Hindu Administrative Institutions c12.s3.34

c12.s3.34

Some of the following references will clear this point. There was a village of 500 carpenters all doing woodwork.³ There was again a village of smiths with 1,000 houses engaged in the manufacture of razors, axes, ploughshares, goads, needles and other iron work and superintended by a head smith.⁴ Mention is also made of a town of carpenters containing 1,000 families.⁵ There was overseas trade as well as internal trade by caravans. The hereditary professions were those of the smith, potter and stone-grinder. There were fixed streets for fixed professions. Dr. Fick mentions these as also other casteless professions such as contractors, dancers, musicians, huntsmen, fishermen, slaves, etc. Still the learned writer doubts an organized guild life and speaks of traders without organization.⁶ There might have been traders without organization perhaps answering to our modern retail dealers. But still that there were organized business firms, understood by the people as such can be stated beyond doubt. Dr. Fick himself admits that the commercial communities were represented in the administration¹ and the *śreṣṭin* who was the acknowledged head of the Guild² was ranked as an aristocrat and entitled to royal audience. How could there be a leader without an organized following, and how could the community be represented without any organization? The answer to these questions affirms the fact further that there was real organized life among the commercial and industrial classes of those days who had also political functions to perform.