Crafts and Craftsmen

 The Digha Nikaya, which relates to pre- Maurya times, mentions

nearly two dozen occupations, but the Mahavastu, which relates to
this period, catalogues thirty-six kinds of workers living in the town of
Rajgir, and the list is not exhaustive.
 The Milinda Panho or the Questions of Milinda enumerates as many as
seventy-five occupations, sixty of which are connected with various
crafts. A Tamil text known in English as The Garland of
Madurai supplements the information supplied by the two Buddhist
texts on crafts and craftsmen.
 The Telangana region of Andhra seems to have been the richest in
this respect, and in addition to weapons, balance rods, socketed axes
and hoes, sickles, ploughshares, razors, and ladles have been
discovered in the Karimnagar and Nalgonda districts of this region.
 Indian iron and steel, including cutlery, were exported to the
Abyssinian ports, and they enjoyed great prestige in western Asia.
 Mathura was a great centre for the manufacture of a special type of
cloth which was called shataka. Dyeing was a thriving craft in some
south Indian towns.
 A brick-built dyeing vat has been unearthed at Uraiyur, a suburb of
Tiruchirapalli town in Tamil Nadu, and similar dyeing vats were
excavated at Arikamedu. These structures relate to the first– third
centuries when the handloom textile industry in these towns
flourished.
 Many products of crafts have been found as a result of digging in the
Kushan complexes. Indian ivories have been found in Afghanistan and
Rome. They are likened to ivory objects found in excavations at
Satavahana sites in the Deccan.
 Roman glass objects are found in Taxila and in Afghanistan, but it was
around the beginning of the Christian era that the knowledge of glass-
blowing reached India and attained its peak.
Types of Merchants

 The Garland of Madurai calls the streets broad rivers of people who

buy and sell in the market place. The importance of shopkeepers is
 indicated by the repetition of the term apana in the description of the
city of Sakala.
 Its shops appear as filled with various types of cloth made in Kashi,
Kotumbara, and elsewhere. Many artisans and merchants were
organized into guilds called sreni and ayatana, but how these
organizations functioned is indicated neither in the Mahavastu nor in
the Milinda-Panho.
 The Buddhist texts mention the sresthi, who was the chief merchant
of the nigama, and the sarthavaha, the caravan leader who was the
head of the corporation of merchants (vanijgramo). It also speaks of
nearly half a dozen petty merchants called vanija.
 The term agrivanija seems to be obscure, but these merchants may
have been the predecessors of the agrawala
Trade Routes and Centres

 Although the Parthians of Iran imported iron and steel from India,
they presented great obstacles to India’s trade with the lands further
west of Iran. It seems that around the beginning of the Christian era,
the monsoon was understood, and this enabled sailors to sail in much
less time directly from the eastern coast of the Arabian Sea to the
western coast, and easily call at the various ports along the route such
as Broach and Sopara situated on the western coast of India, and
Arikamedu and Tamralipti situated on the eastern coast.
 The Shakas and the Kushans used two routes from the north-western
frontier to the western sea coast. Both these routes converged at
Taxila, and were connected with the Silk Route passing through
Central Asia.
 The first route directly ran from the north to the south, linking Taxila
with the lower Indus basin from where it passed on to Broach. The
second route, called the uttarapatha, was in more frequent use.
 From Taxila it passed through modern Punjab up to the eastern bank
of the Yamuna. Following the course of the Yamuna, it went
southward to Mathura, from Mathura passing on to Ujjain in Malwa,
and again from Ujjain to Broach on the western coast. Ujjain was the
meeting point of another route which started from Kaushambi near
Allahabad.
Goods in Foreign Trade

