Anga and Champa

Chapter argument. Aṅga and its capital Campā must be reconstructed through a controlled combination of archaeology, early Buddhist and Jain textual traditions, river geography, and later historical testimony. Campā was not simply a literary “great city” or a modern place-name attached to Bhagalpur. Excavation near Nathnagar–Champanagar documents a fortified and repeatedly rebuilt settlement with Northern Black Polished Ware, ring-wells, coins, sealings, craft objects and structural remains. Texts add evidence for political incorporation, brahmanical endowment, religious debate, merchants, travellers and remembered long-distance exchange. The strongest history keeps these source types separate before asking where they converge. 14.1 Aṅga is a historical region, not a synonym for the modern Bhagalpur district Early Sanskrit, Buddhist and Jain traditions use Aṅga as a regional and political name, but its boundaries shifted and cannot be mapped directly onto a modern district. The core association with the lower middle Ganga around Bhagalpur and Munger is strong, while claims about its maximum extent vary by source and period. For socio-economic history, the safer approach is to begin with securely associated places and routes rather than to draw a single timeless frontier. Campā was the principal urban focus of Aṅga in early historic literature, but the lives of cultivators, fishers, artisans and mobile traders extended beyond any capital’s walls. Modern Anga identity and Angika language history belong to later chapters and should not be projected backward as unchanged institutions. Figure 52 — Aṅga–Campā must be reconstructed from distinct evidence streams before they are combined. 14.2 The identification of ancient Campā with the Bhagalpur–Nathnagar landscape rests on converging evidence The excavated “Champa mounds” lie near Nathnagar and Champanagar, west of central Bhagalpur. Archaeological Survey reports from 1968–69 onward recorded mud fortification, early pottery and later HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II structural phases in this zone (Indian Archaeology 1968–69: 4; 1970–71: 4–5). The resemblance between ancient and modern place-names is supportive but is not the whole case: the riverine setting, early historic occupation and literary geography strengthen the identification. At the same time, the exact limits of the ancient city remain a research question. A large archaeological landscape cannot be reduced to one mound, one modern neighbourhood, or one sacred enclosure. 14.3 Campā’s river setting was an economic asset and an archaeological complication Campā stood in a landscape shaped by the Ganga and subsidiary watercourses. River access lowered the cost of moving grain, timber, animals, pottery, stone and other bulky goods, and linked the city to both upstream and downstream settlements. Yet the same setting complicates archaeology: channels migrate, banks erode, low areas accumulate sediment and modern occupation obscures earlier surfaces. The city’s riverine advantage therefore should not be turned into a claim that every commodity travelled by boat or that a stable ancient harbour has been located. What can be said securely is that Campā occupied an exceptionally favourable position for combining agricultural hinterland, river transport and eastern Ganga communication. 14.4 Fortification indicates collective investment, defence and boundary-making Exploration and excavation revealed substantial mud ramparts. The 1970–71 season reported a second- phase rampart with a basal width of about fifteen metres and an extant height approaching five metres; later work identified an earlier rampart phase and associated brick and timber features (Indian Archaeology 1970– 71: 4–5; 1971–72: 5). Such construction required organised labour and repeated maintenance. Fortification can signal insecurity, political competition, control over access, civic investment or elite authority, but it does not by itself reveal the constitutional form of the city. Nor should an excavated rampart be equated automatically with the walls described in later narrative texts. Figure 53 — Campā as a riverine urban system: conceptual relationships among city, Ganga corridor, hinterland and markets. 