Crafts, Trade and Towns in the Post-Maurya Age
The age of the Sakas, Kushans, and Satavahanas (c. 200 BCE – AD 200) and the first Tamil states was the most flourishing period in the history of crafts and commerce in ancient India. This era witnessed a remarkable growth in arts and crafts. The Digha Nikaya (pre-Maurya) mentions about two dozen occupations; the Mahavastu (belonging to this period) catalogues 36 kinds of workers living in the town of Rajgir alone. The Milinda Panho (Questions of Milinda) enumerates as many as 75 occupations, 60 of which are connected with various kinds of crafts.
Diversity of Artisans
Craftsmen were mostly associated with towns in literary texts, though some excavations show they also inhabited villages. In a village settlement in Karimnagar (Telangana), carpenters, blacksmiths, goldsmiths, potters, etc. lived in separate quarters, and agricultural and other labourers lived at one end.
Key Crafts and Their Products
Metals and Metallurgy:
- Eight crafts were associated with working gold, silver, lead, tin, copper, brass, iron, and precious stones or jewels
- Various kinds of brass, zinc, antimony, and red arsenic are mentioned — indicating great advance in mining and metallurgy
- Technological knowledge of iron work had made great progress; iron artifacts discovered in greater numbers in Kushan and Satavahana layers at various excavated sites
- The Telangana region of Andhra made special progress in iron manufacture: balance rods, socketed axes, hoes, sickles, ploughshares, razors, ladles discovered in Karimnagar and Nalgonda districts
- Indian iron and steel including cutlery were exported to Abyssinian ports and enjoyed great prestige in Western Asia
Textiles:
- Cloth-making, silk-weaving, and making of arms and luxury articles also made progress
- Mathura was a great centre for manufacturing a special type of cloth called sataka
- 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, Tamil Nadu)
- Similar dyeing vats excavated at Arikamedu — structures belonging to the 1st–3rd centuries AD, during which handloom textile industry flourished
- The manufacture of oil increased because of the use of the oil wheel
Luxury Crafts:
- Ivory work, glass manufacture, and bead cutting
- Many products of these crafts found as a result of digging in Kushan complexes
- Roman glass objects appear in post-Maurya Taxila and Afghanistan — but it was about the beginning of the Christian era that glass-blowing reached India and attained its peak
- Large numbers of beads of semi-precious stones appear in post-Maurya layers
Coin-Minting:
- An important craft; the period is noted for numerous types of coins made of gold, silver, copper, bronze, lead, and potin
- Craftsmen also made fake Roman coins; various coin-moulds found in north India and the Deccan
- A Satavahana-level coin-mould shows that through it half a dozen coins could be turned out at a time — early mass production
Terracotta:
- Urban handicrafts were supplemented by the manufacture of beautiful pieces of terracotta, found in profuse quantities at almost all Kushan and Satavahana sites
- Special mention: Yelleshwaram in Nalgonda district — largest number of terracottas and the moulds in which they were manufactured; also found at Kondapur, about 65 km from Hyderabad
- Terracottas were meant mostly for the use of upper classes in towns
- Significant: with the decline of towns in Gupta, and especially post-Gupta times, such terracottas almost went out of fashion — directly linking urban prosperity with craft production
Guild Organization
- Artisans were organized into guilds
- In the second century AD in Maharashtra, devotees of Buddhism deposited money with the guilds of potters, oil millers, and weavers for providing robes and other necessities to monks
- In the same century, money was deposited by a chief with the guild of flour makers at Mathura out of the monthly income of which a hundred brahmanas were to be served daily
- Artisans of this period were organized into at least two dozen guilds
- Most artisans known from inscriptions were confined to the Mathura region and the western Deccan — which lay on the trade routes leading to the ports on the western coast
Internal Trade Routes
The most important economic development of the period was the thriving trade between India and the eastern Roman empire. In the beginning, trade was carried on by land, but the movement of the Sakas, Parthians, and Kushans from the first century BCE disrupted trade by land route.
From the first century AD, trade was carried on mainly by sea. Around the beginning of the Christian era, the monsoons were discovered — allowing sailors to sail in much less time directly from the eastern coast of the Arabian Sea to its western coast.
Key ports on the western coast:
- Broach (Bharuch) — the most important and flourishing; received commodities from the Satavahana, Saka, and Kushan kingdoms
- Sopara — western coast
- Arikamedu — eastern coast (near Pondicherry)
- Tamralipti — eastern coast
Key trade routes:
- First route (north-south): Directly from the north connecting Taxila with the lower Indus basin, passing on to Broach on the western coast
- Second route — Uttarapatha: More frequently used; from Taxila through modern Punjab to the western coast of the Yamuna → southward to Mathura → Ujjain in Malwa → again from Ujjain to Broach on the western coast; also a route starting from Kausambi near Allahabad
Both routes converged at Taxila and were connected with the Silk Road passing through Central Asia.
