In the Suttas, again the Brāhman
Kasibhāradvājais
employ-
ing 500 ploughs and hired men (bhatikāls to guide plough an oxen 9,
Rice was the staple article of food0 ; besides which seven other kinds
of grain are mentioned21, sugar-cane" and fruits, vegetables and flowers
were also cultivated.
ing 500 ploughs and hired men (bhatikāls to guide plough an oxen 9,
Rice was the staple article of food0 ; besides which seven other kinds
of grain are mentioned21, sugar-cane" and fruits, vegetables and flowers
were also cultivated.
Cambridge History of India - v1
Fick's admirable mono.
graph Die sociale Gliederuny in Indien is similarly based. That work deals
chiefly with social conditions. The present chapter, on the other hand, is
mainly economic in scope, and only in a minor degree sociological. It is
true that the evidence is drawn very largely from stories. But it is fairly
clear that the folk in those tales have given them a parochial setting and
local colour. And this is frequently borne out by the coincident testimony
of other books not dealing with folk-lore.
The rural economy of India at the coming of Buddhism was based
chiefly on a system of village communities of landowners, or what in
Europe is known as peisant proprietorship. The Jätaka bears very clear
testimony to this. There is no such clear testimony in it to isolated large
estates, or to great feudatories, or to absolute lords of the soil holding such
estates. In the monarchies, the king, though autocratic and actively govern-
ing, had a right to a tithe on raw produce, collected as a yearly tax ; and
only to this extent could he be considered the ultimate owner of the soil.
All abandoned, all forest land the king might dispose of1 ; and under this
right was included the reversion to the crown of all property left intestate or
'ownerless”? a custom which may or may not be a survival of an older
feudalism. The sovereign was moreover entitled to ‘milk money,' a
perquisite paid by the nation when an heir was born to him? , and he could
declare a general indemnity for prisoners at any festal occasion“. Besides
1 D. I, 87.
2 S. I, 89 (Kinrired Sayings, I, 115) ; Jūt, III, 3023 ; cf. IV, 485 ; VI, 348.
3 16. IV, 323.
4 1b. IV, 176 ; V', 285 ; VI, 327.
176
## p. 177 (#211) ############################################
VIII]
TITHES AND TAXES -
177
these privileges he could impose forced labour or rājakāriya on the people,
but this may have been limited to the confines of his own estates. Thus
the peasant proprietors enclose a deer-reserve for their king, that they
might not be summoned to leave their tillage to beat up game for himi. A
much more oppressive extent of corvee is predicted only of a state
of civic decay? The tithe on produce was levied in kind, measured
out either by the village syndic or headman (gāma-bhojaka), or by an
official (a mahāmatta) at the barn doors, or by survey of the crops
Some of the rice and other grain may presumably have been told off
for the special granaries kept filled for urgency, in war or famine", but
Buddhist books make no clear reference to such an institution. The amount
levied seems to have varied from to 19, according to the decision of the
ruling power? or other circumstances. And the contributions raised at one
or more gāmas (villages), rural or suburban, could be made over by a
monarch (or by his chief queen®) to anyone he wished to endow, e. g. , to a
daughte ron her marriage', a ministerio, a Brahman', a merchant, etc12
Again, the king could remit the tithe to any person 13 or group".
4
We have no direct evidence of such a tithe or other tax being levied
on the commonwealth by any of the republics or oligarchies mentioned in
the Buddhist capon, such as the Sākiyas, Koliyas, Licchavis, Mallas, etc15.
But that they did so raise the state revenue, in the case at least of the
Sākiyas, seems to be attested by Asoka's inscription on the Lumbini or
Rumminder pillar6. The tithe thus remitted on the occasion of Asoka's
visit to the birthplace of the Buddha, must have been imposed by the
Sākiyas at a date prior to the Mauryan hegemony. The Sākiyas and
other republics are recorded as meeting for political business at their own
mote-halls"? , and must inevitably have had a financial policy to discuss
and carry out. That their enactments could be somewhat drastically
paternal appears in the case of the Malla clansmen of Kusinārā, who
imposed a fine of 500 (pieces) on anyone who 'went not forth to welcome
the Blessed One' when he drew near, on his tour, to their town18. These
Mallas were also possessed of a mote-hall (santhāgāra) for parliamentary
1 At Benares, Jāt I, 149; the Añjana Wood at Sāketa, ib. III, 270.
2 16. I, 339. A certain familiarity with oppressive taxation is suggested by ib. V,
99 ff ; cf. I, 339 ; II. 240.
3 Ib. II, 378.
4 lb. IV, 169.
5 Ind. Aạt. , 1896, pp. 261 f.
6 Cf Gautama X, 24 : Manu. VII, 130 ; Bühler, Trans Vienna Acad. Jan. 1897 ;
V. A. Smith, J. R. A. S. , 1897, 618 f.
8 164 V. , 4.
9 15. II, 237, 403.
10 15 I, 354 ; VI, 261.
11 D. I, 87 ; Jat, III, 229.
12 16. VI, 344.
13 lb. IV, 169.
14 16. I, 200.
15 See Buddhist India, 22.
16 J. R. A. S. 1898,546 f.
17 D. I, 91; cf. Dialogues of the Buddha, I, 113, n. 2.
18 Vin. I, 247 (Mah. VI, 36).
;
7 Jā. III,
9
## p. 178 (#212) ############################################
178
(c. u.
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
discussions? —a class of buildings illustrated by the bas-relief of a celestial
House of Lords on the Bhārhut Stūpa? .
