Rude Awakenings - Forest Sangha Publications

^0 L E T T I N G G O 06marketplace. On the other side of the ruins and beyond the vihara werethe hills, the first break in the Ganges plain since we started walking.They rose steeply, with a narrow valley cutting into them opposite thevihara. This valley was once the entrance to Old Rajagaha—the originalcapital of Magadha. Old Rajagaha had been protected inside the naturalfortress of the hills, but during the time of the Buddha, the kingdomhad grown sufficiently that King Bimbasara felt confident enough tomove the city out onto the fertile plain.The Rajgir hills are an outlying portion of the central Indian uplands,which start twenty miles farther south. This rolling plateau, known asthe Deccan, is an ancient area of worn-down mountains—much, mucholder than the Himalayas. On its northern edge it has been dissected byrivers flowing down into the Ganges plain. As the sediment in the plainhas built up, the leading edge of the uplands has been buried, leaving theoutlying higher bits, like the Rajgir hills, sticking out of the plain: ruggedislands in a flat green sea of cultivation. The Rajgir hills sweep round inan arc, with the two arms trailing off together to the southwest as a doubleridge. There are only three gaps through them to the flat area containedin the middle. They made the ideal protection for a capital cityand were probably the reason that the kingdom of Magadha grew toprominence.The rocks of these hills are old and the soil so poor that, in the past,the hills were left as forest. They were still shown as such on my old 1940smaps, but by the time of our visit the demands for wood by the evergrowingpopulation had denuded them. From the vihara all I could seewere bare stony slopes rising up some five hundred feet, scattered withthe occasional boulder and rocky outcrop. But each evening, lines ofpoor people, mostly women, would come into town past the viharawith piles of wood on their heads: large bundles of long thin branchesor long sticks made from split logs. They held them with one hand, thewood overhanging forward and back and rocking gently as they walked.The multitudes of the plains have to have fuel to cook their food and, as2 2 3