Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c5.t3.131

c5.t3.131

We have already become familiar with the two types of labourers, the hirelings or the wage-earners and the slaves (*dāsakammakaras*). The craftsmen were, so to say, self-reliant and independent labourers. The wages of a craftsman were the price for the article sold, which included all elements of expenses of production with which modern economic analysis has made us familiar.² Similarly, in the large majority of cases of peasant proprietors where no added labour was required, the wages, as we understand the term today, did not exist. In both the cases, the instruments of labour, as already stated—land, agricultural implements, the workshop, the tools—were the instruments of labour of single individuals, small and circumscribed. The producer was the labourer himself *i.e.*, there was no need to appropriate the product. The worker's property in the product was based upon his own labour. This was no wage-labour. And even where external help was used, it was, as a rule, of little importance and very generally was compensated by something other than wages. The domestic servants, the *dāsas*, of course, boarded and lodged with their employers. The assistants or apprentices to craftsmen worked less for board and wages than for education and training, in order that they might become master-craftsmen themselves.