Ujjain was the most important Saka-period town because it was the nodal point of two routes — one from Kausambi and one from Mathura. It was also important for its export of agate and carnelian stones (raw material obtained from the trap bedrock in the bed of the Sipra river).
Foreign Trade with Rome
India's exports to Rome:
- Spices (especially pepper — called yavanapriya in Sanskrit, meaning 'dear to the foreigners')
- Muslin, pearls, jewels, precious stones
- Iron goods, especially cutlery — an important item of export
- Silk (also brought from China via India to Rome)
Rome's exports to India:
- Wine-amphorae and various types of pottery (discovered at Tamluk in West Bengal, Arikamedu near Pondicherry, and several other places in south India)
- Roman gold coins — the most significant Roman export; about 85 finds of Roman coins have come to light in the whole of the subcontinent, most of them from south of the Vindhyas in the Satavahana kingdom
- Lead (used for coin-making by Satavahanas, seems to have been imported from Rome in shape of coiled strips)
The Roman historian Pliny wrote his account Natural History in Latin in AD 77 and complained that Rome was being drained of gold on account of her trade with India. As early as AD 22 we hear of complaints against excessive expenditure on purchase of pepper from the East. The balance of trade was so much in India's favour that eventually steps had to be taken in Rome to ban Rome's trade with India in pepper and steel goods.
Impact of Parthian rule: The Parthians of Iran imported iron and steel from India but also created obstacles to India's trade with lands further west of Iran, which is why silk was sometimes diverted from China to India via the east coast and then sent west through the north-western part of the subcontinent.
Decline of Roman trade: The Roman conquest of Mesopotamia (made a Roman province in AD 115 by emperor Trajan) actually facilitated eastern Roman trade. But from the third century AD, the ban on trade with India imposed by the Roman empire meant towns could not support artisans and merchants — leading to urban decline.
Currency and Coinage
- Roman gold coins were naturally valued for their intrinsic worth; they also circulated in large transactions
- The Indo-Greek rulers issued a few gold coins; the Kushans issued gold coins in considerable numbers — but it is wrong to think all Kushan gold coins were minted from Roman gold
- As early as the fifth century BCE, India had paid a tribute of 320 talents of gold to the Iranian empire
- Kushans probably obtained gold from Central Asia or from Karnataka or from gold mines of Dhalbhum in south Bihar
- Kushans issued the dinar type of gold coins — which became abundant under Gupta rule
- Day-to-day transactions were carried on in coins of lead, potin, or copper
- Copper and bronze coins were used in large quantities by rulers of some indigenous dynasties — the Nagas (central India), Yaudheyas (eastern Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab, UP), and the Mitras (Kausambi, Mathura, Avanti, Ahichchhatra)
- Money economy penetrated so deeply into the lives of common people of towns and their suburbs during this period as never before
Growth of Towns
The growing crafts, commerce, and increasing use of money promoted the prosperity of numerous towns during this period.
North India: Vaisali, Pataliputra, Varanasi, Kausambi, Sravasti, Hastinapur, Mathura, Indraprastha (Purana Quila in New Delhi) — all mentioned in literary texts; some described by Chinese pilgrims. Most flourished in the Kushan period (1st–2nd centuries AD).
Key sites:
- Mathura: showed as many as seven Kushan levels in excavations at Sonkh, only one Gupta phase
- Ujjain: most important Saka-kingdom town; nodal point of two routes; also exported agate and carnelian stones
- North-western India: excavations at Shringaverapur and Chirand show considerable brick structures; Bihar sites (Chirand, Sonpur, Buxar, Mason, Ghazipur) show prosperous Kushan phases; Sohgaura, Bhita, Kausambi, Shringaverapur near Allahabad, Atranjikhera and sites in districts of Meerut and Muzaffarnagar were thriving in Kushan times
- Punjab: Jullundar, Ludhiana, and Ropar all show good Kushan structures
- Satavahana towns in south and west: Tagar (Ter), Paithan, Dhanyakataka, Amaravati, Nagarjunakonda, Broach, Sopara, Arikamedu, Kaveripattanam
- Several Satavahana settlements may be identical with the 30 walled towns of the Andhras mentioned by Pliny; some excavated in Telangana
Gupta Period Decline
- In the Gupta period, many towns had poorly built structures made of used Kushan bricks — indicating urban decline
- The Gupta period had only ONE phase at Sonkh/Mathura vs. SEVEN Kushan levels
- With the ban on Roman trade from the third century AD, towns in Maharashtra, Andhra, and Tamil Nadu could not support artisans and merchants — decline of towns generally took place from the third century AD onwards
- Archaeological excavations in the Deccan also suggest decline in urban settlements after the Satavahana phase
- GS Paper I — Ancient History: The post-Maurya period is the template for understanding ancient Indian commercial economy — guilds, coinage, trade routes, and urbanization.