149149 GAJENDRA THAKUR 14.5 Northern Black Polished Ware places Campā within the wider early historic urban horizon Northern Black Polished Ware (NBPW) occurs in Campā’s excavated deposits together with black-and- red, black and red wares. Its presence connects the site with the broader material transformation of the middle Ganga plain discussed in Chapter 6. NBPW is useful as a chronological and interregional marker, but it is not a badge of a single ethnic group, dynasty or “urban civilisation.” At Campā it is significant because it occurs alongside fortification, ring-wells, structural remains, coins, beads, terracottas and other evidence of intensified occupation. The archaeological case for urbanism emerges from this bundle, not from one pottery type. 14.6 Excavation shows rebuilding rather than a single moment of urban foundation The Champā excavations identified multiple rampart and construction phases. Work in 1972–73 distinguished structural periods associated with late NBPW, Kushan and Gupta horizons; later seasons exposed additional late-NBPW rooms, halls and drains (Indian Archaeology 1972–73: 6–7; 1975–76: 7–8). These sequences are crucial because literary traditions often imagine cities as if they were founded in a single act. Archaeology instead shows cumulative rebuilding, repair and reuse. The “city of Campā” was therefore a historical process. Its physical form changed even while the name and regional centrality could persist. 14.7 Ring-wells and drains document investment in dense settlement infrastructure The 1970–71 excavations reported ring-wells within the habitation area, while later work encountered brick drains and substantial structural remains. Ring-wells can serve drainage, waste disposal, water management or other functions depending on context, so their interpretation must be specific rather than formulaic. At Campā their importance lies in demonstrating built investment below the scale of monumental fortification. Dense habitation creates recurring problems of water, refuse and circulation. Infrastructure therefore belongs to social and economic history: it required materials, specialised labour, maintenance and decisions about how space was organised. 14.8 Brick structures show differentiated interior space during the late-NBPW horizon The 1975–76 season exposed late-NBPW structures comprising multiple rooms and a larger hall with brick-soling floors. Such architecture indicates planned interior spaces and durable construction, but room function cannot be assigned simply from shape. A hall need not be an assembly hall; a room need not be a shop. Artefact associations, access patterns and activity residues are required. The safest interpretation is that Campā contained substantial built environments in which domestic, administrative, commercial or craft functions may have overlapped. This is more informative than forcing every structure into a modern category. HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II Figure 54 — Selected excavated horizons at Campā: sequence and rebuilding rather than a single founding moment. 14.9 Craft evidence reveals a diversified material economy Excavation yielded terracotta plaques and figurines, stone and semi-precious-stone beads, bone points, iron and copper objects, ivory pieces, toy carts, seals and moulds. These finds reveal a city in which specialised objects circulated and multiple craft traditions were represented. They do not prove that every item was manufactured locally. Chapter 11 established the distinction between object presence and workshop evidence. At Campā that distinction is especially important because a commercial centre could import finished goods while also supporting local specialists. The archaeological question is therefore not “Was Campā a craft city?” but which stages of which production chains can be demonstrated on site. 14.10 Jewellery moulds provide unusually strong evidence for local manufacture Among Campā’s most informative finds are stone moulds associated with jewellery production. The 1974–75 review noted moulds for ornaments and argued, on the basis of repeated discoveries across phases, that jewellery manufacture continued into the Gupta period (Indian Archaeology 1974–75: 8–9). Moulds move the inference beyond mere consumption because they represent a production tool. Even here, scale remains uncertain: the evidence does not tell us the number of workshops, their ownership, or whether artisans worked independently, for households, or under elite patronage. It does, however, support a durable tradition of skilled manufacture. 14.11 Iron, copper, bone and ivory show technological pluralism rather than a single “metal age” Campā’s assemblage combines iron tools and weapons, copper objects and coins, bone implements and ivory artefacts. This mixture is typical of complex early historic technology. New materials did not simply replace older ones. Bone and ivory remained valuable for points, ornaments, dice and fine objects; copper retained roles in ornaments, vessels and currency; iron expanded possibilities in tools, construction and weaponry. The social history of technology lies in access to raw materials, skill, repair and market demand. 151151 GAJENDRA THAKUR Material choice depended on cost, function, status and availability, not on a linear ladder from “primitive” to “advanced.” 