Land might, at least in the kingdom of Magadha, be given away, and
in that of Kosala, be sold. In the former case, a Brāhman landowner
offers a thousand karisas of his estate as a gifts ; in the latter, a merchant
(by a little sharp practice) entangles an unwilling noble in the sale of a
park“. And in the law-books we read that land might be let against a
certain share of the produce. The holdings too in the arable land, called
the khetta, of each village would be subject to redistribution and redivision
among a family, as one generation succeeded another. It is not clear
whether any member of a village community could give or sell any of the
khetta to an outsider. It is just possible that the old tradition, expressed
in the Brāhmanas when a piece of land was given as a sacrificial fee-'And
the Earth said : Let no mortal give me away ! 8 — may have survived in
the villages as a communal, anti-alienising feeling concerning any disinte-
gration of the basis of their social and economic unity. We should anyway
expect, from what is revealed in the early Buddhist books, to find such a
sentiment upheld, less by the infrequent rural autocrat and his little king-
dom of country-seat, tenant-farmers, and serfs, than by the preponderating
groups of cultivators, each forming a gāma.
When, in the Jataka legend, a king of Vedeha abandons the world as
anchorite, he is described as renouncing both his capital, the city (nagara)
of Mithilā, seven yojanas (in circumference), and his realm of sixteen
thousand gāmas”. It may sound incredible that a country owning such a
wealth of ‘villages' should contain but one town, and that so vast in
extent, as to suggest inclusion not only of parks but of suburban gāmass.
There was not, however, any such hard and fast line between gāma and
nigama (small town) to warrant the exclusion, in this description, of some
gāmas which may have amounted to nigamas. A similar vagueness holds
between our town' and 'village'.
A gāma might apparently mean anything from a group of two or
three houses to an indefinite number. It was the generic, inclusive term
for an inhabited settlement, not possessing the fortifications of a nagara
or the ruler's palace of a rājadhāni. The number of inhabitants in the
gāmas of the Jātaka tales varied from 30 to 1000 families. And family
(kula), it must be remembered, was a more comprehensive unit than it is
with us, including not only father and mother, children and grandparents,
but also the wives and children of the sons. Gāma, it is true, might be
used to differentiate a class of settlement, as in the compound gama-nigama,
1 D II, 117. 2 Cunningham, Stūpa of Bhārhut, pl. XVI. 3 Jāl. IV, 281.
4 l'in. II, 158 f. (Cull. V'. VI, 4, 9 f. )
5 Āpast. II, 11, 28 (1); 1, 6, 18 (20).
6 Catap. Br. XIII, 7, 15.
7 Jät. III, 365.
8 16. VI, 330.
9 Childers, Pali Dictionary 8. 1.
## p. 179 (#213) ############################################
VIII]
CITIES AND VILLAGES
179
'villages and towns'; but it is also used in the wider, looser sense of group
as opposed to single house. For instance, a fire, when starting in a house,
may extend to the whole gāmal. When a bhikkhu leaves park, forest, or
mountain to seek alms, he 'enters the gāma”,' whether it be a neighbouring
village, or the suburbs of great Sāvatthi'.
Of such cities there were but few in Northern India. Less than
twenty are named“. Six of them only are reckoned by the Thera Ananda
as sufficiently important cities (mahā-nagarā) to be the scene of a Buddha's
final passing away :-Sāvatthi, Champā, Rājagaha, Sāketa, Kosambi,
Benares, Kusinārā, where that event actually took place, he depreciates as
not a 'village,' but a jungle townlet' (nagaraka)". The greatness of
'
Pātaliputra (Patna) was yet to come. In the absence of any systematic
account of this rural organisation in ancient records, it is better to refrain
from laying down any homogeneous schemie. No doubt different villages,
in different districts, varied one from another in the customs of land-tenure,
and in the rights of individual householders as against the community. '
The jungles and rivers of the vast Ganges valley fostered independent
development probably at least as much as the hill-barriers in the Alps have
done in the case of Swiss and Italian peasant communities down to this day.
Around the gāma, which appears to have been classed as of the
country(janapada), of the border (paccanta), or as suburban, lay its thetta,
or pastures, and its woodland or uncleared jungle :-primeval forest like
the Andhavana of Kosala, the Sitavana of Magadha, the Pācīnavamsa-
dāya of the Sākiya Territory, retreates traditionally haunted by wild beast
and by gentler woodland sprites, and where Māra, the Lucifer of seductive
evil influences, might appear in one shape or another'. Different from
these were such suburban groves as the Bamboo Grove belonging to
Magadha's king, the Anjanavana of Sāketa, the Jetavana of Sāvatthi.
Through those other uncleared woodlands and moorlands, where the folk
went to gather their firewood, and litterlo, ran caravan routes, roads
that were at times difficult because of swampy passages after rain, and
here and here dangeroues, less on account of aggressive beasts
than because of brigands not to mention demonic bipeds.
Adjoining or merged into these wilder tracts were supplementary
:
.
1 Milinda panha, 47.
2 Vin. passim, e. g. Cull V v, 12 ; 29. Cf. Thig. ver. 304 ; Comm. p. 175.
3 Jā I, 106 ; Psalms of the Brethren, p. 34, cf. 24; v. inf. p. 208.
4 Buddhist India, 34 ff
6 D. II, 116.
6 Buddh. Ind. 44. f.
? Jāti, 318.
8 16. I , 215 ; cf, V. 46.
9 See Psalms of the Early Buddhists I, II paesim ; cf. II, p. 151. , n. 1.
10 Jat I, 317 ; V, 103.
11. Ib. 1, 99.
>
;
## p. 180 (#214) ############################################
180
(CH.
