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Economic Conditions
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of the dominions of the Persian emperors in the sixth or fifth century B.C., and the Indians paid tribute in gold to them. Herodotus also refers to the Indian contingent of Xerxes' army clad in cotton garments and armed with cane bows and irontipped cane arrows.
The description in the Ceylonese chronicles of prince Vijaya's voyage to Ceylon from Bengal with his 700 followers presupposes a regular sea trade and commercial intercourse. We read of traders coasting round India from Bharukachchha on the west to Suvarnabhūmi and touching on the way at a port in Ceylon. It is said that the sea-going merchants halted at Simhala diva (Ceylon) in the middle of their journey.3
The head of the mariners (Niyāmakas) was known as Nijāmakajețhaka. He was probably the captain, the owner of the ship, and the leader of travellers voyaging with him. It was his great responsibility to pilot the ship efficiently and unerringly.
The merchants, who returned to their country with valuables, sometimes practised fraud in order to avoid payment of royal taxes. The Rāyapaseniya refers to those who traded in anka jewel, conch-shells or ivory, and to those who, instead of taking the regular highway, always chose the most difficult routes in order to evade taxes.4 We hear of the king of Benņāyaļa who detected the trick of a deceitful merchant and had him arrested.5
The chief articles of export from India were spices, perfumes, mcdicinal herbs, pigments, pearls, precious stoncs like diamond, sapphire, turquoise, and lapis lazuli, iron, stcel, copper, sandalwood, animal skins, cotton cloth, silk yarn, muslin, indigo, ivory, procclain, and tortoise-shell. The principal imports were cloth, linen, perfumes, medicinal herbs, glass, tin, lead, pigments, precious stoncs, and coral.
Progress in the sphere of trade and commerce is reflccied in the general economic condition of thc pcoplc. We have several references to very rich merchant-millionaires of those 1. Diparamsa. IX, 10-28; Mahāvamsa, VI. 2. The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 602. 3. Tcha, Ți, 6. 3, p. 223a. 4. Rüya, 104. 5. Utlar:7. Ti, op. cit.
