Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c5.t1.4

c5.t1.4

We have indeed no statistical knowledge as regards the total population of the country at that time. But if we can be allowed to take the figure 60000 as the total number of villages,¹ and 2500 as the population of a single average village of 500 families,² (taking a family as consisting of five members) both of which we dare not take as reliable, nor even plausible, then we get, on calculation, 15 crores as the total population of India. Whatever it may have been, it seems clear that there was no dread of a growing population. People on the contrary yearned for children, and there was scope for an unlimited increase in population, owing to the vast areas of virgin soil available for occupation and cultivation.