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
>
grazing pastures of herds of cattle and goats3 – herds belonging to king' or
commoners). Commoners customarily entrusted their flocks to a commu-
nal neatherd, as we find in the Pennine Alps to-day(le fromageur). We find
him either penning his herds at night in sheds, or, more often, bringing
them back every evening and counting them out to the several owners,
varying the pasturage from day to day? The official name gopālaka and
the context suggest that dairy work was not usually expected of him so
much as sagacity in minding his beasts.
The arable ground of the gāma lay without the clustered dwellings,
since these were apparently enclosed by a wall or stockade with gates
gāmadvāra,, Fences 10, snares', and field watchmen? guarded the khetta
or gāmakhetta from intrusive beasts and birds, while the internal bound-
aries of each householder's plot were apparently made by channels dug for
co-operative irrigation 13. These dividing ditches, rectangular and curvili-
near, were likened, at least in the Magadha khettas, to a patchwork robe,
,
and prescribed by the Buddha as a pattern for the uniform of his Order :
torn pieces of cast-away cloth sewn together, 'a thing which could not be
coveted 14. The limits of the whole khetta might be extended by fresh clear-
ing of forest land's. And whereas the majority of holdings were probably
small, manageable single-handed or with sons and perhaps a hired manis,
estates of 1000 karisas (acres ? ) and more occur in the Jātakas, farmed by
Brāhmans 17.
In the Suttas, again the Brāhman Kasibhāradvājais employ-
ing 500 ploughs and hired men (bhatikāls to guide plough an oxen 9,
Rice was the staple article of food0 ; besides which seven other kinds
of grain are mentioned21, sugar-cane" and fruits, vegetables and flowers
were also cultivated.
Instances of collectivist initiative reveal a relatively advanced sense
of citizenship in the gamas The peasant proprietors had a nominal head
in the bhojaka or headman, who, as their representative at political
headquarters and municipal head, was paid by certain dues and fines23.
But all the village resident met to confer with him and each other on civic
1 lb. I, 388.
2 lb. III, 149 ; IV, 326.
3 lb, ITI, 401.
116. 240. 5 lb I, 194, 388 : cf. Rigveda, X, 19.
6 12. I 388 ; 111,149. 7 A. I, 205 ; M. Dhp. Comm. I, 157. A. V, 305,
9 Jat. I, 239 ; II, 76, 135 ; III 9; IV, 370 (nigama)
10 Ib. I, 215.
11 16 I 143, 154.
1. Ib. II, 110 ;IV, 277.
13 Dip. rer. 80=145=Therag. 19; Jat IV,167; 1, 336 V, 412.
14 l'in. Texts 17, 207-9 (Mah. VIII, 12). Cf Pss of the Brethren, p. 152.
15 Jāt. II, 357 IV. 16 1h. 1, 277 ;III, 162 ; IV 167. 17 16, III 293 ; IV. 276.
18 S. N. II, 4 ; cf. SI. 171 Jat. III, 293.
19 16, II, 165 ; 300
20 1b. I, 340 ; II, 43, 135, 378 ; III, 383 ; IV, 276.
21 M. 1. 57 ; also yava (barley) in Jāt II, 110. 22 16. I 339 ; Vin. (Mah. VI. 35, 6).
23 16. I, 199.
## p. 181 (#215) ############################################
VIII)
AGRICULTURE
181
over
a
and political matters. And carrying the upshot of their counsels into
effect, they built new mote-halls and rest-houses, constructed reservoirs and
parks, and took turns at a voluntary corvee in keeping their roads in
repair", herein again followed by Alpine peasants of to-day. Women too
considered it a civic honour to bear their own part in municipal building”.
A further glimpse into the sturdy spirit in gāmı-life is caught in the Jātaka
sentiment, that for peasants to leave their tillage and work for impoverished
kings was a mark of social decay3. Relevant to this is the low social
rank assigned to the hired labourer, who is apparently classed beneath the
domestic slave
Scarcity owing to drought or to floods is not infrequently referred
to, extending even
whole kingdom". This contradicts the
'affirmation' recorded by Megasthenes", that 'famine has never visited
India,' unless his informant meant a very general and protracted famine.
The times of scarcity in Buddhist records apparently refer only to brief
periods over restricted areas.
Nothing in all the foregoing evidence has gone to show that, in the
India of early Buddhist literature, the pursuit of agriculture was associated
with either social prestige or social stigma. The stricter Brāhman tradition,
not only in the law-books, but also in the Sutta Nipāta, the Majjhima
Nikāya, and the Jātakas, expressly reserved the two callings of agriculture
and trade for the Vaiçya or middle class, and judges them unfit for
Brāhman or noble. Thus the Brāhman Esukārī of Sāvatthi considers
village and dairy farming as not less the property and province of the
Vaiçya than are bow and arrow, endowed maintenance (by alms), and
sickle and yoke, the property and province of noble, Brāhman, and working
classes respectively? And here and there, in the Jātaka-book, Brāhmans
who engage in agriculture, trade, and other callings are declared to have
fallen from their Brāhmanhood8. On the other hand, in both Jātakas and
Suttas, not only are Brāhmans frequently found pursuing tillage, cow herd-
ing, goat keeping, trade, hunting, wood-work or carpentry, weaving,
caravan guarding, archery, carriage-driving, and snake-charming', but also
no reflection is passed upon them for so doing, nay, the Brāhman farmer
is at times a rotably pious man and a Bodhisat to boot10. Dr. Fick is
1 Ib.
1 Jāt. I, 199 f.
3 Ib. I 339.
4 Cf. D. I, 51 ; A. I, 145, 206 ; Mil. 147, 331 ; trs. II, 210, n. 6.
5 Vin. I, 211, 213 ff. ; Vin. T'exts, III, 220, n. 1, Jāt. I, 329 ; II, 135, 149, 367 ;
V. 193; VI, 487.
6 M ‘Crindle, Ancient India as described by Megasthenes, 32,
7 M. II, 180. The Vásețịha-sutta (M. no. 98 : S. N, III, 9) in spiritualising the
term brāhmaṇa, reveals the same exclusive sentiment as current.
