Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c8.154

c8.154

A very old specimen of all possible kinds of presents is found in the cave inscriptions of Uṣabhadāta in Nāsik² of about the first century A. D. who relates there *inter alia* that every year he has fed 100000 Brahmans, given 100000 cows and 16 villages to Brahmans, given wives to 8 Brahmans, built a staircase at a holy bathing place on the river Banas and rectangular serais and gardens, dug tanks and sunk wells for drinking water, built ferries, inns, water stations, cisterns and a cave for monks and assigned a field to the monks living in that cave for their maintenance, and that he has invested money in guilds of merchants on interest etc.