Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c5.t4.71

c5.t4.71

What commodities were exported and imported³ or what exchanged inland we do not clearly know. Of the inland trade we are mostly told of five hundred waggons laden with valuable goods. Probably these loads (bhaṇḍam) contained cloths for which Benares was so famous. Once⁴ we read of rice, beams and other grains dropped by passing waggons. But, as pointed out by Subbarao,⁵ food-stuffs could hardly have entered in those days into the trade between distant places. The silken robes of Kāsī⁶ the woollen rugs of Gandhāra⁷ and the linen cloths of Koḍumbara (in the Punjab)⁸ must have been some of the exchangeable commodities. The needle-work and steelwork of Dasaṇṇa or the later Vidiśā (Bhilsa region in C. P.) was sufficiently famous to be distributed.⁹ Peacocks and birds must have been included.¹⁰ In general, “silks, muslins, the finer sorts of cloth and cutlery and armour, brocades, embroideries and rugs, perfumes and drugs, ivory and ivory-work, jewellery and gold” were no doubt “the main articles which the merchants dealt in.”¹¹