The City That Loved Him First
Vaishali loved the Buddha before the world had decided what to make of him. The Licchavis, the republic's ruling clan, whose democratic assembly system scholars still cite as one of antiquity's most organised, followed him in such numbers when he left for the last time that he had to cross the Gandak river just to put distance between them and himself. He left his begging bowl on the far bank. That bowl, tradition holds, is what the stupa at Vaishali was later built to enshrine.
