John Keay - India

Moreover, the link between trade and dominion was not just one of timing. ‘The prosperity ushered in by trade and the need to control the trade routes is apparent in the sites chosen by the Shatavahanas for their earliest inscriptions.’ 18Inland trade routes converged on the Shatavahanas’ west coast ports from Ujjain and the Gangetic states as well as from the Shatavahanas’ capital at Paithan in the Deccan. In both cases they had to thread their way down the rocky defiles of the Western Ghats. The Shatavahanas’ earliest inscriptions are at cave sites clearly related to these passes and defiles. Not without reason did one of the earliest Shatavahana kings describe himself as daksinapatha-pati , ‘the lord of the daksinapatha (the “southern route”)’.

The Periplus describes vast wagon trains heading down from Ujjain with the exotic produce of the Kushana domains and beyond – spikenard, saffron and costus (a medicinal root) from the Himalayas, ivory and bdellium (a resin), muslins and silks, agate and carnelian, ebony and teak. The trade may go back to Mauryan times since a fragment of an Ashokan Rock Edict has been found at the port of Sopara. But it was the Shatavahanas who were responsible for developing it. They not only controlled the trade routes but also encouraged the settlement of lands which would supply both the ports and the staging posts. It was to further this programme of settlement and strategic control that the Shatavahana dynasty, though orthodox in its adherence to Vedic sacrifice and deities, patronised and encouraged Buddhist establishments as well as making land grants to brahmans.

Buddhism, as noted, had become identified with commerce and manufacturing. Not only did Buddhist doctrine encourage the investment of resources which would otherwise be wasted on sacrifices; it also denied caste taboos on food and travel which made trade so hazardous for the orthodox. Monastic establishments thus became foci of inland trade. Beside and below the extant cave temples it is thought that there stretched bazaars and lodging houses, stables, holding pens and joinery shops, all of course built in long-since-perished timber. The monasteries thus served the functions of caravanserais. And, though initially recipients of royal grants, they soon attracted private donations and mercantile endowments. As guild-members or as individuals, weavers, grain merchants, basket makers, leather workers, shipping agents, ivory carvers, smiths, salt merchants and a host of other craftsmen and dealers are recorded as donors in the cave temple inscriptions. Many hailed from distant parts of India; some even described themselves as Yavanas ; all clearly had a vested interest in the booming commerce and so in the religious establishments which made it possible.

The nature of Aryanisation within the subcontinent is still debated; so is that of India’s growing influence outside the subcontinent. Were Funan and all the later Indianised states in south-east Asia the result of trading links, of missionary activities, of migration, or of conquest? Should they be called ‘colonies’? Or were their Indian credentials simply the result of local elites espousing imported ideas of kingship, cultural sophistication and social differentiation? Conquests like Rome’s contemporary triumphs in Gaul and Britain can be discounted. It is much more likely that the processes responsible for the diaspora of Indian ideas in south-east Asia mirrored those at work in the western Deccan where trade, religious institutions and royal authority operated in consort to promote security, extend agrarian settlement and stimulate state-formation.

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