________________
98
BUDDHIST INDIA
Besides the peasantry and the handicraftsmen there were merchants who conveyed their goods either up and down the great rivers, or along the coasts in boats; or right across country in carts travelling in caravans. These caravans, long lines of small two-wheeled carts, each drawn by two bullocks, were a distinctive feature of the times.' There were no made roads and no bridges. The carts struggled along, slowly, through the forests, along the tracks from village to village kept open by the peasants. The pace never exceeded two miles an hour. Smaller streams were crossed by gullies leading down to fords, the larger ones by cart ferries. There were taxes and octroi duties at each different country entered (875); and a heavy item in the cost was the hire of volunteer police who let themselves out in bands to protect caravans against robbers on the way (866). The cost of such carriage must have been great; so great that only the more costly goods could bear it.
The enormous traffic of to-day in the carriage of passengers, food-stuffs, and fuel was non-existent. Silks, muslins, the finer sorts of cloth and cutlery and armour, brocades, embroideries and rugs, perfumes and drugs, ivory and ivory work, jewelry and
1 The accompanying plate (Fig. 23) shows, in four scenes on the same bas-relief, Anatha Pindika's famous gift of the Jetavana Park to the Order. To the left is the park, the ground of which is being covered with Kahapanas. In front is the bullock cart which has brought them. In the centre the donor holds in his hand the water of donation, the pouring out of which is to complete the legality of the gift. To the right are the huts to be afterwards put up in the park for the use of the Wanderers.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