8 Jåt. IV, 363 f.
9 Ját. II, 165 ; III, 293 ; IV, 167, 276 ; III, 401 ; IV, 15 ; V, 22, 471 ; II, 200; VI
170 ; IV, 207, 457 ; V, 127.
10 lb. III, 162.
## p. 182 (#216) ############################################
182
[CH.
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
disposed to think that the North-western (Udicca) Brāhmans of the Kurus
and Pañchālas, some of whom came east and settled there, inherited a
stricter standard'. Nevertheless it is not claimed for the pious ones just
mentioned, living near Benares and in Magadha, that they were Udicca
immigrants. Even the law. books permit Brāhmans to engage in worldly
callings if they are in straitened circumstances, or if they take no active
share in the work? .
As for the Kshatriya clansmen of the republics mentioned above,
they were largely cultivators of the soil. For instance, in the Kunāla
Jātaka, it was the workmen in the fields of the Sākiyan and Koliya
'bhojakas, amaccas and uparājas, who began to quarrel over the prior turn to
irrigate'. In the earliest Indian literature agricultural and pastoral concepts
play a great part. But even if this implied that a special dignity attached
to agriculture, it does not follow that any such tradition survived, if it
survived at all, associated with any section of society. There was among
Indo-Aryans little of the feudal tie between land and lord with lordship
over the land-tillers, which made broad acres a basis for nobility in the
West. However they accomplished their prehistoric invasion of the
Ganges basin, “land-grabbing' does not seem to have been carried out
pari passu with success in generalship. This may have been because the
annexation of land to any wide extent meant clearing of jungle. Except
among Dravidian and Kolārian towns along the rivers, the task of the
invaders was more like that of pioneering settlers in America. And there
we know that land is not an appa nage involving special privileges and
entailing special claims, but a commodity like any other.
The slave or servant (dāsa, dāsi) was an adjunct in all households able
to command domestic service; but slaves do not appear to have been kept,
as a rule, in great numbers', either in the house, or, as in the West, at min-
ing or “plantation' work. Their treatment differed of course according to
the disposition and capacity of both master and slave. Thus we find, in the
Jātaka, the slave, petted, permitted to learn writing and handicrafts besides
his ordinary duties as valet and footman, saying to himself that, at the
slightest fault he might get ‘beaten, imprisoned, branded, and fed on slave's
fare''. But of actual ill-treatment there is scarce any mention. Two instan-
ces of beating occur, and in both the victims were maids. One lies a-bed
repeatedly (to test her pious mistress's temper) , the other fails to bring
home wages? . Presumably she had been sent to fetch her master's wage, or
else had been hired out. But we do not meet with runaway slaves. Slavery
1 Sociale Gliederung in Indien, 138 f.
E. g. Manu x, 116.
3 Jāt. v, 412.
4 Vin. I, 72 (Mah. I, 39) ; D. I, 60, 72, 92, f. , 104 ; Dialogues of the Buddha I,
19, 101.
5 Jät. I, 451 f.
6. M. 1, 125.
7 Jät. I, 402 f.
## p. 183 (#217) ############################################
VIII ]
ARTS AND CRAFTS
183
>
>
might be incurred through capturel, commuted death sentences, debt?
voluntary self-degradation, or judicial punishment : on the other hand,
slaves might be manumitteds, or might free themselves by payment. They
might not, while still undischarged, be admitted into the religious commu-
nity (Sangha)?
The hireling, wage-earner, day-labourer was no man's chattel, yet his
life was probably harder sometimes than that of the slaves. He was to a
great extent employed on the larger land-holdings'. He was paid either
in board and lodging, or in money-wages10. Manu prescribes regular wages
both in money and kind for menials in the king's servicell.
In the arts and crafts, a considerable proficiency and specialisation of
industry had been reached. A list of callings given in the Milinda panha,
reveals three separate industries in the manufacture of bows and arrows,
apart from any ornamental work on the samel. In the same work, the
allusion to a professional winnower of grain indicates a similar division
of labour to our own threshing machinists and steam plough-owners who
tour in rural districts13. As certain grain crops were reaped twice a year! 4,
this would afford a fairly protracted season of work every few months.
Some trade-names, on the other hand, are as comprehensive as our
'smith. ' As with us, this word (kammāra) might be applied to a worker in
any metal. Vaddhaki, again, apparently covered all kinds of woodcraft
including shipbuilding, cartmaking15, and architecture16, thapati, tacchaka
(lit, planer), and bhamakāra or turner being occupied with special modes of
woodworki? . A settlement of Vaddhakis is able to make both furniture and
seagoing ships18 Once more the same worker in stone (pāsāņa-kottaka)
builds houses with the ruined material of a former gāma, and also hollows
a cavity in a crystal as a cage for a mouse19.
Important handicrafts like the three above named and their branches,
the workers in leather, i. e. , the leather-dressers, the 'painters,' and others to
the number of eighteen were organised into gilds (seni), according to
Jātaka records ; but it is to be regretted that only four of the eighteen
crafts thus organised are specifically mentioned, 'the woodworkers, the
1 lb. IV, 220 ; VI, 135.
2 lb. VI, 521; Therig. ver. 444.
