Shakya (Pāḷi: Sakya; Sanskrit: शाक्य, romanized: Śākya) was an ancient clan of the northeastern region of South Asia, whose existence is attested during the Iron Age.

[5] The Shakyas' name was derived from the Sanskrit root śak (शक्) (śaknoti (शक्नोति), more rarely śakyati (शक्यति) or śakyate (शक्यते)) meaning "to be able," "worthy," "possible," or "practicable.

[12] Scholars such as Michael Witzel and Christopher I. Beckwith have equated the Shakyas with Central Asian nomads who were called Scythians by the Greeks, Sakās by the Achaemenid Persians, and Śāka by the Indo-Aryans.

[13][14] Scholars criticize the Scythian hypothesis due to a lack of evidence, with Bryan Levman maintaining that the Shakyas were native to the north-east Gangetic plain and unrelated to the Iranic Sakas.

[15] By the sixth century BCE, the Shakyas, the Koliyas, Moriyas, and Mallakas lived between the territories of the Kauśalyas to the west and the Licchavikas and Vaidehas to the east, thus separating the Vajjika League from the Kosala kingdom.

[2] Shortly after the Buddha's death, the Kauśalya king Viḍūḍabha, who had overthrown his father Pasenadi, invaded the Shakya and Koliya republics, seeking to conquer their territories because they had once been part of Kosala.

Viḍūḍabha finally triumphed over the Shakyas and Koliyas and annexed their state after a long war with massive loss of lives on both sides.

[19] The functioning of the proceedings in the Trāyastriṃśa heaven ruled by Sakka, lord of the devas in Buddhist cosmology, are modelled on those of the Shakya santhāgāra or general assembly hall.

[21] According to Hmannan Yazawin, first published in 1823, the legendary king Abhiyaza, who founded the Tagaung Kingdom and the Burmese monarchy belonged to the same Shakya clan of the Buddha.

[23] The Shakyas lived in what scholars presently call the Greater Magadha cultural area, which was located in the eastern Gangetic plain to the east of the confluence of the Gaṅgā and Yamunā rivers.

Like the other eastern groups of the Greater Magadha region, the Shakyas were saṃkīrṇa-yonayaḥ ("of mixed origin"), and therefore did not subscribe to the caturvarṇa social organisation consisting of brāhmaṇas, khattiyas, vessas, and sudda.

[1] Vedic literature therefore considered the populations of Greater Magadha as existing outside of the limits of Āryāvarta, with the Manusmṛiti grouping the Vaidehas, Māgadhīs, Licchavikas, and Mallakas, who were the neighbours of the Shakyas,[10] as being "non-Aryan" and born from mixed caste marriages, and the Baudhāyana-Dharmaśāstras requiring visitors to these lands to perform purificatory sacrifices as expiation.

The judicial and legislative functions of the Assembly of the Sakyas were not distinctly separated, and it met to discuss important issues concerning public affairs, such as war, peace, and alliances.

[2] The head of the Sakya republic was an elected chief, which was a position of first among equals similar to Roman consuls and Greek archons, and whose incumbent had the title of mahārājā.

[24] It was in this non-Vedic cultural environment that Śramaṇa movements existed, with one of them, Buddhism, having been founded by the Shakya Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha.

These rites originated from the pre-Indo-Aryan autochthonous populations of the eastern Gangetic plains, as were the practices such as honouring the Buddha's body with singing, dancing, and music, as well as placing his bones in a golden urn, the veneration of these remains and their burial in a round stūpa which possessed a central mast, flags, pennants, and parasols at a public crossroads, which were rituals that were performed by the pre-Indo-Aryan populations for their greater rulers.