Moriya (tribe)
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Moriya Republic | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| c. 7th century BCE–c. 5th century BCE | |||||||
.jpg) Moriya among the Gaṇasaṅghas | |||||||
.png) The Mahajanapadas in the post-Vedic period. Moriya was to the east of Sakya, northeast of Kosala, and west of Malla. | |||||||
| Capital | Pipphalivana | ||||||
| Common languages | Prakrit Sanskrit | ||||||
| Religion | Historical Vedic religion Buddhism Jainism | ||||||
| Government | Aristocratic republic | ||||||
| Rājā | |||||||
| Historical era | Iron Age | ||||||
• Established | c. 7th century BCE | ||||||
• Conquered by Ajātasattu of Magadha c. 468 BCE | c. 5th century BCE | ||||||
| |||||||
| Today part of | India Nepal | ||||||
Moriya (Pāli: Moriya) was an ancient Indo-Aryan tribe of northeastern South Asia whose existence is attested during the Iron Age. The Moriyas were organised into a gaṇasaṅgha (an aristocratic oligarchic republic), presently referred to as the Moriya Republic.[1][2]
The Moriyas lived to the northeast of Kosala, from which they were separated by the Anomā or Rāptī river. The Moriyas' western neighbours were the Koliyas, while the Mallakas lived to their east,[2] and the Sarayū river was their southern border.[1]
The capital of the Moriyas was Pipphalivana, which the 7th century CE Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang later referred to by the name of Nyagrodhavana.[1][2][3]
Name
The Moriyas originally obtained their name from the mayura (peacock) because the peacock was their totem.[4]
History
Like the other republican tribes neighbouring them, the Moriyas were an Indo-Aryan tribe in the eastern Gangetic plain in the Greater Magadha cultural region. [5][6]
After the death of the Buddha, the Moriyas claimed a share of his relics from the Mallakas of Kusinārā, in whose territory he had died and had been cremated.[2][3][7] The Moriyas received the embers from the Buddha's cremation, which they then enclosed within a stūpa in their capital of Pipphalivana.[1][7]
King Ajātasattu of Magadha annexed The Moriyas soon after he had annexed the Vajjika League.[1]
Legacy
According to Buddhist tradition, the Moriya tribe were the ancestors of the Maurya dynasty[2][3] who under the leadership of Chandragupta Maurya in the 4th century BCE seized power in Magadha.[8] Chandragupta and his descendants would expand the Magadha empire so that it at one point ruled most of South Asia.[1]
Under the reign of Chandragupta's grandson Asoka, who was a patron of Buddhism, Buddhist writers attempted to connect Asoka to the Buddha by claiming that his ancestral tribe, the Moriyas, were descended from Sakyas who had fled from the Kauśalya king Viḍūḍabha's annexation of their state by fleeing into the mountains. The record of the oldest Buddhist texts, according to which both the Moriyas and the Sakyas were among the tribes who claimed a share of the Buddha's relics from the Mallakas of Kusinārā, however shows that the Moriyas were contemporaneous with the Sakyas, and therefore already existed before the destruction of the Sakya republic; the geographical location of the Moriya republic, which was further to the south of Sakya, furthermore counters the claim that the Moriyas were descended from Sakyas who had fled into the Himālaya mountains, which were to the north of the Sakya state.[1]