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ANCIENT KOSALA AND MAGADHA
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to the society in which trade had gained a new importance, and which consists of many diverse types of tribal or local units in close contact.
Exactly the same needs demand an absolute universal monarchy, the tyranny of one rather than the tyranny of many ; along with this, freedom from robbers that infested the great forest which still covered much of the land between settlements, freedom from irregular and excessive tolls charged by petty rulers or tribal oligarchs, and the opening of new trade routes. This can be proved very easily; at the same time it will be seen that Magadha had to be the center of the new kingdom, whether it conquered the others or was conquered by one of the others.
The first land clearing in this region ran along the Himālayan foothills, as beginning of the transition from pastoralismi to agriculture. The course of development is quite clear. The Gangetic plain is alluvial, and in its original state, must have been densely forested, swampy in many places, and certainly devoid of heavy settlement till the age of metals, specifically the age of iron, had set in. This is one of the reasons for dismissing Pargiter's theory of ancient Indian historical development, outward from the Gangetic plain. The Nile, the Mesopotamian rivers, and the Indus permitted the first urban civilizations to develop because of the surrounding desert. Heavy land clearing was unnecessary. Along the Danube, the loess corridor allowed neolithic man and his successors to farm without fighting heavy forest. The rainfall and warm climate of the Gangetic valley would make riparian settlements impossible for neolithic man. Even at the time of the Buddha all movement ceased during the rains, which shows that the roads were mere cart tracks, rivers crossed by ferry or ford, and the land mostly jungle dotted with settlements. Under present conditions, the summer with its heat and dusty winds would be a far worse season for the wandering almsman in U. P. than the monsoon. When Pasenadi began a campaign during the rains (Jat. 176, 226) he not only lost to the borderland rebels, but also scandalized the Buddha by this infraction of what had become a scriptural rule. Alexander's success against Poros seems in part due to this sacrilege. 11 - The first river settlements, presumably at Allahabad (prayāga), perhaps also Benares (kast) and the like must almost certainly have been founded by refugees from the Punjab, driven eastwards by the Aryan invaders ; undoubtedly, their enemies must have followed in their wake. When Hastinapura was destroyed by flood, Nicakşu shifted his capital to Kosambi (DKA 4-5). But the major early settlements all lie along the northern foothills. The process of development is set forth in the Satapatha Brāhmaṇa i. 4. 1. 14 ff; the land was burned over, swampy places dried up, and cultivation could then
11 However, A 9.1 seems to imply the possibility of a campaign in the rains, so that the old rules, were abandoned in practice, by the time of the Mauryans, perhaps following the Greek example, or because the increasingly great distances made it necessary.
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