Discuss the main feature oftrade and urbanisation in the period of 200 bc- 200ad
Answers
The flourishing trade and crafts and growing use of money was an incentive to the growth of new towns.
Vaishali, Pataliputra, Varanasi, Kausambi, Sravasti, Hastinapur, Mathura, Indraprastha etc. were some of the prosperous towns of North India during the Kushan period.
These towns find mention in the old Chinese texts or records of Chinese pilgrims. The town-sites of Sonpur, Buxur, and Ghazipur in Bihar also flourished during the Kushan age. Excavations have unearthed several Kushan towns in Meerut and Muzzaffarnagar districts. Ludhiana, Ropar and Jalandhar in the Punjab were among the flourishing towns. Ujjain was an important town of the Saka kingdom because it was nodal point of two trade routes – one from Mathura and the other from Kausambi.
During the reign of the Satvahana rulers also several towns flourished. Among them were Paithan, Broach, Sopara, Amravati, Nagarjunakonda, Arikamedu and Kaveripattanam which were highly prosperous centers of trade.
Causes of the Growth of Towns or Urban Settlements:
There were many causes for the growth and prosperity of several towns in the Post-Mauryan period, i.e. from 200 B.C. to 200 A.D. In that period under the Satvahanas, the Kushans, the Indo- Parthians and the Saka rulers, India’s trade with Rome and Central Asia was at its zenith.
Several towns flourished in the Punjab and Western Uttar Pradesh. All these places were situated in the heart of their respective empires. Particularly, the Kushan kings ensured the security of the trade-routes which was one of the causes for the prosperity of these towns. But in the third century A.D. with the decline of these kingdoms, the glory and prosperity of these towns also declined.
Science and Technology in Post-Mauryan Period:
There was a great progress in the field of Science and technology, particularly in the field of crafts, mining and metallurgy from c. 200 B.C. to c. 300 A.D.
Answer: