The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c10.507

v1.c10.507

**Waggons:** The *Ṛgveda* makes mention of waggons; so do the great national epics; and the *Lexicon* of Amara Siṃha gives distinct names for covered conveyances of several kinds, as also for open carts for the carriage of goods. The *Mṛcchakaṭika*, which, as already stated, dates, according to Wilson, from the second century before the Christian era, and under the lowest computation cannot be brought down below the beginning of that epoch, takes its name from a fictile model of a cart, which had been given to a child as a substitute for a golden one, which it had seen with a playmate, and wished to have, but which could not be provided by his indigent parents. In the play itself, there are descriptions of roads blocked by a great number of carts, of coverd litters provided with cushions, having doors behind, and drawn by two bullocks, and carts and litters of different qualities,—all which cannot but be accepted as indications of vehicles of various descriptions having been in common use. I do not remember to have anywhere read of a one-bullock cart; but in the tenth *maṇḍala* of the *Ṛgveda*, mention is made of a waggon or car which was drawn by a team of which one was a bull and the other a buffaloe. A sage, named Mudgala, is said to have achieved great success in the battle-field by driving this ill-matched pair. And seeing that mention is made in that work of a team of four bullocks yoked to a plough, it may be very reasonably concluded that occasionally waggons had more than a pair. Three and four bullocks to a cart or waggon is common enough in the present day in the North-Western Provinces. The nature of the country never rendered such large teams as of ten to twenty bullocks, so common in Cape Colony, necessary or desirable in India.