Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c5.10

c5.10

As to the social background, we need not say much here, as we are going to have a separate chapter on this subject. But in order to understand its influence on the economic life, we may point to the existence of joint-family system, which preserved the status and condition of a man, system of hereditary occupations, which also helped to stabilise the industries, system of religious mendicancy which deprived labour of a much useful element, and the class-divisions into the well-off nobility (*issarā*) and the poor (*daliddā*) which to a certain extent marred the social harmony, as usual.