Greater Magadha

The Indian subcontinent c. 500 BCE, during the Mahajanapada period. By 500 BCE, the ancient Kuru-Panchala realm had already declined and given way to influences from the eastern Magadha region.

Greater Magadha is a concept in studies of the early history of India. It is used to refer to the political and cultural sphere that developed in the lower Gangetic plains during the Vedic age. The śramaṇa culture of Greater Magadha developed separately from the orthodox Brahmin-oriented śrauta culture to its west, that was characteristic of the upper Ganges basin (the Ganga-Yamuna doab).

The name derives from a later kingdom, Magadha, that arose in the same region after the Vedic period had ended.

Overview

The concept was developed in a book by the indologist Johannes Bronkhorst (2007), where he defines the region to comprise modern day Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh. According to J.D. Long, although the inhabitants of Greater Magadha revered the same deities as the śrauta Brahmins, they developed an ideological opposition to the sacrifice and ritual slaying of animals, even going so far as to regard all violence as undesirable in the path towards liberation (mokṣa or nirvāṇa).

Out of the ideological opposition between these two cultural spheres – the orthodox śrauta realm of Kuru-Panchala in the west, and Greater Magadha in the east – developed the two main spiritual ideologies of Vedic India. Śrauta practiced by Brahmanas, which placed a lot of importance on the system of sacrifice and ritual correctness, arose out of the culture of the erstwhile Kuru-Panchala realm, while the śramaṇa tradition, which placed emphasis on the spiritual striving towards liberation, that developed in Greater Magadha, later to give rise to the Buddhism and Jainism.