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begin. The extreme limit of this went as far as Vidcha. The trade route then swung down to Patna, and across the river to Rajgir. This is the route from Săvatthi to Rajagṛha followed by traders like Anathapindika, and which the Buddha had begun to traverse in the opposite direction from Rajagṛha when death overtook him near the Malla settlement at Kusinārā. The road would not be difficult to trace, as it passed through Vesali, Setavya, Kapilavastu, Kusinārā, Pāvā, närä, Pävä, Bhoganagara. Another went from Sävatthi south to Säketa and Kosambi, thence presumably to the Avanti kingdom. Both of these are good targets for systematic archaeology. The unit distance is the yojana, approximately nine miles (though the Arthasästra yojana was about 5 miles), the distance after which carts were outspanned. On special roads, there seem to have been royal stages for horse-chariots, the rathavinita from which MN 24 derives its name, and which must have been about the same as the yojana, for six yojanas separated Savatthi from Saketa, while king Pasenadi completed his journey between those two capitals in the seventh stage. The stages and outspanning places should be traceable even now. The western route from Săvatthi led to Takkasilä 147 yojanas away, and presumably allowed trade with the Delhi-Mathura region on the way. Taxila was a great center of learning, as is seen from the tradition that Pasenadi, the Malla Bandhula who was later his minister, and the Licchavi Mahali who afterwards took. service with Bimbisăra had studied there together in their youth (DhA 4-3). The much earlier Kosalan prince Chatta fled to Taxila after Brahmadatta of Benares stormed Savatthi and took his father captive; he studied the three vedas there, and returned to find buried treasure by aid of which he recovered his kingdom (Jat. 336). Brahmin tradition supports this, for eastern brahmins travel regularly to the distant northwest to learn their main business, the firesacrifice (Br. Up. 3. 4. 1, 3.7.1). The punch-marked coins found in great profusion at Taxila belong to Magadhan kings for the greater part, even before the Mauryans.
Rajagrha is an exception to this, being on the opposite bank of the river, though still in the foothills, this time of the Vindhyas. I suggest that its original importance derived from the minerals; in particular iron, which is found as easily smelted surface deposits in Dharwar outcrops, of which the hills about Rajgir consist. More would be available by trade from Choță Nagpur, where there still exist iron-working aboriginal tribes. From the Nepal hills, copper would be the likelier metal, but even this is more easily available in Bihar. No metal is to be found naturally in the immensely fertile alluvial portion of the Gangetic plain, the portion which is the most densely settled today and which had to be cleared with the greatest labourlabour which would have been impossible without iron. But given iron tools, the rapid opening up of U.P. proper was inevitable. According to J. A. Dunn, Memoirs of the Geological Survey of India, LXIX, part 1,1937 (reference by courtesy of Prof. K. V. Kelkar), Singhbhum district has very
