Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c4.3

c4.3

IN the preceding section we traversed the whole difficult field of Political History, i.e., the story of some of the kings and their kingdoms, as viewed from the *Jātakas*: from across the dim past we slowly, but steadily, emerged into the clear and easy path of our journey. Until at last, when we arrived at the *Mahājanapada* Period (800-600 B. C. and after) we felt that our guide—the *Jātakas*—were growing more and more informative. It is this period, as we have pointed out before, which should claim the right of reflecting the political, economical, social and religious conditions of the country. Thus now if we leave the political history as it was and pass on to a deeper study of the administration of the country, we should for the most part keep our eyes to this period, viz., the period just preceding the advent of the Buddha and, to a certain degree, contemporaneous with, and subsequent to him. In fact we should regard the period as circling round the luminous figure of the Buddha—two or three centuries before and two or three centuries after him.