3 Vin. I, 72 (Mah. I, 39, 1) ; Sum. Vil. 1,168.
4 Ját. I, 200,
5 D. I, 72 ; P88. Sisters, p. 117; Pss. Brethren, p. 22 ; Jāt. V, 313.
6 Ib. VI, 547.
7 Vin. I, 76 (Mah. I, 46 f). 8 Jät. I, 422 ; III, 444.
9 1b. III 406 ; IV, 43 ; S. N. p. 12. 10 16. II, 139 ; III, 326, 444 ; V, 212.
11 Manu VII, 125 f.
graph Die sociale Gliederuny in Indien is similarly based. That work deals
chiefly with social conditions. The present chapter, on the other hand, is
mainly economic in scope, and only in a minor degree sociological. It is
true that the evidence is drawn very largely from stories. But it is fairly
clear that the folk in those tales have given them a parochial setting and
local colour. And this is frequently borne out by the coincident testimony
of other books not dealing with folk-lore.
The rural economy of India at the coming of Buddhism was based
chiefly on a system of village communities of landowners, or what in
Europe is known as peisant proprietorship. The Jätaka bears very clear
testimony to this. There is no such clear testimony in it to isolated large
estates, or to great feudatories, or to absolute lords of the soil holding such
estates. In the monarchies, the king, though autocratic and actively govern-
ing, had a right to a tithe on raw produce, collected as a yearly tax ; and
only to this extent could he be considered the ultimate owner of the soil.
All abandoned, all forest land the king might dispose of1 ; and under this
right was included the reversion to the crown of all property left intestate or
'ownerless”? a custom which may or may not be a survival of an older
feudalism. The sovereign was moreover entitled to ‘milk money,' a
perquisite paid by the nation when an heir was born to him? , and he could
declare a general indemnity for prisoners at any festal occasion“. Besides
1 D. I, 87.
2 S. I, 89 (Kinrired Sayings, I, 115) ; Jūt, III, 3023 ; cf. IV, 485 ; VI, 348.
3 16. IV, 323.
4 1b. IV, 176 ; V', 285 ; VI, 327.
176
## p. 177 (#211) ############################################
VIII]
TITHES AND TAXES -
177
these privileges he could impose forced labour or rājakāriya on the people,
but this may have been limited to the confines of his own estates. Thus
the peasant proprietors enclose a deer-reserve for their king, that they
might not be summoned to leave their tillage to beat up game for himi. A
much more oppressive extent of corvee is predicted only of a state
of civic decay? The tithe on produce was levied in kind, measured
out either by the village syndic or headman (gāma-bhojaka), or by an
official (a mahāmatta) at the barn doors, or by survey of the crops
Some of the rice and other grain may presumably have been told off
for the special granaries kept filled for urgency, in war or famine", but
Buddhist books make no clear reference to such an institution. The amount
levied seems to have varied from to 19, according to the decision of the
ruling power? or other circumstances. And the contributions raised at one
or more gāmas (villages), rural or suburban, could be made over by a
monarch (or by his chief queen®) to anyone he wished to endow, e. g. , to a
daughte ron her marriage', a ministerio, a Brahman', a merchant, etc12
Again, the king could remit the tithe to any person 13 or group".
4
We have no direct evidence of such a tithe or other tax being levied
on the commonwealth by any of the republics or oligarchies mentioned in
the Buddhist capon, such as the Sākiyas, Koliyas, Licchavis, Mallas, etc15.
But that they did so raise the state revenue, in the case at least of the
Sākiyas, seems to be attested by Asoka's inscription on the Lumbini or
Rumminder pillar6. The tithe thus remitted on the occasion of Asoka's
visit to the birthplace of the Buddha, must have been imposed by the
Sākiyas at a date prior to the Mauryan hegemony. The Sākiyas and
other republics are recorded as meeting for political business at their own
mote-halls"? , and must inevitably have had a financial policy to discuss
and carry out. That their enactments could be somewhat drastically
paternal appears in the case of the Malla clansmen of Kusinārā, who
imposed a fine of 500 (pieces) on anyone who 'went not forth to welcome
the Blessed One' when he drew near, on his tour, to their town18. These
Mallas were also possessed of a mote-hall (santhāgāra) for parliamentary
1 At Benares, Jāt I, 149; the Añjana Wood at Sāketa, ib. III, 270.
2 16. I, 339. A certain familiarity with oppressive taxation is suggested by ib. V,
99 ff ; cf. I, 339 ; II. 240.
3 Ib. II, 378.
4 lb. IV, 169.
5 Ind. Aạt. , 1896, pp. 261 f.
6 Cf Gautama X, 24 : Manu. VII, 130 ; Bühler, Trans Vienna Acad. Jan. 1897 ;
V. A. Smith, J. R. A. S. , 1897, 618 f.
8 164 V. , 4.
9 15. II, 237, 403.
10 15 I, 354 ; VI, 261.
11 D. I, 87 ; Jat, III, 229.
12 16. VI, 344.
13 lb. IV, 169.
14 16. I, 200.
15 See Buddhist India, 22.
16 J. R. A. S. 1898,546 f.
17 D. I, 91; cf. Dialogues of the Buddha, I, 113, n. 2.
18 Vin. I, 247 (Mah. VI, 36).
;
7 Jā. III,
9
## p. 178 (#212) ############################################
178
(c. u.
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
discussions? —a class of buildings illustrated by the bas-relief of a celestial
House of Lords on the Bhārhut Stūpa? .
