Introduction
Bimbisara was king of Magadha and one of the Buddha's earliest and most significant royal patrons, ruling from his capital at Rajagaha during much of the Buddha's early teaching career.
Family
- Children: Ajatasattu
An Early Royal Patron
Bimbisara's donation of the Veluvana (Bamboo Grove) near Rajagaha gave the early Sangha one of its first stable monastic residences, and his ongoing patronage helped establish Buddhism's standing among the ruling elite of Magadha, one of the most powerful states of the region during the Buddha's lifetime. Later tradition holds that Bimbisara was imprisoned and died at the instigation of his own son Ajatasattu, acting partly under the influence of the schismatic monk Devadatta.
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.