Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c5.t3.38

c5.t3.38

The craft-villages, not to speak of other homogenous villages that lay in the middle of the flat country, were much more remarkable. They formed themselves, naturally, into special markets for the whole country-side. Thus we read in the *Suci Jātaka*¹¹ that there were two smiths-villages (*Kammāra gāmas*) situated very near to each other, one of which is said to have comprised a thousand huts (*sahassakuṭiko*). From the villages round about, people came there to have razors, axes, ploughshares, spikes, needles and other implement made (*vāsipharasu-phalupacanādikārāpanattham*). Similarly, the hunters villages (*nesādagāmas*) on the Ganges or further afield supplied skins, ivory and the like.¹ "When one reflects," so runs the talented reflection of Fick, "what a difficulty such a local isolation creates in the economical relations, one will see in these manufacturing villages, not a phenomenon of secondary importance, but a highly important factor and one that is characteristic of the physiognomy of the social life of that time. The power of traditional customs, which suit the spirit of the Indian people inclined to schematism, has created and maintained here a new impetus which is stronger than the practical need which obviously points to a variety of professions within the same common life. However much the origin of professional communities may have to be traced, as we have to do in the case of the Russian village communities, to the close relationship of the villagers with one another and to the equal right of all in the common property,² on the Indian soil the maintenance of such a remarkable institution seems to have been due principally to the inborn tendency towards organization, classification, schematism in the minds of the Indians. As the Brāhmaṇas worked together in villages in which foreign, especially lower, elements were not tolerated so, following their example, social groups united by community of profession, separated themselvs from one another and helped to create the manifoldness of modern caste-life."³ We cannot wholly agree to the learned scholar's view, specially with regard to the 'impetus' for such unions, and the creation of caste-system. We are inclined to believe that it was the practical need, the natural instinct, more than anything else, which went to create such isolated village-unions.