The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c28.60

v1.c28.60

The state of society corresponding to this activity of trade, to the traffic on high roads (*rājapatha* ‘routes royales’) and by-roads (*baṇikpatha* ‘merchant roads’), the bustle at frontiers, ferries, tolls, and city-gates, and to the minute regulation of all these, must have been one of considerable complexity. Nor do we lack the means, literary or illustrative, of becoming in part acquainted with it. Beside the statements of the Greek writers, we may gather abundant material from the Pāli books of the Buddhist canon⁴, from the Arthaçāstra and the code of Manu, from Patañjali’s commentary upon the grammar of Pāṇini, and from the Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata; while the Buddhist *stūpas* of Sāñchī and Bhārhut supply ocular demonstrations of much that is recorded in the literature. But from this material large deductions must be made: the Sanskrit Epics, and in a less degree the books of the Pāli canon, reflect the circumstances of an earlier period—irrespective of the actual dates of composition—and we run the risk of confusing conditions as widely different as those of the Homeric, the Solonian, and the Periclean age in Greece. If we seek to elicit the special features of the Maurya epoch, we shall mark first of all the growth of luxury consequent upon the rise of the great Magadha empire in the east: in the Punjab, no doubt, in spite of the effeminacy which the Greeks observed in the court of Porus, the old tribal system was still prevalent. There the actual cultivator would still be a man of the three upper classes, while in the east he was generally a Çūdra. It is to this period, no doubt, that we must ascribe the great complexity of the caste system, and the beginning of the association of caste with craft. It seems not doubtful that a number of castes did arise, according to the Brāhman theory, by intermixtures of the old four divisions, which still formed the basis: a process natural in itself, when intermarriage between the different classes was still licit, and certain to be specifically noted, while it is evidenced not only by the testimony of theological works, but also by so worldly a treatise as the Arthaçāstra. But it is only in a few cases that we find a particular occupation assigned to a particular caste¹.