 The Romans mainly imported spices for which south India was
famous, and also muslin, pearls, jewels, and precious stones from
central and south India. Iron goods, especially cutlery, formed an
important item of export to the Roman empire.
 Pearls, ivory, precious stones, and animals were considered luxuries,
but plants and plant products served the basic religious, funerary,
culinary, and medicinal needs of the people. Kitchenware may have
been included in the items of import, and cutlery may have been
important for the higher class of people.
 In addition to the goods directly supplied by India, certain articles
were brought to India from China and Central Asia and then passed
on to the eastern part of the Roman empire.
 Silk was directly sent from China to the Roman empire via the Silk
Route passing through north Afghanistan and Iran. In return for the
articles exported by India to the Roman empire, the Romans exported
to India wine, wine-amphorae, and various other types of pottery
which were discovered in excavations at Tamluk in West Bengal,
Arikamedu near Pondicherry, and at several other sites in south India.
 Sometimes Roman goods travelled as far as Guwahati. Lead, which
was used for making coins by the Satavahanas, seems to have been
imported from Rome in the form of coiled strips.
 At Begram, 72 km north of Kabul, large glass jars made in Italy, Egypt,
and Syria have been found. Also found there were bowls, bronze
stands, steel yards, and weights of Western origin, small Graeco-
Roman bronze statues, jugs, and other vessels made of alabaster.
 Taxila, which is coterminous with the modern Sirkap in the North-
West Frontier Province of Pakistan, has yielded fine examples of the
Graeco- Roman sculpture in bronze. Silver ornaments, some bronze
pots, one jar, and coins of the Roman emperor Tiberius were also
found. However, Arretine pottery, which is regularly found in south
India, appears neither in central or western India nor in Afghanistan.
 The best-known of these are the Chinese Buddhist pilgrims,
Fa Xian, who came to the subcontinent about 1600 years
ago, Xuan Zang (who came around 1400 years ago) and I-
 Qing, who came about 50 years after Xuan Zang carried back
with him statues of the Buddha made of gold, silver and
sandalwood, and over 600 manuscripts loaded on the backs
of 20 horses. Over 50 manuscripts were lost when the boat
on which he was crossing the Indus capsised. [New NCERT
CLASS-VI CHAPTER-10]
Money Economy

 As early as the fifth century BC, India had paid a tribute of 320 talents
of gold to the Iranian empire. This gold may have been extracted from
the gold mines in Sindh.
 The Kushans probably obtained gold from Central Asia, and may also
have procured it either from Karnataka or from the gold mines of
Dhalbhum in Jharkhand which later came under their sway. On
account of the contact with Rome, the Kushans issued the dinar type
of gold coins which became abundant under the Gupta rule.
 The Kushans issued the largest number of copper coins in northern
and north-western India. The Indo-Sassanians, the successors of the
Kushans in lower Sindh, also issued many coins.
 Copper and bronze coins were used in large quantities by the rulers of
some indigenous dynasties such as the Nagas who ruled in central
India, the Yaudheyas who ruled in eastern Rajasthan together with the
adjacent areas of Haryana, Punjab, and UP, and by the Mitras who
ruled in Kaushambi, Mathura, Avanti, and Ahichchhatra (Bareilly
district in UP).
 The period roughly between 200 BC and AD 300 evidences the
largest number of coins, and these were issued not only by Indian and
Central Asian rulers and but also by many cities and tribes.
Urban Growth

 Important towns in north India, such as Vaishali, Pataliputra, Varanasi,

Kaushambi, Shravasti, Hastinapur, Mathura, and Indraprastha (Purana
Qila in New Delhi), are all mentioned in literary texts, and some of
them are also described by the Chinese pilgrims.
 Most of them flourished during the Kushan period in the first and
second centuries. Excavations have revealed superior constructions of
 the Kushan age. Several sites in Bihar such as Chirand, Panr, Sonpur,
and Buxar, and others in eastern UP such as Khairadih and Mason saw
prosperous Kushan phases.
 Similarly, in UP, towns such as Sohgaura, Bhita, Kaushambi,
Shringaverapur, and Atranjikhera were prosperous. Rangmahal in
Rajasthan, and many other sites in the western areas throve in Kushan
times.
 The excavations at Sonkh in Mathura reveal as many as seven levels
of the Kushan phase, and only one of the Gupta phase. Current
excavation shows Sachnan Kot, 50 km from Lucknow, to be the
largest Kushan town in Northern India. It covers 9 sq. km and contains
many brick houses and copper coins.
 Again, sites in Jalandhar, Ludhiana, and Ropar, all located in Punjab,
and several Haryana sites reveal the quality of Kushan constructions.
In many instances, the Gupta period structures were poorly built and
made of used Kushan bricks.
 The most important town was Ujjain as the nodal point of two routes,
one from Kaushambi and the other from Mathura. It was however
also important because of its export of agate and carnelian stones.
Excavations show that agate, jasper, and carnelian were worked on a
large scale for the manufacture of beads after 200 BC.
 Towns throve in the Satavahana kingdom during the same period as
they did under the Shakas and Kushans. Tagar (Ter), Paithan,
Dhanyakataka, Amaravati, Nagarjunakonda, Broach, Sopara,
Arikamedu, and Kaveripattanam were prosperous towns in western
and south India, during the Satavahana period.
 Towns in Punjab and western UP throve because the centre of
Kushan power lay in north-western India. Most Kushan towns in India
lay exactly on the northwestern or uttarapatha route passing from
Mathura to Taxila.