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Shishunaga dynasty

Shishunaga, a minister raised to the throne by the people of Magadha, destroyed the Pradyota house of Avanti and joined Malwa to Magadha. His son Kalashoka held the second Buddhist council at Vaishali; the line ended when Mahapadma Nanda seized power.

  1. Shishunagac. 413–395 BCE
  2. Kalashoka (Kakavarna)c. 395–367 BCE
  3. The ten sons of Kalashokac. 367–345 BCE
  4. Mahanandinto c. 345 BCE
Period: c. 413–345 BCERegion: Magadha, with Avanti, Vatsa and Kosala absorbedCapitals: Rajagriha, Vaishali (secondary seat), Pataliputra (from Kalashoka)
Photo: CNG Coins · CC BY-SA 3.0

01The minister made king

The Mahavamsa says the people of Magadha, tired of a line in which sons killed fathers, deposed Nagadasaka and anointed his amatya Shishunaga. His great work was in the west. Avanti, ruled from Ujjain by the Pradyotas, had been Magadha’s rival for a century; Shishunaga ended that house and brought Avanti under Magadha, and with it the routes to the western sea. Vatsa and Kosala had already fallen in. From now on Magadha had no equal in the Ganga plain.

02Kalashoka and the council at Vaishali

Shishunaga’s son is Kalashoka in the Buddhist chronicles and Kakavarna in the Puranas. In his tenth year, a hundred years after the parinirvana, monks of Vaishali were found accepting gold and silver and keeping nine other relaxed practices, and seven hundred elders met at Vaishali to judge them. That was the second council, and the dispute behind it is the beginning of the split between Sthaviras and Mahasanghikas. Kalashoka moved the royal seat back to Pataliputra. Bana’s Harshacharita remembers his end: Kakavarna was stabbed in the throat near his city.

Vaishali
Place · Vishala of the Ramayana; capital of the Licchavis and the Vajji gana, 6th century BCEVaishaliThe capital of the Licchavis, the most famous of the ganas, the republics of ancient Bharat. The Jain scriptures place Bhagwan Mahavira’s birth in its suburb Kundagrama, and the Buddha preached here often.Read →

03Ten sons, then the Nandas

The Mahabodhivamsa says Kalashoka’s ten sons ruled together after him for twenty-two years. The Puranas give a single line instead, ending with Mahanandin, and say that Mahapadma, his son by a shudra mother, took the throne and founded the Nanda house. The two traditions disagree on names and order, and nothing from the Shishunaga kings themselves has been read in stone. What stands certain is the shape of what they did: they finished Magadha’s conquest of the Ganga plain and Malwa, and handed the Nandas a kingdom ready to become an empire.

The rulers

  1. 1ShishunagaEnded the Pradyotas of Avantic. 413–395 BCE
  2. 2Kalashoka (Kakavarna)Second Buddhist council at Vaishalic. 395–367 BCE
  3. 3The ten sons of KalashokaRuled jointly, by the Mahabodhivamsac. 367–345 BCE
  4. 4MahanandinLast king in the Puranic listto c. 345 BCE

What they left

  • Avanti and Malwa joined to Magadha
  • The second Buddhist council at Vaishali
  • Pataliputra restored as the royal seat

Places

VaishaliExcavated
Janapadas and the Rise of Magadha

Vaishali

The capital of the Licchavis, the most famous of the ganas, the republics of ancient Bharat. The Jain scriptures place Bhagwan Mahavira’s birth in its suburb Kundagrama, and the Buddha preached here often.

Rajgir (Rajagriha)Ruined
Janapadas and the Rise of Magadha

Rajgir (Rajagriha)

The ring of five hills that was Magadha’s first capital: Jarasandha’s Girivraja in the Mahabharata, Bimbisara’s Rajagriha, and a place equally holy to Buddhists and Jains. Its stone walls run for some 40 km over the hills.

PataliputraExcavated
The Maurya Empire

Pataliputra

Capital of Magadha, of the Nandas, the Mauryas and the Guptas, on the Ganga where the Son once joined it. Under modern Patna lie the timber palisade Megasthenes described and the pillared hall of the Mauryas.

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