Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s3.13

c12.s3.13

The references in Kauṭilya's *Arthaśāstra*, scattered and incidental as they are, register some advance in the conditions of trade above described. Active encouragement of trade on the part of the State is proved by the care with which Kauṭilya provides for the construction and security of trade-routes and the foundations of market-towns in his scheme of State colonisation of the country-part. Elsewhere (ii. 4), the largest scale of width—eight *daṇḍas* as compared with the usual four *daṇḍas*—is prescribed for roads leading to the market-towns (*saṃyānīya patha*). Intelligent appreciation of the importance of trade-routes is shown by the discussion in *Arthaśāstra* circles (vii. 12) of the relative advantages of different types of trade-routes from the standpoint of their conduciveness to commerce. Such are the pairs: land and water-routes, water-routes along the coast and through mid-water, the Himalayan and the southern land-routes. In comparing the last pair, the *Arthaśāstra* authors give us a valuable, though far from exhaustive, list of the imports borne along both routes evidently to the Ganges valley. According to an un-named teacher quoted by Kauṭilya, the costlier merchandise consisting of elephants, horses, fragrant products, tusks, skins, gold and silver were more plentiful in the Himalayas. In Kauṭilya's opinion, on the other hand, the merchandise other than blankets, skins and horses, and consisting of conch-shells, diamonds, jewels, pearls and gold, was more plentiful in the South. For the rest, the remarkable lists of agricultural, manufacturing and other products of different lands which Kauṭilya mentions (ii. 11-12) testify to the extent as well as the objects of India's internal and foreign trade. Among these products are found textiles of Bengal, Assam, Benares, the Konkan and Pāṇḍya, the silks of China, the woollens of Nepal, the skins of the Himalayan regions, the fragrant wood of Assam, Ceylon (?) and the Himalayas, the gems of Ceylon (?), Alakanda and Vivarna (unidentified) and the like¹.