Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 22.djvu/18

xiv|GAINA SÛTRAS. Mahâvîra and Buddha. But Kûnika or, as the Buddhists call him, Agâtasatru, his son by Kellanâ, the Videhan lady, showed no favour to the Buddhists in the earlier part of his reign; only eight years before Buddha's death he became his patron. We should go wrong in believing him to have sincerely been converted. For a man who avowedly murdered his father, and waged war against his grandfather, is not likely to have cared much about theology. His real motive in changing his religious policy we may easily guess. He planned to add Videha to his dominions, just as his father had added Aṅga to his kingdom of Magadha; he therefore built the fort at Pâtaligrâma, in order not to repel but subdue the Vaggians or Vrigis, a tribe of Videha, and at last fixed a quarrel on the king of Vaisâlî, his grandfather. As the latter was the maternal uncle of Mahâvîra, Agâtasatru, by attacking this patron of the Gainas, lost in some degree their sympathy. Now he resolved on siding with their rivals, the Buddhists, whom he formerly had persecuted as friends of his father's, whom, as has been said above, he finally put to death. We know that Agâtasatru succeeded in conquering Vaisâlî, and that he laid the foundation of the empire of the Nandas and Mauryas. With the extension of the limits of the empire of Magadha a new field was opened to both religions, over which they spread with great rapidity. It was probably this auspicious political conjuncture to which Gainism and Buddhism chiefly owed their success, while many similar sects attained only a local and temporal importance.

The following table gives the names of the relations of Mahâvîra, or, as we should call him when not speaking of