One of the republican clans In der Zeit von the Buddha. The Koliyā owned two chief settlements - one at Rāmagāma und the other at Devadaha. The Commentaries (DA.i.260f; SNA.i.356f; A.ii.558; ThagA.i.546; also Ap.i.94) contain accounts of the origin of the Koliyas. We are told that a König of Benares, named Rāma (the Mtu.i.353 calls him Kola und explains from this the name of the Koliyas), suffered from leprosy, und being detested by the women of the court, he left the kingdom to his eldest son und retired into the forest. There, living on woodland leaves und fruits, he soon recovered, und, while wandering about, came across Piyā, the eldest of the fünf daughters of Okkāka, she herself being afflicted mit leprosy. Rāma, having cured her, married her, und they begot thirty-two sons. With the help of the König of Benares, they built a town in the forest, removing a big kola-tree in doing so. The city thereupon came to be called Kolanagara, und because the site was discovered on a tiger-track (vyagghapatha) it was also called Vyagghapajjā. The descendants of the König were known as Koliyā.
According to the Kunālā Jātaka (J.v.413), when the Sākyans wished to abuse the Koliyans, they said that the Koliyans had once "lived like animals in a Kola-tree," as their name signified. The territories of the Sākiyans und the Koliyans were adjacent, separated by the river Rohinī. The khattiyas of both tribes intermarried, und both claimed relationship mit the Buddha. (It is said that once the Koliyan youths carried away many Sākiyan maidens while they were bathing, but the Sākiyans, regarding the Koliyans as relatives, took no action; DA.i.262). A quarrel once arose between the two tribes regarding the right to the waters of the Rohinī, which irrigated the land on both sides, und a bloody feud was averted only by the intervention of the Buddha. In gratitude, each tribe dedicated some of its young men to the membership of the Order, und during the Buddha's stay in the neighbourhood, he lived alternately in Kapilavatthu und in Koliyanagara. (For details of this quarrel und its consequences see J.v.412ff; DA.ii.672ff; DhA.iii.254ff).
Attached probably to the Koliyan central authorities, was a special body of officials, presumably police, who wore a distinguishing headdress mit a drooping crest (Lambacūlakābhatā). They bore a bad reputation for extortion und violence (S.iv.341).
Besides the places already erwähnt, several other townships of the Koliyans, visited by the Buddha or by his disciples, are erwähnt in literature - z.B.,
Nisabha (ThagA.i.318), Kakudha (SA.i.89) (attendant of Moggallāna), und Kankhā-Revata (Ap.ii.491) (und perhaps Sona Kolivisa, q.v.), were also Koliyans.
After the Buddha's death the Koliyans of Rāmagāma claimed und obtained one-eighth of the Buddha's relics, over which they erected a thūpa (D.ii.167; Mhv.xxi.18, 22ff). See also s.v. Suppavāsā.