Virudhaka

Virudhaka (IAST: Virūḍhaka, Pali: Viḍūḍabha, Sanskrit: विरूढक) was a king of Kosala during the lifetime of the Buddha. Virudhaka was the son of Raja Prasenjit.

Soon after usurping the prosperous kingdom built up by his father Bimbisara, the parricide Ajatashatru (ruled 491-461 BCE) went to war with his aged uncle Prasenjit, and gained complete control of Kashi. Just after this Prasenjit, like Bimbisara, was deposed by his son, and died. The new king, Virūḍhaka (in Pali Viḍūḍabha), then attacked and virtually annihilated the little autonomous tribe of Shakyas and Koliyas, in Himalyan foothills of Nepal but after some month Nepalese monarch annexed these places back by defeating Virudhaka.^[1]

Probably Virudhaka, like Ajatashatru of Magadha, had ambitions of empire, and wished to embark on a career of conquest after bringing the outlying peoples, who had paid loose homage to his father, more directly under the control of the centre; but his intentions were unfulfilled, for we hear no more of him except an unreliable legend that he was destroyed by a miracle soon after his massacre of Shakyas. A little later his kingdom was incorporated in Magadha.^[1]

References

1. 1 2 A.L. Basham, The Wonders that was India, 1967, p. 47

Basham, A. L. The Wonder That was India. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1963.