Q1.
Take a sheet of transparent paper that can be used for tracing. Trace a map of the trade routes from the chapter ‘The Rise of Empires’. Place it on top of the map of the important tīrthas. What do you observe?
Answer
How to do it: lay the tracing sheet on Fig. 5.5 (page 92). Trace the coastline, then the Uttarapatha in one colour, the Dakṣhiṇapatha in a second and the other routes in a third, and mark the cities as dots. Now lift the sheet and place it over Fig. 8.6 (page 174), matching the coastline and the 70°E, 80°E and 90°E lines so the two maps sit exactly on top of each other.
What you observe: the two maps very largely coincide.
| Trade-route city (Fig. 5.5) | What sits at or near the same spot in Fig. 8.6 |
|---|---|
| Kāśhī | Varanasi — a great tīrtha, with Sarnath (Buddhist) just beside it |
| Kauśhāmbī | Prayagraj, a Kumbh Mela site, at the confluence of the Ganga and Yamuna |
| Mathurā | Mathura, one of the places Guru Nanak's pilgrimages are recorded to have touched |
| Ujjayinī | Ujjain — a Kumbh Mela site and the Mahakaleshwar jyotirlinga |
| Dvāraka | Dwarka, the western chār dhām |
| Kalinganagara | Close to Puri, the eastern chār dhām |
| Kānchīpura | Kanchipuram, a temple city and Shakti pīṭha |
| Madurai | Madurai, and the road onward to Rameswaram, the southern chār dhām |
| Pāṭaliputra / Rājagṛiha / Champā | Patna Sahib (Sikh), and the Buddhist and Jain sites of Bihar and Jharkhand |
| Takṣhaśhilā, in the far northwest | The northwestern end of both the trade network and the Shakti pīṭha network |
Three clear conclusions follow:
- Pilgrimage routes and trade routes are largely the same roads. The Uttarapatha ran east–west across the north, past Mathurā, Kāśhī and Pāṭaliputra; the Dakṣhiṇapatha ran from Kauśhāmbī through Ujjayinī to Pratiṣhṭhāna. Both strings are also strings of tīrthas.
- The two networks fed each other. Pilgrims needed food, cloth, vessels and lodging, which traders supplied; traders needed safe, well-used roads with rest houses, which pilgrim traffic kept alive. Some traders “double as pilgrims”, carrying wares to distant towns while visiting shrines.
- Both networks explain the same result. Goods, coins, ideas and stories moved along the same lines — which is why the chapter calls this exchange “a major factor in the cultural integration of the Indian Subcontinent”.
Look for the difference too: the trade map has strong coastal and port lines (Bharukachchha, Sopārā, Tāmralipti, Muchiri, Kāverīpattinam) that carried sea trade, while the tīrtha map reaches deep into the Himalayas (Badrinath, Kedarnath, Amarnath) where no trade route goes. Where money leads, roads go to harbours; where faith leads, paths go up mountains.