Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s3.15

c12.s3.15

All indications point to the fact that the rise of the Nandas and the Mauryas helped greatly to improve India's inland and foreign trade. The liberation of the Indus valley, and still more the repulse of Seleucus, gave Chandragupta Maurya complete control over the coveted north-western route to which we have referred above. With the conquest of the Deccan by Chandragupta Maurya or Bindusāra, the possession of the equally, or still more, valuable western and southern routes was ensured to the Mauryas. The conquest of Kaliṅga by Aśoka destroyed the only possible rival for the mastery of the eastern trade. While the Mauryas thus brought all the great inland trade-routes under the control of a highly centralised and efficient administration, their rule was helpful for the growth of trade in other ways. That the Mauryas had a special department for the construction of roads is proved by Megasthenes' reference (quoted, Strabo xv.1.50) to the duties of officers called Agoranomoi ('market commissioners'). They had, among other duties, to 'construct roads and at every ten stadia set up a pillar to show the bye-roads and distances.' The most renowned of the imperial roads of these times was 'the Royal Road' connecting the North-West Frontier with Pāṭaliputra and leading thence to the mouths of the Ganges. The stages of this first Indian Grand Trunk Road together with their distances have been recorded by the Roman writer Pliny in his encyclopaedic work called *Natural History* (vi. 21). His somewhat confused account may be summed up in the following table¹ :-