A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c11.19

c11.19

The western and eastern coasts were studded with ports throbbing with trade. Ptolemy names several in ‘Maisolia’, the region between the deltas of the Godāvari and Krishna, and states that one of them was the starting-point of ships bound for ‘Golden Chryse’—the Malay peninsula and the eastern archipelago. In the western Deccan, Barygaza (Broach) was the most northern port, Sopara the most ancient, and Kalyan the largest. The market-towns of the interior, besides Paithan and Tagara, were Junnar, Karahātaka, Nasik and Vaijayanti; those of the eastern Deccan were less important: Dhānyakataka, Vijayapura and Narasela. Each group of traders—corn-dealers, braziers, weavers, florists, ironmongers and scribes—was organized into a guild. Each guild had an alderman (seṭhi) and its own office or guildhall (nigamasabhā), and acted as a bank, receiving deposits and lending out money. Imports included luxuries like wine, cloth of the finest texture, choice unguents, glass, storax and sweet clover. Exports were common cloth, cornelian, muslins and mallow cloth. The absence of roads hindered commerce as much as it was helped by the plentiful currency towards the end of the first century A.D. The eastern Deccan seems to have entered at this time upon a period of great industrial and commercial activity which reached its climax towards the end of the second century.