Shakya

right|thumb|The Buddha|Siddhartha Gautama, called [[Shakyamuni "Sage of the Shakyas", the most famous Shakya. Seated bronze from Tibet, 11th century.]] Shakya (Pāḷi: ; Sanskrit: ) was an ancient Indo-Aryan tribe of north-eastern South Asia whose existence is attested during the Iron Age. The Shakyas were organised into a Gaṇasaṅgha| (an aristocratic oligarchic republic), known as the Shakya Republic. The Shakyas were on the periphery, both geographically and culturally, of the eastern Indo-Gangetic Plain in the Greater Magadha cultural region.

==Location== thumb|Map of Shakyan territory The Shakyas lived in the Terai – an area south of the foothills of the Himalayas and north of the Indo-Gangetic Plain with their neighbors to the west and south being the kingdom of Kosala, their neighbors to the east across the Rohni River being the related Koliya tribe, while on the northeast they bordered on the Mallakas of Kushinagar. To the north, the territory of the Shakyas stretched into the Himalayas until the forested regions of the mountains, which formed their northern border.