The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c17.16

c17.16

On account of the comparatively great respectability and the high salary which the Court artists enjoyed, the effort of most of the artists was to get into the king's service; as, however, this fell to the lot of only a very few, others tried to serve under rich private persons. Very often we meet with artists in the service of young tradesmen whom they help, along with other parasites, to squander their paternal property: jumpers, runners, singers, dancers, etc., receive each one of 1,000 from the squandering and pleasure-seeking seṭṭhi's son (laṅghanadhâvanagîtanaccâdîni karontânaṃ sahassaṃ dadamâno, II. 431) and make him in a short time a beggar. In contrast with these parasitic artists, there were many who earned their bread with difficulty by catering for the amusement of people at festivities. We read of a dancer (naṭa III. 507) who lives in a village not far from Benares and goes with his wife into the town, where he gets money through dancing and singing which accompanies his lyre (vīṇā). As, however, such festivities, in spite of their frequency, formed only an occasional break in their daily life, the dancers led at other times a thoroughly miserable life, as did the dancing family (naṭakakula, II. 167) in the Ucchiṭṭhabhatta Jātaka in which the Bodhisatta was reborn. This family maintained itself by begging and even the Bodhisatta had no other way of earning a livelihood than through alms.