Local Government in Ancient India c8.9

c8.9

Thus the *Aitareya Brāhmaṇa* has three passages bearing on the subject. In III. 30, 3² there is a reference to the position of the chief of the guild (*śreṣṭhī*) who favours with a draught from his goblet whom he likes. In IV. 25, 8–9 and again in VII. 18, 8¹ the position of leadership is indicated by the use of the words *śraiṣṭhya* and *śreṣṭhatā*. In the *Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa*, XIII. 7, 1, 1² the word *śraiṣṭhya* is similarly used to indicate lordship. In the *Atharva-veda*, I. 9, 3³ there is the expression ‘bestow on him lordship (*śraiṣṭhya*) over his fellows’ and in X. 6, 31⁴ the word *śraiṣṭhya* is again used in that sense. The terms *śreṣṭhin* and *śraiṣṭhya* are similarly used to denote the chief of the guild or the high position that belongs to him among his fellows in the *Chāndogya Upaniṣad*, V. 2, 6⁵; *Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad*, IV. 20, II. 6, and IV. 15. 20. In *Bṛhad. Up.* I. 4, 12, Śaṅkara reads a reference even to co-operative trading or industry. In all these references from the Vedic literature the manner of the allusion to the head of the guild, and his high social position and pre-eminent influence, seems to support the conclusion expressed by some Vedic scholars that the guild was then already a known and familiar institution, a commonplace phenomenon, an ordinary object of daily observation, to which, as to matters of every day experience, references are made in order to explain abstruse and abstract philosophical subjects, topics, or problems. Metaphorical and indirect allusions to guilds show that they are already well-known existences within the range of common observation, and the allusions are warranted on the logical principle of arguing from the known to the unknown, of explaining the unknown, the unfamiliar and the abstract in the terms of the known, the familiar, and the concrete.