India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c8.s6.t2.11

c8.s6.t2.11

The word *niyukta* comes from *niyoga*, which Patañjali explains as a legal obligation like a debt.¹ For example, if one had engaged a servant for a *paṇa* per day, the *paṇa* was a *niyukta* charge, the payment of which at the end of the day was obligatory. We have to think of those circumstances in which an article of food became due in a like manner. We read in the *Arthaśāstra* of *bhakta-karmakaras*, i.e. servants engaged on the stipulation of being given daily food. In actual rural economy there has always existed the custom of giving a portion of the mid-day meal to certain domestic servants and menials, like the scavenger and the water-carrier, etc. Their daily wages in respect of the services rendered to the various families consist only of food articles which they are required to collect in the course of the day from the houses served by them. The village Brāhmaṇa also by virtue of his privileged position as Purohita gets a portion, which is no doubt referred to in the illustration *agrabhojanika* (*agre bhojanam asmai niyuktaṁ dīyate*) cited by the *Kāśikā*. In this case the members of the household cannot partake of their food unless the *agrabhojana* has been set apart. It is to be noted that this supply of food (*niyukta bhaksha*) is part of the stipulated wages for which the servant is employed. According to Pāṇini the food thus supplied might be of different kinds, viz. cooked vegatables (*śrāṇā*), rice cooked with meat (*māṁsa* and *odana*, IV.4.67), or full meal, (*bhakta*, IV.4.68). One getting cooked vegetables would be called *śrāṇika*, or *śrāṇikī* in the case of a female; similarly *māṁsika* (getting meat as food), *odanika* (geting boiled rice) and *bhāktika*. The *bhāktika* was the same as *bhakta-karmakara* of Kauṭilya, receiving a full meal every day. This practice worked out in a manner that the servant could make a complete meal with the different articles received from different houses. The same person would be a *śrāṇika* in respect of one family, *odanika* in respect of a second, and *āpūpika* in respect of a third. For example, a female water-drawer (*udahārī*) agreed to take vegetables from one house, soup from another, meat and rice from a third and so on, and thus she earned her full meal. If she served a confectioner (*āpūpika*) she would naturally receive an *apūpa* a day as her payment for work, and with reference to that particular house she would be called *āpūpikī*, i.e. a female receiving an *apūpa* every day.