14.12 Coins and sealings show portable value and administrative communication, not a fully monetised economy Cast copper coins and terracotta sealings occur in Campā’s excavated contexts. Coins made value more portable and divisible, while sealings could be used in administration, storage, ownership or authentication. Their presence strengthens the picture of an urban centre with transactions and institutional communication. It does not mean that taxes, wages and market exchange were all paid in coin. Grain, labour obligations, gifts, credit and barter could coexist with money. The proportion of monetary to non-monetary exchange cannot be calculated from the survival of coins alone. 14.13 Campā depended on a productive rural hinterland A fortified city of this scale required regular inflows of grain, pulses, oil, vegetables, dairy products, livestock, fodder, firewood, timber and clay. The Ganga plain around Campā offered fertile agricultural land but also flood risk and seasonal variation. Urban demand could encourage specialised production and market-oriented surplus, yet the archaeology does not permit a precise reconstruction of crop acreage, tenancy or prices. The key socio-economic point is interdependence: urban craft specialists and religious communities depended on rural producers, while villages gained access to manufactured goods, markets, credit and political institutions through the city. 14.14 Campā’s market function emerged from location, population and institutional demand An urban market is not merely a named bazaar. It is a recurring concentration of buyers, sellers, carriers, storage, information and rules. Campā’s position on the Ganga, its fortification, craft assemblage, coins and textual reputation as a major city together make a strong case for substantial exchange activity. Religious visitors and political officials added demand to resident consumption. Periodic rural markets, neighbourhood exchange and larger urban marketplaces could all coexist. The evidence does not allow their exact locations to be mapped inside the ancient city. HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II Figure 55 — Campā’s economy depended on reciprocal flows among rural producers, urban households, merchants, crafts and institutions. 14.15 Buddhist texts preserve a vivid image of Campā as a city of householders, brahmins and visitors The Soṇadaṇḍa Sutta (DN 4) places the Buddha at Campā on the bank of the Gaggarā lotus pond and describes the brahmin Soṇadaṇḍa living there on a royal grant from Bimbisāra. Other canonical passages remember the Buddha, Sāriputta, Vaṅgīsa and lay followers at Campā. These texts are valuable because they situate religious debate inside a socially differentiated urban setting of brahmins, householders, rulers, monks and lay communities. They are not censuses. Named figures survive because the texts had doctrinal and narrative reasons to remember them. 14.16 Literary memories of merchants and Suvaṇṇabhūmi should be used as evidence for imagined commercial horizons, not shipping statistics Later Buddhist narrative traditions associate Campā’s merchants with voyages toward Suvaṇṇabhūmi. Such stories are often cited to call Campā a maritime port. The geographical possibility of moving down the Ganga toward the sea is real, but a Jātaka is not a harbour ledger. The strongest formulation is therefore that eastern Indian literary memory associated Campā with ambitious long-distance trade and waterborne mobility. Direct archaeological proof of a specific Campā-to-Southeast-Asia shipping route in the early historic period is much thinner. The chapter keeps the literary horizon and the material evidence in dialogue without collapsing them. 14.17 The Soṇadaṇḍa endowment illuminates political economy after Aṅga’s incorporation into Magadha DN 4 states that Soṇadaṇḍa enjoyed Campā as a royal grant from King Bimbisāra, described as productive in grain, water, wood and living resources. Whatever the precise institutional form behind the Pāli description, the passage is important because it links political conquest, revenue assignment, agrarian 153153 GAJENDRA THAKUR resources and brahmanical prestige. A city and its hinterland could be embedded in relationships of royal patronage as well as market exchange. The text should not be treated as a cadastral document, but it offers a rare window into how political control could be expressed economically after the loss of Aṅga’s independence. 14.18 Gaggarā’s lotus pond represents public landscape, memory and patronage Buddhist tradition repeatedly locates the Buddha beside the Gaggarā-pokkharaṇī, a lotus pond associated with Queen Gaggarā and a grove of campaka trees. Whether every topographical detail can be matched to a modern waterbody is less important than the urban function implied by the tradition. Tanks and groves could supply water, shade, leisure, gathering space and locations for teachers outside dense habitation. A remembered royal woman as patron also introduces gender into public landscape. The pond is therefore useful socio-cultural evidence, provided literary memory is not mistaken for an excavated plan. 14.19 Campā was a node in the circulation of teachers and ideas Canonical texts place multiple discourses and monastic episodes at Campā, including the Soṇadaṇḍa and Kandaraka settings and Vinaya material. Such repetition suggests that the city occupied a recognised position within routes of teaching and travel. Religious mobility depended on the same infrastructures as commerce: roads, ferries, food supply, lodging and donor households. Intellectual history is therefore inseparable from economic history. A city able to host large groups of mendicants and audiences needed surplus and social organisation, even though texts naturally emphasise doctrine rather than provisioning. 