The Licchavi City and the Last Journey

Vaishali was the seat of the Licchavis, the leading people of the Vajji confederacy, and early Buddhist texts treat their assembly as a model. The Buddha is shown telling a minister of Ajatashatru that the Vajjis cannot be conquered while they meet in full and frequent assembly, and then applying the same conditions to his own monastic community, which is why the passage is quoted in modern Indian writing as an early instance of republican government, a reading that goes well beyond what the texts themselves claim. The Buddha visited repeatedly. He accepted a mango grove from the courtesan Ambapali, and the account of her invitation, in which the Licchavi nobles try to buy the honour from her and are refused, is one of the few places in the canon where a woman of her profession is treated with unqualified respect.

Tradition also places at Vaishali the admission of women to the monastic order at the request of Mahapajapati, although the recensions locate that episode differently. On his last journey the Buddha turned to look back at the city, said he would not see it again, and announced at a shrine outside it that he would die within three months. The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang, arriving a thousand years later, was shown the ruins of Ambapali's house and the stupa the Licchavis were said to have built over their share of the relics, so the sites the texts name were still being pointed out to visitors in the seventh century.