Land might, at least in the kingdom of Magadha, be given away, and
in that of Kosala, be sold. In the former case, a Brāhman landowner
offers a thousand karisas of his estate as a gifts ; in the latter, a merchant
(by a little sharp practice) entangles an unwilling noble in the sale of a
park“. And in the law-books we read that land might be let against a
certain share of the produce. The holdings too in the arable land, called
the khetta, of each village would be subject to redistribution and redivision
among a family, as one generation succeeded another. It is not clear
whether any member of a village community could give or sell any of the
khetta to an outsider. It is just possible that the old tradition, expressed
in the Brāhmanas when a piece of land was given as a sacrificial fee-'And
the Earth said : Let no mortal give me away ! 8 — may have survived in
the villages as a communal, anti-alienising feeling concerning any disinte-
gration of the basis of their social and economic unity. We should anyway
expect, from what is revealed in the early Buddhist books, to find such a
sentiment upheld, less by the infrequent rural autocrat and his little king-
dom of country-seat, tenant-farmers, and serfs, than by the preponderating
groups of cultivators, each forming a gāma.
When, in the Jataka legend, a king of Vedeha abandons the world as
anchorite, he is described as renouncing both his capital, the city (nagara)
of Mithilā, seven yojanas (in circumference), and his realm of sixteen
thousand gāmas”. It may sound incredible that a country owning such a
wealth of ‘villages' should contain but one town, and that so vast in
extent, as to suggest inclusion not only of parks but of suburban gāmass.
There was not, however, any such hard and fast line between gāma and
nigama (small town) to warrant the exclusion, in this description, of some
gāmas which may have amounted to nigamas. A similar vagueness holds
between our town' and 'village'.
A gāma might apparently mean anything from a group of two or
three houses to an indefinite number. It was the generic, inclusive term
for an inhabited settlement, not possessing the fortifications of a nagara
or the ruler's palace of a rājadhāni. The number of inhabitants in the
gāmas of the Jātaka tales varied from 30 to 1000 families. And family
(kula), it must be remembered, was a more comprehensive unit than it is
with us, including not only father and mother, children and grandparents,
but also the wives and children of the sons. Gāma, it is true, might be
used to differentiate a class of settlement, as in the compound gama-nigama,
1 D II, 117. 2 Cunningham, Stūpa of Bhārhut, pl. XVI. 3 Jāl. IV, 281.
4 l'in. II, 158 f. (Cull. V'. VI, 4, 9 f. )
5 Āpast. II, 11, 28 (1); 1, 6, 18 (20).
6 Catap. Br. XIII, 7, 15.
7 Jät. III, 365.
8 16. VI, 330.
9 Childers, Pali Dictionary 8. 1.
## p. 179 (#213) ############################################
VIII]
CITIES AND VILLAGES
179
'villages and towns'; but it is also used in the wider, looser sense of group
as opposed to single house. For instance, a fire, when starting in a house,
may extend to the whole gāmal. When a bhikkhu leaves park, forest, or
mountain to seek alms, he 'enters the gāma”,' whether it be a neighbouring
village, or the suburbs of great Sāvatthi'.
Of such cities there were but few in Northern India. Less than
twenty are named“. Six of them only are reckoned by the Thera Ananda
as sufficiently important cities (mahā-nagarā) to be the scene of a Buddha's
final passing away :-Sāvatthi, Champā, Rājagaha, Sāketa, Kosambi,
Benares, Kusinārā, where that event actually took place, he depreciates as
not a 'village,' but a jungle townlet' (nagaraka)". The greatness of
'
Pātaliputra (Patna) was yet to come. In the absence of any systematic
account of this rural organisation in ancient records, it is better to refrain
from laying down any homogeneous schemie. No doubt different villages,
in different districts, varied one from another in the customs of land-tenure,
and in the rights of individual householders as against the community. '
The jungles and rivers of the vast Ganges valley fostered independent
development probably at least as much as the hill-barriers in the Alps have
done in the case of Swiss and Italian peasant communities down to this day.
Around the gāma, which appears to have been classed as of the
country(janapada), of the border (paccanta), or as suburban, lay its thetta,
or pastures, and its woodland or uncleared jungle :-primeval forest like
the Andhavana of Kosala, the Sitavana of Magadha, the Pācīnavamsa-
dāya of the Sākiya Territory, retreates traditionally haunted by wild beast
and by gentler woodland sprites, and where Māra, the Lucifer of seductive
evil influences, might appear in one shape or another'. Different from
these were such suburban groves as the Bamboo Grove belonging to
Magadha's king, the Anjanavana of Sāketa, the Jetavana of Sāvatthi.
Through those other uncleared woodlands and moorlands, where the folk
went to gather their firewood, and litterlo, ran caravan routes, roads
that were at times difficult because of swampy passages after rain, and
here and here dangeroues, less on account of aggressive beasts
than because of brigands not to mention demonic bipeds.
Adjoining or merged into these wilder tracts were supplementary
:
.
1 Milinda panha, 47.
2 Vin. passim, e. g. Cull V v, 12 ; 29. Cf. Thig. ver. 304 ; Comm. p. 175.
3 Jā I, 106 ; Psalms of the Brethren, p. 34, cf. 24; v. inf. p. 208.
4 Buddhist India, 34 ff
6 D. II, 116.
6 Buddh. Ind. 44. f.
? Jāti, 318.
8 16. I , 215 ; cf, V. 46.
9 See Psalms of the Early Buddhists I, II paesim ; cf. II, p. 151. , n. 1.
10 Jat I, 317 ; V, 103.
11. Ib. 1, 99.
>
;
## p. 180 (#214) ############################################
180
(CH.
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
>
grazing pastures of herds of cattle and goats3 – herds belonging to king' or
commoners). Commoners customarily entrusted their flocks to a commu-
nal neatherd, as we find in the Pennine Alps to-day(le fromageur). We find
him either penning his herds at night in sheds, or, more often, bringing
them back every evening and counting them out to the several owners,
varying the pasturage from day to day? The official name gopālaka and
the context suggest that dairy work was not usually expected of him so
much as sagacity in minding his beasts.
