Princess Vajira

Vajira (also called Vajirakumari) was Empress of the Magadha Empire as the principal consort of Emperor Ajatashatru.[2] She was the mother of her husband's successor, Emperor Udayibhadra.[3]

Vajira
Empress consort of the Magadha Empire
Reignc. 492 – c. 460 BCE
SpouseAjatashatru
IssueUdayibhadra[1]
HouseHariyanka (by marriage)
Ikshvaku (by birth)
FatherPasenadi
ReligionBuddhism

Vajira was born a princess of the Kingdom of Kosala and was the daughter of King Pasenadi and Queen Mallika. She was also the niece of her mother-in-law, Empress Kosala Devi,[4] the first wife and chief consort of Emperor Bimbisara and the sister of King Pasenadi.

Life

Birth

Vajira or Vajirakumari was born to Pasenadi's chief queen, Mallika. According to Pali tradition, her mother was a beautiful daughter of the chief garland maker of Kosala.[5] When the princess was born, her father was apparently disappointed on hearing the child was a girl, but Buddha assured him that women were sometimes wiser than men.[5]

Marriage

The events which led to her betrothal and eventual marriage to Ajatashatru was that her husband waged a war against her father's kingdom after Bimbisara's death, the cause of the conflict being the revenues from the estate of Kashi, which was given as a dowry to Kosala Devi in her marriage to Bimbisara. After Kosala Devi's death, Pasenadi immediately confiscated the revenues of the estate of Kashi, which had been settled on her as "pin-money", this resulted in hostilities between him and Ajatashatru.[6][7]

The duel between Ajatashatru and her father was a prolonged affair, fortune favouring each combatant alternatively. Though, Pasenadi emerged victorious, and came to terms with his nephew. He gave the seventeen-year-old Vajira's hand in marriage to him.[6][8] The estate of Kashi, which had been the reason of the conflict, was given to his daughter, Vajira, as a part of her dowry in her marriage to Ajatashatru. Pasenadi also assigned the revenues from the estate of Kashi to Vajira.[9]

gollark: HAHAHAHAHA
gollark: ... because it's massively widespread?
gollark: Say you dislike the government or something and say so near your phone. Imagine the Turkish government partnered with Google to datamine the microphone data. Now they know you dislike the government and bad things may happen.
gollark: Besides, they could automatically datamine it.
gollark: I don't know exactly what they could use it for. But it's *there*, it'll probably be stored forever, you can't really revoke your access to it, and it might be going/go eventually to potatOS knows who.

References

Citations
  1. Buddhist Council of Ceylon, Ceylon. Ministry of Cultural Affairs, Sri Lanka. Bauddha Kaṭayutu Depārtamēntuva (1963). Encyclopaedia of Buddhism. Govt. of Ceylon. p. 316.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  2. Sen, Sailendra Nath (1999). Ancient Indian history and civilization (Second ed.). New Delhi: New Age International. p. 113. ISBN 9788122411980.
  3. Mukherjee, Hemchandra Raychaudhuri. With a commentary by B. N. (2005). Political History of Ancient India : From the accession of Parikshit to the extinction of the Gupta dynasty (6. impression. ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 190. ISBN 9780195643763.
  4. Jayapalan, N. (2001). History of India. New Delhi: Atlantic. p. 52. ISBN 9788171569281.
  5. Alex Wayman & Hideko Wayman (1990). The lion's roar of Queen Śrīmālā : a Buddhist scripture on the Tathāgatagarbha theory (1. Indian ed.). Motilal Banarsidass Publ. p. 3. ISBN 9788120807310.
  6. Tripathi, Rama Shankar (1942). History of Ancient India (1st. ed., repr. ed.). Delhi: Motinal Banarsidass. p. 95. ISBN 9788120800182.
  7. Upinder Singh 2016, p. 271.
  8. Manoj Kumar Pal (2008). Old Wisdom and New Horizon. Viva Books Private Ltd. p. 162.
  9. The Journal of the Bihar Research Society. Bihar Research Society. p. 127.

Sources
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.