The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c19.s9.87

v1.c19.s9.87

Of such cities there were but few in Northern India. Less than twenty are named⁴. Six of them only are reckoned by the Thera Ānanda as sufficiently important cities (*mahā-nagarā*) to be the scene of a Buddha’s final passing away:—Sāvatthī, Champā, Rājagaha, Sāketa, Kosambī, Benares. Kusinārā, where that event actually took place, he depreciates as not a ‘village,’ but a jungle ‘townlet’ (*nagaraka*)⁵. The greatness of Pāṭaliputra (Patna) was yet to come. In the absence of any systematic account of this rural organisation in ancient records, it is better to refrain from laying down any homogeneous scheme. ‘No doubt different villages, in different districts, varied one from another in the customs of land-tenure, and in the rights of individual householders as against the community⁶.’ The jungles and rivers of the vast Ganges valley fostered independent development probably at least as much as the hill-barriers in the Alps have done in the case of Swiss and Italian peasant communities down to this day.