page_title: History of India
section_title: Mahajanapadas
hierarchical_section_title: History of India / Iron Age (1500 – 200 BCE) / Second urbanisation (800–200 BCE) / Mahajanapadas
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of places mentioned in ancient Buddhist Texts (like Anguttara Nikaya), Ramayana and Mahabharata. Sources: (2005) The Hindu Equilibrium: India C.1500 B.C. - 2000 A.D., Oxford University Press, p.&#160;xxxviii ISBN&#58; 978-0-19-927579-3.&#32; Approximate boundaries are described by H.C. Raychaudhuri (p. 96-150), and https://books.google.com/books?id=8qvY8pxVxcwC&amp;pg=PA386 Habib, Irfan, and Habib, Faiz (1995). "A Map of India 600-320 B.C." in Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 56, pp. 95–104. www.jstor.org/stable/44158590 Kenoyer, J. M. (1995), “Interaction Systems, Specialised Crafts and Culture Change: The Indus Valley Tradition and the Indo-Gangetic Tradition in South Asia”, in G. Erdosy, The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia: Language, Material Culture, and Ethnicity, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, ISBN&#160;9783110144475 Raychaudhuri, H.C. (1972), Political History of Ancient India: From the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty, Calcutta: University of Calcutta. Schwartzberg, J. E. (1992), A Historical Atlas of South Asia: University of Oxford Press Singh, U. (2009), A History of Ancient and Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century, Delhi: Longman, ISBN&#160;978-81-317-1677-9 Background from http://www2.demis.nl/mapserver/mapper.asp Made with GIMP
context_page_description: According to consensus in modern genetics, anatomically modern humans first arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa between 73,000 and 55,000 years ago. However, the earliest known human remains in South Asia date to 30,000 years ago. Settled life, which involves the transition from foraging to farming and pastoralism, began in South Asia around 7,000 BCE. At the site of Mehrgarh, Balochistan, Pakistan, presence can be documented of the domestication of wheat and barley, rapidly followed by that of goats, sheep, and cattle. By 4,500 BCE, settled life had spread more widely, and began to gradually evolve into the Indus Valley Civilization, an early civilization of the Old world, which was contemporaneous with Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. This civilization flourished between 2,500 BCE and 1900 BCE in what today is Pakistan and north-western India and was noted for its urban planning, baked brick houses, elaborate drainage, and water supply.
  In the early second millennium BCE, persistent drought caused the population of the Indus Valley to scatter from large urban centres to villages.
context_section_description: The period from c. 600 BCE to c. 300 BCE witnessed the rise of the Mahajanapadas, sixteen powerful and vast kingdoms and oligarchic republics. These Mahajanapadas evolved and flourished in a belt stretching from Gandhara in the northwest to Bengal in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent and included parts of the trans-Vindhyan region. Ancient Buddhist texts, like the Anguttara Nikaya, make frequent reference to these sixteen great kingdoms and republics—Anga, Assaka, Avanti, Chedi, Gandhara, Kashi, Kamboja, Kosala, Kuru, Magadha, Malla, Matsya (or Machcha), Panchala, Surasena, Vriji, and Vatsa. This period saw the second major rise of urbanism in India after the Indus Valley Civilisation.
  Early "republics" or Gaṇa sangha, such as Shakyas, Koliyas, Mallas, and Licchavis had republican governments. Gaṇa sanghas, such as Mallas, centered in the city of Kusinagara, and the Vajjian Confederacy (Vajji), centered in the city of Vaishali, existed as early as the 6th century BCE and persisted in some areas until the 4th century CE. The most famous clan amongst the ruling confederate clans of the Vajji Mahajanapada were the Licchavis.
  This period corresponds in an archaeological context to the Northern Black Polished Ware culture. Especially focused in the Central Ganges plain but also spreading across vast areas of the northern and central Indian subcontinent, this culture is characterized by the emergence of large cities with massive fortifications, significant population growth, increased social stratification, wide-ranging trade networks, construction of public architecture and water channels, specialized craft industries (e.g., ivory and carnelian carving), a system of weights, punch-marked coins, and the introduction of writing in the form of Brahmi and Kharosthi scripts. The language of the gentry at that time was Sanskrit, while the languages of the general population of northern India are referred to as Prakrits.
  Many of the sixteen kingdoms had coalesced into four major ones by 500/400 BCE, by the time of Gautama Buddha. These four were Vatsa, Avanti, Kosala, and Magadha. The life of Gautama Buddha was mainly associated with these four kingdoms.
caption: The Mahajanapadas were the sixteen most powerful and vast kingdoms and republics of the era, located mainly across the Indo-Gangetic plains.
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