DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

262 THE SOUTHERN TRACK ROUTE [8.5
accumulation in land, metals, and other means of production. The
Hinayanist were, on the whole, less efficient in such exploitation, though
the difference was in many cases lessened by intermediares (GAEB 74).
The question had come up at a very early period, historic (A. Bareau
: Less premiers candles bouddhiques, Ann. Musee Guimet LX, Paris 1955,
particularly 145-7) second council held at Vesali a hundred years after
the death of the Buddha. The Vajjiputtaka sect had begun to accept gold
and silver, a practice condemned by the council. The ban was accepted
into the Vinaya. Nevertheless, there was soon another council and a
schism, this time on complicated grounds of theological dogma, but
undoubtedly with the same underlying cause. The later Satslputriya
and their numerous wealthy schools are supposed to have derived from
the Vajjiputtakas. Rather than excavate the economic foundation buried
safely under the most complicated philosophy, we turn to the
indispensable role played by monastic life in the further economic
development of the whole country.
8.5. We have followed the different methods whereby the two great
alluvial river valleys in the north were opened up for agrarian settlement.
These were not suited to the Deccan plateau with its scattered
pockets of fertile soil in a poorly watered hilly region, nor to the
coastal strip with its terrific rainfall and heavy forest. Northern traders
had skirted the coast long before the Mauryans, and there had been
a little indirect penetration for gold and forest produce, into the middle of
the plateau itself. Had the penetration not led the local inhabitants to a
certain amount of food production, the Maur-yan conquest would have
been difficult and worthless — just as Caesar’s conquest of Gaul was
valuable and easy, but that of Germany out of the question.
The name Deccan comes from daksinapatha = the southern (trade)
route of SN 976-7, 1931, 1011-14. A beginning is seen in ‘the southern
mountain’ DakMiinagiri of Jat. 39, 268, and the fourth sutta of SN.
which however refers only to the hills near the south bank of the
Ganges, in Mirzapore. These had been settled by the time of the Buddha,
who preached sermons there, one to a brahmin farmer Kasi-Bharadvaja.
Something is known of the archaeology of this region (A. C. Carlleyte,