A Note on Rājagṛha

Summary

This short note engages with recent scholarship on the ancient city of Rājagṛha, capital of the Magadha kingdom in the Buddha’s time. In a monograph on Rājagṛha, Dr. B. C. Law had argued that the city mentioned in Jain and Buddhist texts was distinct from Pāṭaliputra and should be identified with the modern village of Rajgir in Bihar. He cited Hemacandra’s Triṣaṣṭiśalākāpuruṣa‑carita and Chinese pilgrim accounts to support his chronology. The present author revisits Hemacandra’s passages and contends that Dr. Law misread certain words. She notes that Hemacandra calls the city Kuśāgārapura and makes no clear distinction between “old” and “new” Rājagṛha, thereby weakening the argument for a separate site. The note also points out that another Jain text, the Marīci‑śrīmrūla‑kalpa, refers to Kuṣāgārapura only as a descriptive term meaning “grass‑hut city,” not as a proper name. In the Chinese sources, the differentiation between inner and outer cities may refer to fortifications rather than distinct settlements. By re‑examining the key passages and comparing them with Brahmanical Puranas, the author suggests that Rājagṛha and Girivraja were alternative names for the same town and that its shift to Pāṭaliputra occurred gradually. The note concludes by stressing the need for cautious use of textual evidence and for collaboration between literary scholars and archaeologists in reconstructing urban history.