The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c19.s9.294

v1.c19.s9.294

The slaughter-houses (*sūnā*) mentioned in the Vinaya⁴ were presumably outside also, and near them the poor man and the king's *chef* bought their meat⁵, unless by *siṅghāṭaka* we understand street-corners as the places where meat was sold⁶. The great city of Mithilā was, according to the *Mahā-ummagga Jātaka*, composed in part of four suburbs extending beyond each of its four gates, and called not *gāmas*, but *nigamas*. These were named respectively East, South, West, and North Yavamajjhako, translated by Cowell and Rouse 'market-town'⁷. The workshop in the street was open to view, so that the *bhikkhu* coming in to town or village for alms, could see fletcher and carriage-builder at work, no less than he could watch the peasant in the field⁸. Arrows and carriages and other articles for sale were displayed in the *āpaṇa*⁹, or fixed shop, or, it might be, stored within the *antarāpaṇa*¹⁰. In these, or in the portable stock-in-trade of the hawker¹¹, retail trading constituted a means of livelihood, independently, it might be, of productive industry. The application, judgment, cleverness, and 'connexion' of the successful shopkeeper¹² are discussed in the Nikāyas¹³, and among trades five are ethically proscribed¹⁴ for lay believers:—daggers, slaves, flesh, strong drink, poisons.