________________
102
BUDDHIST INDIA
there was plenty of land to be had for the trouble of clearing it, not far from the settled districts.
On the other hand, the number of those who could be considered wealthy from the standards of those times (and of course still more so from our own) was very limited. We hear of about a score of monarchs, whose wealth consisted inainly of the land tax, supplemented by other dues and perquis. ites; of a considerable number of wealthy nobles, and some priests, to whom grants had been made of the tithe arising out of certain parishes or counties' or who had inherited similar rights from their forefathers; of about a dozen millionaire merchants in Takkasilā, Sāvatthi, Benares, Rājagaha, Vesāli, Kosambi, and the seaports (882), and of a considerable number of lesser merchants and iniddlemen, all in the few towns. But these were the exceptions. There were no landlords. And the great mass of the people were well-to-do peasantry, or handicraftsmen, mostly with land of their own, both classes ruled over by local headınen of their own selection.
Before closing this summary of the most important economic conditions in Northern India in the sixth century B.C. it may be well to bring together the few notices we have in the books about the trade routes. There is nothing about them in the preBuddhistic literature. In the oldest Pali books we have accounts of the journeys of the wandering teachers; and as, especially for longer journeys, they will generally have followed already established routes, this is incidental evidence of such as were then in
'D. 1. 88; M. 2. 163, 3. 133; S. 62.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