The arable ground of the gāma lay without the clustered dwellings,
since these were apparently enclosed by a wall or stockade with gates
gāmadvāra,, Fences 10, snares', and field watchmen? guarded the khetta
or gāmakhetta from intrusive beasts and birds, while the internal bound-
aries of each householder's plot were apparently made by channels dug for
co-operative irrigation 13. These dividing ditches, rectangular and curvili-
near, were likened, at least in the Magadha khettas, to a patchwork robe,
,
and prescribed by the Buddha as a pattern for the uniform of his Order :
torn pieces of cast-away cloth sewn together, 'a thing which could not be
coveted 14. The limits of the whole khetta might be extended by fresh clear-
ing of forest land's. And whereas the majority of holdings were probably
small, manageable single-handed or with sons and perhaps a hired manis,
estates of 1000 karisas (acres ? ) and more occur in the Jātakas, farmed by
Brāhmans 17.
In the Suttas, again the Brāhman Kasibhāradvājais employ-
ing 500 ploughs and hired men (bhatikāls to guide plough an oxen 9,
Rice was the staple article of food0 ; besides which seven other kinds
of grain are mentioned21, sugar-cane" and fruits, vegetables and flowers
were also cultivated.
Instances of collectivist initiative reveal a relatively advanced sense
of citizenship in the gamas The peasant proprietors had a nominal head
in the bhojaka or headman, who, as their representative at political
headquarters and municipal head, was paid by certain dues and fines23.
But all the village resident met to confer with him and each other on civic
1 lb. I, 388.
2 lb. III, 149 ; IV, 326.
3 lb, ITI, 401.
116. 240. 5 lb I, 194, 388 : cf. Rigveda, X, 19.
6 12. I 388 ; 111,149. 7 A. I, 205 ; M. Dhp. Comm. I, 157. A. V, 305,
9 Jat. I, 239 ; II, 76, 135 ; III 9; IV, 370 (nigama)
10 Ib. I, 215.
11 16 I 143, 154.
1. Ib. II, 110 ;IV, 277.
13 Dip. rer. 80=145=Therag. 19; Jat IV,167; 1, 336 V, 412.
14 l'in. Texts 17, 207-9 (Mah. VIII, 12). Cf Pss of the Brethren, p. 152.
15 Jāt. II, 357 IV. 16 1h. 1, 277 ;III, 162 ; IV 167. 17 16, III 293 ; IV. 276.
18 S. N. II, 4 ; cf. SI. 171 Jat. III, 293.
19 16, II, 165 ; 300
20 1b. I, 340 ; II, 43, 135, 378 ; III, 383 ; IV, 276.
21 M. 1. 57 ; also yava (barley) in Jāt II, 110. 22 16. I 339 ; Vin. (Mah. VI. 35, 6).
23 16. I, 199.
## p. 181 (#215) ############################################
VIII)
AGRICULTURE
181
over
a
and political matters. And carrying the upshot of their counsels into
effect, they built new mote-halls and rest-houses, constructed reservoirs and
parks, and took turns at a voluntary corvee in keeping their roads in
repair", herein again followed by Alpine peasants of to-day. Women too
considered it a civic honour to bear their own part in municipal building”.
A further glimpse into the sturdy spirit in gāmı-life is caught in the Jātaka
sentiment, that for peasants to leave their tillage and work for impoverished
kings was a mark of social decay3. Relevant to this is the low social
rank assigned to the hired labourer, who is apparently classed beneath the
domestic slave
Scarcity owing to drought or to floods is not infrequently referred
to, extending even
whole kingdom". This contradicts the
'affirmation' recorded by Megasthenes", that 'famine has never visited
India,' unless his informant meant a very general and protracted famine.
The times of scarcity in Buddhist records apparently refer only to brief
periods over restricted areas.
Nothing in all the foregoing evidence has gone to show that, in the
India of early Buddhist literature, the pursuit of agriculture was associated
with either social prestige or social stigma. The stricter Brāhman tradition,
not only in the law-books, but also in the Sutta Nipāta, the Majjhima
Nikāya, and the Jātakas, expressly reserved the two callings of agriculture
and trade for the Vaiçya or middle class, and judges them unfit for
Brāhman or noble. Thus the Brāhman Esukārī of Sāvatthi considers
village and dairy farming as not less the property and province of the
Vaiçya than are bow and arrow, endowed maintenance (by alms), and
sickle and yoke, the property and province of noble, Brāhman, and working
classes respectively? And here and there, in the Jātaka-book, Brāhmans
who engage in agriculture, trade, and other callings are declared to have
fallen from their Brāhmanhood8. On the other hand, in both Jātakas and
Suttas, not only are Brāhmans frequently found pursuing tillage, cow herd-
ing, goat keeping, trade, hunting, wood-work or carpentry, weaving,
caravan guarding, archery, carriage-driving, and snake-charming', but also
no reflection is passed upon them for so doing, nay, the Brāhman farmer
is at times a rotably pious man and a Bodhisat to boot10. Dr. Fick is
1 Ib.
1 Jāt. I, 199 f.
3 Ib. I 339.
4 Cf. D. I, 51 ; A. I, 145, 206 ; Mil. 147, 331 ; trs. II, 210, n. 6.
5 Vin. I, 211, 213 ff. ; Vin. T'exts, III, 220, n. 1, Jāt. I, 329 ; II, 135, 149, 367 ;
V. 193; VI, 487.
6 M ‘Crindle, Ancient India as described by Megasthenes, 32,
7 M. II, 180. The Vásețịha-sutta (M. no. 98 : S. N, III, 9) in spiritualising the
term brāhmaṇa, reveals the same exclusive sentiment as current.
