History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c20.s1.t2: Group-life
History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c20.s1.t2
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Group-life
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As some Pratihāra inscriptions show, persons following the same occupation normally formed themselves into corporations for regulating their business. For example, the Gwalior (Vaillabhaṭṭasvāmin) epigraph⁶ refers to the guild of oil-millers (tailikaśreṇī) and gardeners (mālikaśreṇī), who in their corporate capacity made gifts to a temple. The members of these guilds had their chiefs called respectively *Tailikamahattaka* (lines 12, 13 and 14) and *Mālikamahar* (line 17). Similarly the Siyadoni record mentions such traders as potters, distillers of spirituous liquors, sugar-boilers, betel-sellers, oil-makers, stone-cutters,¹ and the Pehoa inscription adds to this list the horse-dealers,² whose organisation into guilds is proved by their joint action in matters of common concern, and by the fact that they had a foreman or *deśī*. We are told, for instance, that the distillers of liquors were required to give on every cask liquor worth half a *vigrahapāladramma* to the god Viṣṇu. Or, we may cite the joint agreement of the horse-dealers belonging to “various countries,” whereby they imposed upon themselves and upon their customers certain taxes, the proceeds of which were distributed among the temples and the priests in specified proportions.
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⁶ *Ep. Ind.*, I, pp. 160, 161.
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¹ *Ibid.*, pp. 167-68, 174-78.
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² *Ibid.*, I, pp. 184-90.
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Such guilds must have been of benefit to the state, inasmuch as they certainly fostered a law-observing spirit in the interests of the community, and thus facilitated the task of government, besides rendering useful service in organising society and administering justice in internal affairs.³
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³ Cf. R. C. Majumdar, *Corporate Life in Ancient India*, (Calcutta, 1922).