Story of Nation Buddhist India

SR No.: 035274
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T W Rhys Davids
Publisher: T Fisher Unwin Ltd
Publication Year: 1916
Total Pages: 356
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 88 MB

Page 124

ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
103
use by traders. Later on, we have accounts of routes actually followed by merchants, either on boats, or with their caravans of bullock carts. We can thus draw up provisionally the following list:
1. North to South-west. Săvatthi to Patitthāna (Paithan) and back. The principal stopping places are given ' (beginning from the south) as Māhissati, Ujjeni, Gonaddha, Vedisa, Kosambi, and Sāketa.
2. North to South-east. Sāvatthi to Rājagaha. It is curious that the route between these two an. cient cities is never, so far as I know, direct, but always along the foot of the mountains to a point north of Vesāli, and only then turning south to the Ganges. By taking this circuitous road the rivers were crossed at places close to the hills where the fords were more easy to pass. But political consid. erations may also have had their weight in the original choice of this route, still followed when they were no longer of much weight. The stopping places were (beginning at Sāvatthi), Setavya, Kapilavastu, Kusinārā, Pāvā, Hatthi-gāma, Bhandagama, Vesāli, Pătaliputta, and Nālandā. The road probably went on to Gaya, and there met another route from the coast, possibly at Tāmralipti, to Benares.'
3. East to West. The main route was along the great rivers, along which boats plied for hire. We even hear of express boats. Upwards the rivers were used along the Ganges as far west as Sahajāti," and along the Jumna as far west as Kosambi.' Downwards, in later times at least, the boats went
In S. X. 1011-1013. 3 Vinaya Texts, 1. 81. 4 Ibid. 3. 401. Sutta Vipāta loc. cit., and Dīgha, 2.
5 Ibid. 3. 382.