The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c15.23

c15.23

In this official position as “a representative of the commercial community” the seṭṭhi does not appear always even in the Jâtakas, but appears here at times as a private gentleman, as a rich and influential merchant prince. A seṭṭhi living in Benares engages in trade and drives a caravan of five hundred wagons (I. 270); in the province (pacvante I. 451; IV. 169) the seṭṭhis living in the country (janapadasetthi IV. 37) for whom an official position is manifestly improbable, are mentioned in several places. How far these tradesmen differ from others, for example, from the caravan leaders (satthavâha), to be mentioned later, especially, whether they exercised any supervising functions with regard to these as “masters of the guild,” does not appear from the Jâtakas; what we learn from our source is confined to a description of their wealth and their influence. The wealth of a setthi is given, like that of the rich Brâhmanas, uniformly as eight hundred millions (asîtikotivibhavo setthi, III. 128, 300, 444; V. 382), a statement which has very little value as a judgment concerning actual conditions, as, on account of the very little care which the Indians show for correct, or even approximately correct, numbers, any other great number would have had the same meaning, as we do not know what coin is to be added to this figure.