Matsya Rajya

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The position of the Matsya kingdom in Iron Age Vedic India.

Matsya or Machcha (Sanskrit for fish) was the name of a tribe and the state of the Vedic civilization of India. It lay to south of the kingdom of Kurus and west of the Yamuna which separated it from the kingdom of Panchalas. It roughly corresponded to former state of Jaipur in Rajasthan, and included the whole of Alwar with portions of Bharatpur. The capital of Matsya was at Viratanagara (modern Bairat) which is said to have been named after its founder king Virata. In Pali literature, the Matsya tribe is usually associated with the Surasena. The western Matsya was the hill tract on the north bank of Chambal. A branch of Matsya is also found in later days in Visakhapatnam region. In early sixth century BCE, Matsya was one the sixteen great kingdoms (Mahajanapadas) mentioned in Buddhist traditions, but its political clout had greatly dwindled and had not much of political importance left of their own by the time of Buddha. King Sujata ruled over both the Chedis and Matsyas thus showing that Matsya once formed a part of Chedi Kingdom.