Introduction
Ajatasattu was king of Magadha, son of Bimbisara, whose reign began under the troubling circumstances of his father's imprisonment and death, traditionally attributed to his own actions under Devadatta's influence.
Family
- Father: Bimbisara
From Patricide to Patron
Despite the dark circumstances of his rise to power, Ajatasattu is recorded in the Samannaphala Sutta as later visiting the Buddha, expressing remorse for his actions against his father, and becoming a significant patron of the Sangha in his own right. After the Buddha's death, Ajatasattu sponsored the First Buddhist Council at Rajagaha, providing crucial royal support for the gathering that formally compiled the Buddha's teachings.
This article follows the Pali Canon and its commentarial tradition as the primary early Buddhist textual source; where sources genuinely disagree on a detail (such as an exact parentage), that disagreement is noted rather than resolved into a single invented certainty.