14.20 Vinaya traditions make Campā part of the institutional geography of the Buddhist Saṅgha The Vinaya preserves episodes and formal decisions associated with Campā. These traditions show that the city was not merely a place where sermons happened; it also became part of the remembered institutional geography in which questions of monastic procedure were discussed and regulated. The historicity of every narrative detail must be evaluated separately, but the cumulative evidence marks Campā as an important eastern centre in Buddhist memory. Institutional gatherings also had material consequences: visiting monks required food, cloth, medicine and temporary or permanent accommodation. 14.21 Jain traditions add a different sacred map of Campā Jain traditions connect Campā with Tīrthaṅkara memory, especially Vāsupūjya, and with the itineraries of later teachers. Modern Champapuri remains a major Jain sacred centre. These traditions are essential to the long cultural history of the place, but they have their own textual chronologies and theological purposes. They should not be used mechanically to date excavated layers. What they demonstrate securely is the durability of Campā/Champāpuri as a remembered sacred landscape across communities and centuries. 14.22 The city’s prosperity depended on labour that elite texts rarely name Rampart building, brick manufacture, transport, pottery production, food processing, cleaning, animal care, ferrying, carting and craft work required large amounts of labour. Elite and religious texts tend to preserve kings, brahmins, merchants and teachers more readily than porters, builders or dependent workers. Archaeology partly corrects that imbalance because walls, drains, tools and production debris embody work even when workers’ names are lost. A socio-economic history of Campā must therefore treat labour as central rather than as background scenery. HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II 14.23 Women participated in the urban economy even when the evidence names few of them Women appear most visibly in textual memory as patrons, householders, courtesans, queens or renunciants, while archaeology rarely permits sexing everyday work. Yet the functioning of an early historic city depended on food preparation, textile production, childcare, retail, service, ritual and household management, many of which involved women. Queen Gaggarā’s remembered association with a public pond is one unusual example of female patronage. The chapter avoids assigning every spindle whorl or domestic artefact to women, but it also avoids reproducing the textual silence as if women were economically absent. 14.24 Wealth, ritual prestige, political rank and labour status intersected without forming one simple hierarchy Campā’s texts and archaeology reveal several axes of inequality. Soṇadaṇḍa represents brahmanical prestige combined with a royal economic grant; merchants could possess substantial wealth without political sovereignty; rulers and officials controlled resources; artisans possessed specialised skills; dependent labourers had less autonomy. Gender and life stage further shaped access to property and institutions. These dimensions did not necessarily coincide. The city therefore reinforces the argument of Chapter 8: early social differentiation should not be reduced to a fully fixed later caste map. 14.25 Aṅga’s incorporation into Magadha changed sovereignty without erasing Campā’s urban importance Political traditions remember rivalry between Aṅga and Magadha and the eventual annexation of Aṅga by Bimbisāra. By the setting of DN 4, Bimbisāra is clearly represented as exercising authority at Campā. Conquest altered fiscal and political relations, but cities do not disappear simply because sovereignty changes. Campā remained important enough to appear among the major cities remembered in Buddhist literature. This continuity is economically plausible: a conqueror had reason to preserve and appropriate a productive city, its revenue, routes and institutions. 