Which one of the following is NOT listed as one of the sixteen mahajanapadas in the pre-Mauryan period?

Correct — D, Kalinga. The list of sixteen mahajanapadas comes from Buddhist texts, chiefly the Anguttara Nikaya, and runs Anga, Magadha, Kashi, Kosala, Vajji, Malla, Chedi, Vatsa, Kuru, Panchala, Matsya, Surasena, Assaka, Avanti, Gandhara and Kamboja. Kalinga is absent from it. Kalinga enters the record prominently only later — first as the region Ashoka conquered in the war that changed his policy, and then under Kharavela of the Chedi line, whose Hathigumpha inscription is its great source. Kuru, Vatsa and Gandhara are all on the list of sixteen.

• (a)Kuru — On the list. The Kuru mahajanapada lay around the Delhi and Haryana region with Indraprastha and Hastinapura as its centres, and it is the older heartland of the Vedic tradition.
• (b)Vatsa — On the list. Vatsa had its capital at Kaushambi on the Yamuna, and under Udayana it was one of the four powers competing for supremacy in the sixth century BCE.
• (c)Gandhara — On the list, and the north-western member of it. Its capital Taxila was a centre of learning and it later came under Achaemenid control.

By about the sixth century BCE the Ganga valley and its neighbours were organised into sixteen large states called mahajanapadas. Some were monarchies with a hereditary king, and some were ganas or sanghas, oligarchies in which a body of chiefs governed collectively; Vajji, with the Lichchhavis at its head, is the standard example of the second kind. Iron tools, surplus paddy and fortified capitals underpin the whole formation, and the eventual winner of the contest between them was Magadha.

The stem says pre-Mauryan, which is the clue to why Kalinga is the odd one out. Kalinga was certainly a real and populous region in that period, but it does not appear in the canonical list, and its place in the syllabus is Mauryan and post-Mauryan — the war of about 261 BCE recorded in Ashoka's thirteenth major rock edict, and Kharavela's Hathigumpha inscription in the first century BCE. Two of the sixteen names are worth fixing because they lie outside the Ganga plain and are therefore easy to forget: Assaka on the Godavari in the Deccan, and Kamboja beyond Gandhara in the far north-west.

• The sixteen mahajanapadas are listed in the Anguttara Nikaya and appear with small variations in Jaina texts as well.
• Vajji was a gana or sangha, an oligarchy of chiefs, in contrast to the monarchies around it.
• Magadha eventually absorbed the rest, helped by its iron ore, its elephants and its position on the Ganga.
• Kalinga is not among the sixteen; it becomes central to the record with Ashoka's war and later with Kharavela.
• Gandhara's capital Taxila and Vatsa's capital Kaushambi are the two capital names most often tested from the list.

• Assuming any well-known ancient region must have been a mahajanapada.
• Forgetting Assaka and Kamboja, the two members outside the Ganga plain.
• Reading the sixteen as a fixed political map — the boundaries and the list itself vary a little between texts.

The odd-one-out form is standard here; learn the sixteen as a list rather than as individual facts, because the item is decided by absence.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following mahajanapadas had Kaushambi as its capital?

  • (a)Kosala
  • (b)Vatsa
  • (c)Avanti
  • (d)Chedi

  Answer(b) Vatsa — Kaushambi stood on the Yamuna and was ruled by Udayana in the sixth century BCE.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Hathigumpha inscription is the principal source for the reign of

  • (a)Ashoka
  • (b)Kharavela
  • (c)Rudradaman
  • (d)Samudragupta

  Answer(b) Kharavela — the Kalinga ruler of the first century BCE, whose inscription is cut near Bhubaneswar.