Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c6.s1.166

c6.s1.166

The Gahapati engages himself in whatever occupation he likes. And even as the term denotes, the Gahapati class embraces in its fold all those traders and businessmen, the craftsmen and the artisans whom we noticed in the course of our investigation of the Economic life of the day,¹ in fact the large mass, a conglomeration of differing groups of people following different professions and different rules of life. Though not forming anything like a closed rank, with a social exclusiveness about them or with rigid caste rules binding them all, the Gahapatis can be differentiated from the Khattiyas and the Brāhmaṇas on the one hand and the Suddas and other lower strata of the people on the other. A distinctive atmosphere does, no doubt, surround this class of the Gahapatis.