Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c5.t1.44

c5.t1.44

What was the position of these hired labourers? It was not at all enviable. The agricultural labourer received the customary wages and many times in kind²—an usual phenomenon even to this day. And as to an ordinary labourer, too, he could not earn more than a *māsaka* or even half a *māsaka*, and in almost all instances of a hired-labourer, it is invariably mentioned that the wages he got were hardly sufficient for his maintenance.³ With such a low wage, it was simply impossible for the ordinary worker to raise himself to a higher position. "Born and bred in poverty, he bore his sad lot as a nature-necessity in order to leave it to his children as a legacy."⁴ Perhaps, the cause of this cheapness of labour and low wages is to be found in the proverbial poverty of the people and also, to a certain extent, in the want of efficient organization of labour in ordinary life. The ideal was that "a man should always work for his interest in whose house he is fed."⁵