Explain how the growth and development of crafts and commerce promoted the prosperity of towns in post-Maurya times.

I. The growth and development of crafts and commerce:

(i) The flourishing trade, crafts and growing use of money was an incentive to the growth of the new towns. Vaishali, Patliputra, Benaras, Kausambi, Sravasti, Hastinapur, Mathura, Indraprastha etc. were some of the prosperous towns of north India during the Kushana period. These towns find mention in the old Chinese texts or records of Chinese pligrims. The town sites of Sonpur, Buxur, Ghazipur in Bihar also flourished during the Kushana age.

(ii) Excavations have unearthed several Kushana towns in Meerut and Muzaffarnagar districts. Ludhiana, Ropar and Jallandhar in the Punjab were among the flourishing towns. Ujjain was an important town of the Saka kingdom because it was the nodal points of two trade routes-one from Mathura and the other from Kausambi.

(iii) During the reign of the Satavahana rulers also several towns flourished. Among them were Paithan, Broach, Sopara, Amravati, Nagaijunakonda, Arikamedu and Kaveripattanam which were highly prosperous centres of trade.

II. Causes of the growth of crafts, trade and urban settlements: There were several causes for the growth and prosperity of several towns in the Post-Mauryan period i.e., from 200 B.C. to 200 A.D.

(i) In that period under the Satvahanas, the Kushanas, the Indo-Parthians and the Saka rulers India's trade with Rome and Central Asia was at its zenith.

(ii) Several towns flourished in the Punjab and western Uttar Pradesh. All these places were situated in the heart of their respective empires.

(iii) Particularly, the Kushana 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.