The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c10.506

v1.c10.506

If this be admitted it must follow that roads for such vehicles were also extant. The great epics describe urban roads as wide and spacious, lined on both sides with shops of various kinds and private mansions of elegance and beauty. The *Rāmāyaṇa* notices the practice of watering the street to allay the dust, (*ante* p. [21] ), and refers to a large trunk road extending from Oudh to the Panjab. The Vedas also make mention of roads for cars and waggons, and they offer very strong presumptive evidence of a settled, civilized life among the people as distinct from a nomadic or purely pastoral existence. It is impossible to say whether the roads were ever metalled with stones or bricks: perhaps they were not; but in a country so abounding in *kaṅkar*, as the North-Western Provinces are, and occurring as that substance does often on the very surface of the earth, it could have scarcely escaped the notice of man who made roads, and watered them to keep down dust.