The impact of the Emperor Ashoka on Buddhism may serve as a paradigm of its dependence on the patronage of rulers and the loyal devotion of ordinary people throughout its history. The geography of Buddhism sketched above shows that its links with traders also deserve attention. The Discourses of the Buddha preserve many instances of his accepting converts, close disciples, and merit-making gifts from all classes and castes of ancient Indian society, many of them traders. Thus itinerant merchants moving along the early Indian trade routes mentioned, and later making much longer journeys by land and sea, had no fear of becoming isolated from the Buddhist sources of religious inspiration as their Hindu counterparts may have done in the early centuries CE. The Emperor Ashoka himself had sent proselytising Buddhist missions to the limits of the then known world.
Still other links existed at times between sangha and traders. Merit-making gifts to support Buddhism were not usually spent. They were invested and the proceeds from the investments were used to support the sangha and its activities. Since the vinaya rules precluded monks from handling financial affairs, there were councils of the laity to do this on their behalf. Members of the whole social spectrum supported Buddhism: short donatory inscriptions show that kings, queens and princesses, royal treasurers, bankers and their families, generals, royal scribes, superintendents of water houses, caravan leaders, heads of renovation works, artisans, stoneworkers, village leaders, farmers, leaders of the cowherds, sandalmakers, carters, and traders (including foreign traders) made gifts for the monumental and monastic buildings and the upkeep of the monastic communities. Similar people also served on the lay committees administering the gifts. Traders, in particular, had a specialized knowledge of how and where best to invest donations on behalf of the sangha. Thus the guestrooms of the monasteries dotted along major trade routes provided safe places where traders, their goods and their animals could stop on their journeys, affording them simultaneously with shelter, opportunities to make merit through donations or services to Buddhist foundations and also, on occasion, to receive loans from their committees to support their trading ventures. This draws attention to the particular character of the economic geography of Buddhism, which accounts in many ways for both the pattern of dispersal of ancient Buddhist sites and for many of the variations in their density.
World History
