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176 INDIA AS DESCRIBED IN DARLY TEXTS
* remained concealed from public view have and except on a day of roligious, for suival.1 Besides the kings and wealthy nobles, there were others who could well afford to keep and maintain the gaņikās or prostitutes. An idea of the cash hoardings of the rich bankers of the time might be gathered from the fact, however exaggerated, that the banker Anāthapiņņika of Sävatthí easily spent fifty-four crores of gold coins for the purchase of Prince Jeta's garden, Erection of a monastic establishment thereon and its formal and festive consecration. The hoards had to be carried as cart-loads. A single piece of jewellery presented to Visākha' by her father-in-law, the banker Migāra, cost him one bundred thousand. As dowry she received from her father, Dhananjayasetthi of Säketa and originally of Rājagaha, five hundred carts full of money, five hundred carts full of vessels of gold, etc., ghee, rice, husked and winnowed, alsa ploughs, ploughshares and other farm implements, and five hundred carts with three slave-women in each, along with big cattle, bulls and milch cows.
Though by definition the Vessas formed the third grade of the Indo-Aryan society with
ze :
on
1 Dhammapada-afthakatha, ir, p. 100f. % Vinaya, Oullavagga, vi, 4.9c; Jataka, i, p. 92. 9 E. J. Thomas, The Life of Buddha, pp. 105-6. - Malalasekera, op. cit., i, p. 901,
