The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c26.136

v1.c26.136

The first class of Megasthenes consisted of ‘philosophers,’ under which term, as has just been said, Brāhmans and ascetics were confused. It was numerically the smallest class, but the highest in honour, immune from labour and taxation. Its only business was to perform public sacrifice, to direct the sacrifice of private individuals, and to divine. On the New Year all the philosophers assembled at the king’s doors and made predictions with a view to guiding agriculture or politics. If any one’s prophecy was falsified by the event, he had to keep silence for the rest of his life. ‘These wise men pass their days naked, exposed in winter to the cold and in summer to the sun, in the fields and the swamps and under enormous trees....They eat the fruits of the earth and the bark of the trees, which is no less agreeable to the taste and no less nourishing than dates.’ The *second* class consisted of the cultivators, and included the majority of the Indian people. They never took any part in war, their whole business being to cultivate the soil and pay taxes—to the kings or to the free cities, as the case might be. Wars rolled past them. At the very time when a battle was going on, the neighbouring cultivators might be seen quietly pursuing their work of ploughing or digging, unmolested. All the land belonged to the king, and the cultivators paid one-fourth of the produce in addition to rent. The *third* class Megasthenes described as herdsmen and hunters. They lived a nomad life in the jungles and on the hills, but brought a certain proportion of their cattle to the cities as tribute. They also received in return for their services a grant of corn from the king. It is easy to recognise in the description low-caste people, who in ancient Pāṭaliputra, as in a modern Indian city, were to be seen performing certain services to the civilised community. The *fourth* class consisted of the traders, artisans, and boatmen. They paid a tax on the produce of their industry, except those who manufactured implements of war and built ships. These, on the other hand, received a subsidy from the royal exchequer. The *fifth* class was that of the fighters, the most numerous class after the cultivators. They performed no work in the community except that of fighting. Members of the other classes supplied them with weapons and waited upon them and kept their horses and elephants. They received regular pay even in times of peace, so that when not fighting they could live a life of ease and maintain numbers of dependents. The *sixth* and *seventh* classes of Megasthenes cannot have formed castes in any sense. The *sixth* consists of the government secret inspectors, whose business it was to report to the king, or, among the free tribes, to the headmen, what went on among the people, and the *seventh* of those constituting the council of the king or the tribal authorities. 'In numbers this class is a small one, but it is distinguished for wisdom and probity. For which reason there are chosen from among it the magistrates, the chiefs of districts, the deputy governors, the keepers of the treasury, the army superintendents, the admirals, the high stewards, and the overseers of agriculture.' When Megasthenes, in talking about the fixity of these classes, stated¹ that the only exception to the law which forbad a man changing his class was that any one might become a 'wise man,' he was saying something which was true only if by 'wise man' we understand an ascetic, not a Brāhman. A sense of the difference between Brāhmans living in the world and ascetics is implied in the statement of Nearchus that Indian 'sophists' were divided into Brāhmans, who followed the king as councillors, and the men who 'studied Nature.'²