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42 INDIA AS DESCRIBED IN EARLY TEXTS
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to be the future capital of Jambudvipa. According to Brahmanical literature, the city derived its name from Asi and Baruna,1 the two small streams bounding it on the south and the north respectively. The country was noted as a great centre of trade, most populous and prosperous at the same time, One high way connected it with Rajagaha 2 and another with Savatthi. It was noted for its silk cloth and for perfumes (Käsi-vilepana, Kasi-candana). Vasabhagāma, Macchikāsaṇḍa, Kīṭāgiri and Dhanapālagāma are mentioned as notable places. Of them. Kiṭāgiri was a very fertile tract with abundance of rain-water enabling it to yield three harvests of food-grains'. Cundatthila (Cundavila) finds mention in the Petavatthu, iii, i, as a village near Benares but on the other side of the river (Baruņā?) and between Vasabhagama and Benares. A locality of this name finds mention in one of the Barhut inscriptions. The most important place near Benares in the history of Buddhism is the Deer Park at Isipatana (Rṣipatana, modern Sarnath) eighteen leagues from Uruvelă, the place of the Buddha's Enlightenment and three or four miles to the
1 Cunningham, op. cit., pp. 435-6.
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2 Vinaya,ri, p. 212.
4 Jataka,,vi, p. 151.
3 Ibid., 11, p. 10.
5 Ibid., i, f. 355; Anguttara, ii, p. 391. • Barua in J.H.Q., x, p. 63.
7 RAMIA. And Sinha. Barhut Tuorrintione
