Shakya (Pāḷi: ; ) was an ancient eastern sub-Himalayan ethnicity and clan of north-eastern region of the Indian subcontinent, whose existence is attested during the Iron Age. The Shakyas were organised into a (an aristocratic oligarchic republic), also known as the Shakya Republic. The Shakyas were on the periphery, both geographically and culturally, of the eastern Gangetic plain in the Greater Magadha cultural region. Location The Shakyas lived along the foothills of the Himālaya mountains, with their neighbours to the west and south being the kingdom of Kosala, their neighbours to the east across the Rohiṇī river being the related Koliya tribe, while on the north-east they bordered on the Mallakas of Kusinārā. To the north, the territory of the Shakyas stretched into the Himālayas until the forested regions of the mountains, which formed their northern border. The capital of the Shakyas was the city of Kapilavastu. Etymology The name of the Shakyas is attested primarily in the Pāli forms and , and the Sanskrit form . The Shakyas' name was derived from the Sanskrit root () ( (), more rarely () or ()) meaning "to be able," "worthy," "possible," or "practicable." The name of the Shakyas was also derived from the name of the or tree, which Bryan Levman has identified with either the teak or sāla tree, which is ultimately related to word (), meaning ‘branch,’ and was connected to the Shakyas' practice of worshipping the or tree. History Origin The Shakyas were an eastern sub-Himalayan ethnic group on the periphery, both geographically and culturally, of the eastern Gangetic plain in the Greater Magadha cultural region. The Shakyas were of ‘mixed origin’ () of Indo-Aryan and Munda descent, with the former group forming a minority. The Shakyas were closely related to their eastern neighbours, the Koliya tribe, with whom they intermarried. Scholars such as Michael Witzel and Christopher I. Beckwith have equated the Shakyas with central Asian Iranic nomads who were called Scythians by the Greeks, s by the Achaemenid Persians, and by the Indo-Aryans. These scholars have suggested that the people of the Buddha were Saka soldiers who arrived into South Asia in the army of Darius I when he conquered the Indus Valley, and saw in Scytho-Saka nomadism the origin of the wandering asceticism of the Buddha. The scholar Bryan Levman however criticised this hypothesis for resting on slim to no evidence, and maintains that the