The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c16.10

c16.10

The plentifulness of great navigable waterways in Northern India allows us to assume an early development of internal maritime trade; still I have found it mentioned in only one place in the Jātakas. In the sale of a ship’s cargo mentioned in the Cullakaseṭṭhi Jātaka (I. 126), the question is of wares unloaded at a port in the neighbourhood of Benares. The hero of the narrative, a youth of good but poor family, learns from a sailor friend that a big ship has arrived at the port. He hires for eight kahāpaṇas a vehicle and drives with great pomp to the port. Here he buys the ship’s cargo on credit and gives his signet ring as security; then he erects a tent close to the ship and after he takes his seat within it, he gives an order that if tradesmen want to see him they should only be admitted after a threefold notice. On the news of the arrival of the ship about a hundred tradesmen from Benares come to buy the cargo. They are told: “You cannot buy wares any more, for a great merchant who lives at such and such a place has bought them by advancing a deposit.” When they hear this, they go to the youth and are admitted by the servants to his presence after a threefold notice in the way mentioned above. Everyone of the hundred tradesmen pays one thousand in order to receive a portion of the ship’s cargo and finally in order to buy off his partnership, they pay each one of them for the rest of his goods a further 1,000. Thus the youth returns to Benares with 2,00,000 in his possession.