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SOCIAL LIFD AND BỌONOMIO OONDITIONS 195 in large cities used to get money from fellow merchants. There is also mention of promissory notes.
There were no banks, and banking facilities were few. Loans could be taken. Money-lending was looked upon as an honest calling but this had already given rise to profit-mongering. Money was lent against bonds (pannā) and there were instances of bad debts which were never repaid. But money-lending was done by professional money-lenders while ordinary people used to hoard up their wealth in piles and conceal them underground or deposited with friends. The nature and amount of such hoarded wealth were recorded on gold or copper plates.1
In the Anguttara Nikāya we have mention of Satta-vanijjā or trade in living beings. Buddhaghosa 8 explains the word as meaning manussa-vikkaya or traffic in human beings. This traffic might be taken to imply, among other things," traffic in women and slave trade. Prostitution as a social institution was in existence in India from the earliest times, and it had originated, as suggested by some scholars,
1 Buddhast Indra, p. 101f. 9, Anguttara Nakaya, u, p 208.
8 A celebrated Buddhist oommöntator who flourished in the 5th century AD. Wrote many important Pali commentai108—Law, The Life and World of Buddhachosa (1923)
