Greater Magadha

Greater Magadha is a concept in the early historiography of India.[1] It is used to refer to the political and cultural sphere that developed in the lower Gangetic plains during the Vedic age. The name derives from the kingdom of Magadha that later arose in this region. The culture of Greater Magadha developed separately from the orthodox śrauta culture that was characteristic of the upper Gangetic basin (the Ganga-Yamuna doab) to its west. The concept was developed by the indologist Johannes Bronkhorst in his work Greater Magadha: Studies in the Culture of Early India[2], where he defines the region to comprise modern day Bihar and easter Uttar Pradesh. According to Jeffrey D. Long[3], although the inhabitants of Greater Magadha revered the same deities as the srauta Brahmins, they developed an ideological opposition to the ritual slaying and sacrifice of animals, even going so far as to regard all violence as undesirable in the path towards liberation (mokṣa or nirvāṇa ).

The Indian subcontinent c.500 BCE, during the Mahajanapada period. By 500 BCE, the ancient Kuru-Panchala realm had already declined and given way to influences from the eastern Magadha region.

Out of the ideological opposition between these two cultural spheres - the orthodox śrauta realm of Kuru-Panchala in the west, and Greater Magadha in the east - developed the two main spiritual ideologies of Vedic India. Śrauta practiced by Brahmanas, which placed a lot of importance on the system of sacrifice and ritual correctness, arose out of the culture of the erstwhile Kuru-Panchala realm, while the śramaṇa tradition which placed emphasis on the spiritual striving towards liberation (and later giving rise to the Buddhist and Jain religions) developed in Greater Magadha. [3]