapr and tibodhiputra lived in Magadha country, but was a very respectable Brahmin So the country was a non-Aryan country, then came the Vratyas, the Aryans of the first migration, and they came to stay. They made friends with the Magadhas and became very influential; and the Vedic Aryans, the Aryans of the second migration tried hard to bring them to their own foil. This is all that we can glean from the scant information vouchsafed to us by the Vedic literature,
Magadha is better known in the classical literature. But before entering into that literature it is necessary to know what time elapsed between the close of the Vedic and the commencement of the Classical literature. Max Miiller in his History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature written in 1859 limited the Sutra literature between 600-200 B. 0. But Biihler in page xxii of his Introduction to his translation of the M ana va-Dl tarn taSaslra in the S. B K. Series (1886) says, " It seems no longer advisable to limit the production of Sutras to so short and so late a period as 600-200 BC. But works have been discovered, facts brought to light and interpretation put on old materials which seem to justify the inference that the Sutra activity of the Vedic t'haranas closed sometime before the advent of Buddha and his contemporary reformers, i.e., the higher limit of Max Miiller may be the lower limit of these activities, For he seems to have included the activity of the special schools within this period which Biihler pronounced to be short and late. The Sutras of the Vedic School seem to have been followed by a long period in which many comprehensive Sutra works of special schools were written. The aphoristic form of writing continued, but not of the Vedic Schools. The fall of Taxila into the hands of the Persians seems to have dealt a death blow to the Vedic Sutra activities, and the transference of the intellectual capital of India from Taxila to Pataliputra gave un impetus to the Sutra activity of another sort. Already the tendency in Taxila seems to have been to write comprehensive works in Sutra form, but at Pataliputra, the rulers of which were aiming at Imperial dominion.
