Local Government in Ancient India c9.110.1

c9.110.1

The epigraphic evidence also confirms the literary evidence and throws some new light on these organizations of craft-guilds and merchant-guilds. We read of munificent religious endowments and benefactions executed by merchant princes and prosperous guilds whose wealth is derived from success in trade and commerce. The great *caitya* cave at Kārli was the gift of a *śeṭh* (*śreṣṭhin*) of Vaijayantī. There were similar costly gifts at other places also, such as those at Kānheri. In the Mathurā Jaina image inscription (no. 24 in Lüders's List)¹ the wife of the śeṭh Veṇi dedicates a four-fold image of Bhagavāna. Similarly in the Mathurā Jaina elephant capital inscription of the time of Mahārāja Devaputra Huviṣka the elephant Nandiviśāla is set up by the śeṭh Ārya Rudradāsa for the worship of the Arhats (no. 41). In the inscriptions of the Sānchi stūpa assigned to the period dating from Aśoka's time up to the first century a. c. (*Ep. Ind.*, vol. II, p. 88) we have records of gifts made by several merchants, viz. those of Sāmanerā, the Abeyaka śeṭh (i.e. ‘the śeṭh of a town or village called Aba or Amba, in Sanskrit Āmragrāma’) (no. 184); of the śeṭh, the great executor of repairs (*patikamakārikānā*) (no. 248); gift of a pillar (*thava*) by Nāgapiya, the Korāra (native of Kurāra), a śeṭh in Achāvaḍa (339); gift of the śeṭh Śiha (364); gift of the śeṭh Nāgadīna (Nāgadatta), inhabitant of Rohaṇipada (*Ep. Ind.*, vol. II, p. 109);