The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c16.32

c16.32

As with the guilds of tradesmen, so can we also in the case of the manufacturers, infer from the institution of the elders (jeṭṭhakas) the presence of a certain organisation. Such elders stand at the head of the smiths (kammâ-rajeṭṭhaka or jeṭṭhakakammâra),¹ garland-makers (mâlakârajeṭṭhaka III. 405), and carpenters (vaḍḍhaki IV. 161). It appears that the number of manufacturers combined into a guild having a common leader could not exceed a certain figure; at least, it is said, in the last-named passage of the Samuddavâṇija Jâtaka, that in a village inhabited by a thousand carpenter families, every five hundred families had a head (kulasahasse pañcannam pañcannam kulasatânam jeṭṭhakâ dve vaḍḍhaki ahesum). Whether the elder had either by law or by custom any recognised authority over the members of his union, is not mentioned; his office seems to have been an honorary one which was held by specially skilled manufactures and not always by the oldest in point of age. The elder seems to have occupied a peculiar position in the royal court. "The senior among the hundred smiths"—so it is said in the Sûci Jâtaka (III. 281)—"was a favourite of the king, blessed with wealth and property." In another place it is narrated that a prince asks a kammâreṭṭhaka to come to him and commissions him to make a female figure out of a quantity of gold (V. 282).