queries on population & monks in Early India

[David Magier]

Dear colleagues, just in case any of you are interested in the
responses to the query I posted earlier, I've summarized them here,
for your info. If further leads occur to you, please let me know.
Thanks.  David Magier

> I'm trying to get a rough estimate of the
>
> 1. population of India in the Maurya, Gupta and Pala periods; and
> 2. the number of Buddhist monks and nuns for those same time
> periods.

EARLY POPULATION:

a) Check out Josiah Cox Russell's MEDIEVAL REGIONS AND THEIR CITIES
(Bloomington : Indiana U. Press) 1972, which includes a chapter on
India and makes use of Chinese Buddhist pilgrim accounts to arrive at
population estimates.

b) Check some of the essays in F. R. Allchin's, THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF
EARLY HISTORIC SOUTH ASIA (Cambridge University Press) 1995.

c) George Erdosy's URBANISATION IN EARLY HISTORIC INDIA. (Oxford,
England: B.A.R.) 1988.

d) Makkhan Lal's "Population distribution and its movement during the
second and first millennium B.C. in the Indo-Gangetic divide and upper
Ganga Plain", Puratattva, No. 18 (1987-88), pp.35-43.

e) Makkhan Lal's Archaeology of population : a study of population
change in the Ganga-Yamuna Doab from 2nd millennium B.C. to the
present (Varanasi: Department of Ancient Indian History, Culture and
Archaeology, Banaras Hindu University) 1984.

f) Makkhan Lal's Settlement history and rise of civilization in
Ganga-Yamuna Doab from 1500 B.C. to 300 A.D. (Delhi: B.R. Publishing
Co.; New York, N.Y. : Distributed by APT Books) 1984.

BUDDHIST MONKS:

a) Some Chinese Buddhist pilgrim's accounts themselves might be
useful, e.g. Fa-Hsien's (dates: ca 337-ca. 422) and Hsuan-Tsang
(dates: ca. 596-664).  Samuel Beal has translated both in SI YU KI =
BUDDHIST RECORDS OF THE WESTERN WORLD; there are other translations
available. One or both of these pilgrims actually recorded the number
of monks in each of the monasteries they went through.

b) An estimate of the number of monks in Kushana times might be given
somewhere in:
 Lamotte, Etienne. HISTOIRE DU BOUDDHISME INDIEN: DES ORIGINES `A
L'`ERE _SAKA. (Louvain, Publications Universitaires, Institut
Orientaliste) 1958.