Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c5.t4.19

c5.t4.19

There is very little to be said on this part in the shares of the dividend. Agriculture, as a money-making process, has never been a profitable business. And as to the manufactures also, we have seen that they were on a very small scale and therefore could not possibly secure anything like a good profit. It is very difficult to trace out exactly from the stories that class of middlemen whom the economists call the entrepreneur. These men stand between the producer and the trader. They purchase wholesale the surplus produce from the producers and sell it to the petty businessmen. Perhaps the only men from the *Jātakas* who can correspond to these middle-men were the rich *Seṭṭhis* and the rich traders who travelled from place to place, both on land and sea. The daring youth of the *Cullaka-Seṭṭhi Jātaka*,⁵ buying off the whole of the ship's cargo and selling it off to different merchants of the city might be regarded as a typical entrepreneur. He snatched a heavy profit, indeed; the *Seṭṭhis*, and the *Vāṇijas* should also belong to this class of middle-men.