The foreign trade by land and sea was regulated by means of ordinances and passports. India supplied the western countries, Syria and Egypt in particular, with indigo, and various medicinal substances, and cotton and silk.

To facilitate the Bactrian trade with India, Antiochus I, at the time of his joint rule with Seleucus (285- 280 B.C.), issued coins of the Indian instead of the Attic standard. Asoka’s religious missions to the West and perhaps also the East must have, taken well- established trade-routes.

The inland trade was carried on by carts and caravans. Trade routes (vanikpatha) according to Kautilya are to be established as ways of profit. Kautilya does not agree with the view that water route is preferable to land route for the transport of goods.

He classifies sea-ways into the ways along the coast and the ways through mid-ocean to foreign countries. Of these he prefers the former as a source of greater profit. Besides these two there was the river which served as the water­ways. Bridges were not known, but only ferries and boats.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

The Organisation of Trade:

The eighteen chief handicrafts of the time such as wood-work, metal- work and jewellery, etc. were organised in guilds called srenis each under its president called pramukha and the alderman called jetthaka.

Trade was organised in merchant-guilds (sanghas and srenis) whose chief was called alderman over the aldermen of the guilds, empowered to hear disputes among the guilds. According to Kautilya they flourished on vartta, a term which included agriculture, cattle-raising and trade.