Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c5.t2: III. Capital
Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jātaka Stories c5.t2
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III. Capital
c5.t2.2
Coming to Capital we find that it was practically negligible. The producers, as we saw, had to supply themselves with tools made of metals or wooden implements easily available. The fact that cattle-breeding was carefully attended to in those times, and that cattle were considered as the best form of wealth, shows, that almost every cultivator had a pair of oxen to till his land. Large-scale production was unknown, and there could not exist any idea of what is now called the co-operative movement. And even the ordinary manufacturer got the necessary raw material mostly through barter, there being no need of investing capital for his work. The State took away a pretty heavy share of the national wealth in the form of taxes, rents, fines, cesses, etc., which was squandered away to maintain a great number of parasitical professions at the Court. There is no trace of state-Capital being invested in productive concerns. Then the only other minority of the people who possessed capital was that of the rich tradesmen, the *Setthis* or the rich *Brāhmaṇas*, who are described as possessing 80 *koṭis*.¹⁴ These people also either spent their surplus over luxuries and unproductive purposes like alms-giving or hoarded the wealth,¹⁵ perhaps through fear of State-extractions or with a wish to save it for the family, rather than invest in production. Thus there was a great lack of fluid capital for purposes of industrial development. This state of things remained for centuries together without much change.
c5.t2.3
¹⁴ *Asītikotivibhavo*: J. I, pp. 349, 466, 478; III, pp. 128, 300, 444; IV, pp. 1, 7, 26, 237, 255; V, pp. 382;
c5.t2.4
¹⁵ J., I, pp. 225, 277, 323, 375, 423; II, pp. 308, 431; III, pp. 25, 116, 356; IV, pp. 7, 237, 256. Cf. *Uvāsagadasāo* (*Nidhānapauttāo*) p. 3.