- Continuity vs. Change: The Gupta period, often celebrated as a golden age of culture, actually witnessed urban and commercial decline — a counterintuitive but important UPSC theme.
- Trade and Economy: The Roman trade connection explains the prosperity of both northern and southern kingdoms. The monsoon discovery (1st century AD) transformed sea trade — a key causal link.
- Art and Archaeology: Terracotta figures, dyeing vats at Arikamedu, Roman amphorae, coin-moulds, and brick structures are all material evidence that UPSC questions frequently draw on.
- Interlinks: Post-Maurya Crafts ↔ Silk Route ↔ Kushan Economy ↔ Satavahana Trade ↔ Tamil Kingdoms ↔ Roman Empire ↔ Decline of Urbanization (Gupta period)
- Milinda Panho lists 75 occupations, NOT the Mahavastu: The Mahavastu lists 36 kinds of workers in Rajgir; the Milinda Panho lists 75 occupations (60 connected with crafts). These are frequently swapped in MCQs.
- Glass-blowing reached India at the beginning of the Christian era, NOT earlier: Glass objects appear earlier in post-Maurya Taxila, but glass-blowing as a technique reached India and peaked only at the beginning of the Christian era.
- Broach (Bharuch) = most important western port, NOT Sopara: Both are western ports, but Broach was the most important and flourishing, receiving goods from Satavahana, Saka, AND Kushan kingdoms.
- Uttarapatha = more frequently used route: The route running north-south directly from Taxila to lower Indus to Broach was the first route; the uttarapatha (Taxila–Punjab–Mathura–Ujjain–Broach) was the second route and was in MORE frequent use — a common reversal in MCQs.
- Roman gold coins found mostly SOUTH of Vindhyas: About 85 finds of Roman coins in the whole subcontinent; most come from south of the Vindhyas in the Satavahana kingdom — NOT from north India.
- Pliny's complaint: AD 77, NOT AD 22: Pliny wrote Natural History in AD 77. Complaints against excessive pepper expenditure began as early as AD 22 — two different data points.
- Yavanapriya = pepper, NOT wine: Yavanapriya = 'dear to the foreigners' in Sanskrit = pepper. Do not confuse it with wine (sura) or any other product.
- Kushan gold coins ≠ necessarily from Roman gold: It is explicitly stated that it is WRONG to think all Kushan gold coins were minted from Roman gold. They obtained gold from Central Asia, Karnataka, or Dhalbhum mines.
- Urban decline begins from 3rd century AD, NOT immediately after Mauryas: Towns flourished through the Kushan/Satavahana period and declined from the 3rd century AD onward when Roman trade collapsed — not before.
- Period: c. 200 BCE–AD 200 (Saka, Kushan, Satavahana + first Tamil states)
- Digha Nikaya: ~24 occupations (pre-Maurya); Mahavastu: 36 kinds of workers in Rajgir; Milinda Panho: 75 occupations, 60 craft-connected
- Telangana/Andhra: special progress in iron; cutlery exported to Abyssinian ports
- Mathura: sataka cloth; Uraiyur and Arikamedu: brick-built dyeing vats (1st–3rd century AD)
- Glass-blowing peaked at India at the beginning of the Christian era
- Coin-minting: Satavahana coin-mould could turn out half a dozen coins at a time
- Yelleshwaram (Nalgonda): largest number of terracottas of this period
- Terracottas went out of fashion with Gupta/post-Gupta urban decline
- Artisans organized in at least two dozen guilds
- Most flourishing trade: India–eastern Roman empire
- Land trade disrupted by Sakas, Parthians, Kushans from 1st century BCE; sea trade took over from 1st century AD
- Monsoon discovery: beginning of 1st century AD → direct Arabian Sea sailing
- Most important western port: Broach (Bharuch)
- Two main routes: (1) Taxila–lower Indus–Broach; (2) Uttarapatha: Taxila–Punjab–Mathura–Ujjain–Broach (more frequent)
- Both routes converged at Taxila; connected to Silk Road
- Ujjain: nodal point of two routes; also exported agate and carnelian (raw material from Sipra river bed)
- India exported: pepper (yavanapriya), muslin, pearls, jewels, iron/cutlery, silk
- Rome exported: wine amphorae, pottery, gold coins
- ~85 finds of Roman coins in subcontinent; mostly south of Vindhyas
- Pliny (Natural History, AD 77): complained Rome was being drained of gold
- Kushan gold: dinar type; from Central Asia, Karnataka, or Dhalbhum (south Bihar)
- Decline of towns: from 3rd century AD (Roman trade ban + Satavahana collapse)