8 Jåt. IV, 363 f.
9 Ját. II, 165 ; III, 293 ; IV, 167, 276 ; III, 401 ; IV, 15 ; V, 22, 471 ; II, 200; VI
170 ; IV, 207, 457 ; V, 127.
10 lb. III, 162.
## p. 182 (#216) ############################################
182
[CH.
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
disposed to think that the North-western (Udicca) Brāhmans of the Kurus
and Pañchālas, some of whom came east and settled there, inherited a
stricter standard'. Nevertheless it is not claimed for the pious ones just
mentioned, living near Benares and in Magadha, that they were Udicca
immigrants. Even the law. books permit Brāhmans to engage in worldly
callings if they are in straitened circumstances, or if they take no active
share in the work? .
As for the Kshatriya clansmen of the republics mentioned above,
they were largely cultivators of the soil. For instance, in the Kunāla
Jātaka, it was the workmen in the fields of the Sākiyan and Koliya
'bhojakas, amaccas and uparājas, who began to quarrel over the prior turn to
irrigate'. In the earliest Indian literature agricultural and pastoral concepts
play a great part. But even if this implied that a special dignity attached
to agriculture, it does not follow that any such tradition survived, if it
survived at all, associated with any section of society. There was among
Indo-Aryans little of the feudal tie between land and lord with lordship
over the land-tillers, which made broad acres a basis for nobility in the
West. However they accomplished their prehistoric invasion of the
Ganges basin, “land-grabbing' does not seem to have been carried out
pari passu with success in generalship. This may have been because the
annexation of land to any wide extent meant clearing of jungle. Except
among Dravidian and Kolārian towns along the rivers, the task of the
invaders was more like that of pioneering settlers in America. And there
we know that land is not an appa nage involving special privileges and
entailing special claims, but a commodity like any other.
The slave or servant (dāsa, dāsi) was an adjunct in all households able
to command domestic service; but slaves do not appear to have been kept,
as a rule, in great numbers', either in the house, or, as in the West, at min-
ing or “plantation' work. Their treatment differed of course according to
the disposition and capacity of both master and slave. Thus we find, in the
Jātaka, the slave, petted, permitted to learn writing and handicrafts besides
his ordinary duties as valet and footman, saying to himself that, at the
slightest fault he might get ‘beaten, imprisoned, branded, and fed on slave's
fare''. But of actual ill-treatment there is scarce any mention. Two instan-
ces of beating occur, and in both the victims were maids. One lies a-bed
repeatedly (to test her pious mistress's temper) , the other fails to bring
home wages? . Presumably she had been sent to fetch her master's wage, or
else had been hired out. But we do not meet with runaway slaves. Slavery
1 Sociale Gliederung in Indien, 138 f.
E. g. Manu x, 116.
3 Jāt. v, 412.
4 Vin. I, 72 (Mah. I, 39) ; D. I, 60, 72, 92, f. , 104 ; Dialogues of the Buddha I,
19, 101.
5 Jät. I, 451 f.
6. M. 1, 125.
7 Jät. I, 402 f.
## p. 183 (#217) ############################################
VIII ]
ARTS AND CRAFTS
183
>
>
might be incurred through capturel, commuted death sentences, debt?
voluntary self-degradation, or judicial punishment : on the other hand,
slaves might be manumitteds, or might free themselves by payment. They
might not, while still undischarged, be admitted into the religious commu-
nity (Sangha)?
The hireling, wage-earner, day-labourer was no man's chattel, yet his
life was probably harder sometimes than that of the slaves. He was to a
great extent employed on the larger land-holdings'. He was paid either
in board and lodging, or in money-wages10. Manu prescribes regular wages
both in money and kind for menials in the king's servicell.
In the arts and crafts, a considerable proficiency and specialisation of
industry had been reached. A list of callings given in the Milinda panha,
reveals three separate industries in the manufacture of bows and arrows,
apart from any ornamental work on the samel. In the same work, the
allusion to a professional winnower of grain indicates a similar division
of labour to our own threshing machinists and steam plough-owners who
tour in rural districts13. As certain grain crops were reaped twice a year! 4,
this would afford a fairly protracted season of work every few months.
Some trade-names, on the other hand, are as comprehensive as our
'smith. ' As with us, this word (kammāra) might be applied to a worker in
any metal. Vaddhaki, again, apparently covered all kinds of woodcraft
including shipbuilding, cartmaking15, and architecture16, thapati, tacchaka
(lit, planer), and bhamakāra or turner being occupied with special modes of
woodworki? . A settlement of Vaddhakis is able to make both furniture and
seagoing ships18 Once more the same worker in stone (pāsāņa-kottaka)
builds houses with the ruined material of a former gāma, and also hollows
a cavity in a crystal as a cage for a mouse19.
Important handicrafts like the three above named and their branches,
the workers in leather, i. e. , the leather-dressers, the 'painters,' and others to
the number of eighteen were organised into gilds (seni), according to
Jātaka records ; but it is to be regretted that only four of the eighteen
crafts thus organised are specifically mentioned, 'the woodworkers, the
1 lb. IV, 220 ; VI, 135.
2 lb. VI, 521; Therig. ver. 444.
3 Vin. I, 72 (Mah. I, 39, 1) ; Sum. Vil. 1,168.
4 Ját. I, 200,
5 D. I, 72 ; P88. Sisters, p. 117; Pss. Brethren, p. 22 ; Jāt. V, 313.
6 Ib. VI, 547.
7 Vin. I, 76 (Mah. I, 46 f). 8 Jät. I, 422 ; III, 444.
9 1b. III 406 ; IV, 43 ; S. N. p. 12. 10 16. II, 139 ; III, 326, 444 ; V, 212.
11 Manu VII, 125 f.
