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A CULTURAL STUDY OF THE NISITHA CURNI
There was also a class of individual traders who carrying the miscellaneous articles of trade by themselves ( lit, under their armpits-kakkha pudiya )1 toured the villages throughout the year except the rainy season, and thus provided the villagers with all their requirements by selling their multifarious commodities.
Besides, collective or joint trade enterprise was also not unknown. Five merchants are mentioned to have embarked on a joint trade by putting an equal share ( samabhāga)." When they desired to get separated the property and profit were equally divided amongst the five. For all practical purposes the traders were united under corporative bodies or trade-guilds headed by the setthi or salthavaha. The corporation of the Bālamjuya Vaniks has been frequently mentioned in the text. These traders usually went to the different villages to sell or purchase the food-grains ( balañja ).5 The contemporary inscriptions from South India also reveal Balamjuya as flourishing corporation of a certain class of traders. 1. tere naa YET SEA # 85311-NC. 2, p. 143. 2. Tagfe4aft III vị gift_NC. 3, p. 160. 3. 12 aforit FHUTTEAEA Teia-NC. 4, p. 309. 4. NC. 2, pp. 118, 163, 164; Brh. VI. 4, p. 1158. 5. 91 910T37 afors acier THqfatti-NC. 2, p. 118; atrof
qigit—NC. 3, p. 163. qoca forum Tagiatoi art teaIbid., p. 164. Also quitoi fè aiföroleh-afsi asist-Brh. V;. 4, p.
1158). 6. Inscriptions from South India frequently refer to a corporation of
merchants variously termed as Valan jiyam, Valan jiyar, Balažji, Bananji etc. The term Valañ jiyam occurs in the Kottiyam Plate of Vira-Raghava Three Kanarese inscriptions from Baliganji (Rice, Mysore Inscriptions, Nos. 38, 55, 56 ) refer to this corporation of merchants who are called protectors of bananji-dharma or vira-balažji-dharma. The last one even gives a list of the various classes of merchants that composed this guild. The words banajiga in Kanarese and balja or balijaga in Telugu even now denote a class of merchants (see--EI. IV, p. 296, n. 2; also Majumdar, R. C., op. cit., pp. 88-91). The term bālamjua vanija as mentioned in the NC. in Prakrit, or Valiñ juka as mentioned in Sanskrit in the commentary on the Brhatkalpa Bhāsya, seems to refer to the same corporation of the merchants,
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