14.26 Urban continuity after conquest was compatible with repeated physical transformation Archaeological phases at Campā extend well beyond the early NBPW horizon into Kushan, Gupta and later periods. This long sequence warns against telling the city’s history only through the sixth–fifth centuries BCE. The meaning of “Campā” changed as new buildings, religious communities and political systems appeared. At the same time, reuse of location and infrastructure could preserve regional centrality. Historical continuity here means repeated occupation and memory, not an unchanged urban form or social order. 14.27 Xuanzang’s seventh-century description belongs to Campā’s later afterlife, not to the Buddha’s city The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang described the country and capital of Champā many centuries after the early historic period, noting a fertile landscape and Buddhist establishments. His account is valuable for the long history of the region and for showing that the place remained legible as an important centre. It cannot be projected backward to reconstruct the size, monastery count or street plan of Campā in the Buddha’s lifetime. The chronological gap is itself historically useful: it demonstrates how sacred and urban geographies were reworked over time. 155155 GAJENDRA THAKUR 14.28 Later centres such as Vikramaśīlā belong to the same broad eastern Ganga corridor but not to early Campā’s urban system The Bhagalpur region later contained major institutions such as Vikramaśīlā. Their presence confirms the long strategic importance of the eastern Ganga corridor, but they should not be folded into an “ancient Campā complex” spanning a millennium. Each site has its own chronology, patronage and economic base. Regional history becomes stronger when connections are traced without erasing temporal difference. The river corridor persisted; the institutions occupying it changed. 14.29 Campā’s relation to Mithilā was one of connectivity across the Ganga world, not territorial identity A Jātaka tradition gives a conventional distance between Campā and Mithilā, while later geographical writing often places Mithilā primarily north of the Ganga and Aṅga to the south and east. Such evidence is useful for reconstructing perceived spatial relationships but not for drawing fixed modern-style borders. The two regions participated in overlapping exchange, pilgrimage and political networks. This volume therefore treats Mithilā and Aṅga as connected historical regions, not as interchangeable territories or as parts of a single timeless polity. 14.30 Conclusion: Campā was a fortified river city whose centrality was repeatedly remade The strongest reconstruction of Campā rests on convergence. Archaeology documents fortification, NBPW occupation, ring-wells, rooms, drains, coins, sealings and specialised craft evidence. Buddhist texts remember a major city of brahmins, householders, rulers, teachers and travellers beside the Gaggarā pond; Jain traditions preserve another sacred geography; later pilgrims document the site’s continuing religious importance. River location linked Campā to hinterland production and wider routes. None of these sources alone proves the whole city. Together, critically separated and then recombined, they reveal Aṅga’s capital as a durable socio-economic node whose political sovereignty, built form and cultural meanings changed over time. Table 14.1 — Evidence for Aṅga and Campā, and limits of inference Evidence What it supports What it does not Key references prove alone Mud ramparts and Fortification, Exact political IAR 1968–69; 1970– structural phases organised constitution or 71; 1971–72 construction, identity of builders rebuilding and dense occupation NBPW and Early historic A single ethnicity, IAR 1968–69; 1971– associated pottery chronology and dynasty or exact 72; Singh 2008 interregional material foundation date links Ring-wells, drains, Investment in urban Specific room IAR 1970–71; 1975– rooms and halls infrastructure and functions without 76 durable built space activity evidence Jewellery moulds and Local production for Scale, ownership or IAR 1974–75; Prasad craft objects at least some organisation of all 1987 specialised crafts workshops Coins and sealings Portable value, A fully monetised IAR 1970–71; 1972– transactions and market economy 73 HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II Evidence What it supports What it does not Key references prove alone institutional communication DN 4 and other Pāli Campā as major city; A census, street plan, Walshe 1995; texts Gaggarā landscape; or exact Malalasekera 1937– royal grant; religious archaeological dating 38 and social actors Jātaka trade Literary memory of Direct archaeological Jātaka traditions; Ray narratives ambitious long- proof of a specific 2003 distance commerce overseas shipping route Jain sacred traditions Long-term religious Date of excavated Jaini 1979 memory of layers or literal Campā/Champāpuri continuity of every narrative detail Xuanzang and later Later urban/religious Conditions in the Beal 1884 accounts afterlife and regional Buddha’s lifetime geography 157157