Chandragupta Maurya and His Times c15.51

c15.51

While Kauṭilya naturally pays more attention to the former, other texts throw light on the part played by private enterprise in industry. The most important of these texts are the *Jātakas* on which craftsmen drew so largely for their themes treated in the early sculptures of Bharhut or Sanchi in the third and second century B.C. The *Jātakas* are documents of older history, as pointed out by Rhys Davids. They speak of eighteen chief handicrafts of the times, such as those of wood-workers, smiths, leather-dressers, painters, workers in stone, ivory-workers, weavers, confectioners, jewellers, workers in precious metals, potters, makers of bow and arrow. These handicrafts were also organised in guilds or craft-guilds called *Śreṇīs*, each under its President or Foreman called *Pamukha*, and the Alderman called *Jeṭṭhaka*. We are also told of federations of guilds under a common Head called *Bhāṇḍāgārika*. Like Industry, Trade also was organised in Merchant-Guilds whose chief was called *Seṭṭhi*. Anāthapiṇḍika of Sāvatthī was a *Mahāseṭṭhi*, chief of a commercial federation controlling 500 *Seṭṭhis*, the heads of its constituent guilds. Caravan-traffic for its risks was carried on as a co-operative enterprise in which different traders with their carts, goods, and men formed themselves into a Company under a captain called *Sātthavāha* to give directions as to halts, watering, routes, fords, and danger-spots, and also other common officers or land-pilots called *Thalaniyyāmaka* who acted as guides and escorts against the dangers to travel from "drought, famine, wild beasts, robbers and demons." We are similarly told of sea-going merchants chartering a common vessel, or concerted action in freights between dealers, and of partnership concerns in business such as export of birds to Babylon, or of import of horses from the 'north' to Benares. There was also localisation in Industry. We read of villages of potters, of wood-wrights, iron-smiths, or even trappers; while within the town were ivory-workers' street (*vīthī*), dyers' street, Vessas' streets or the weavers' quarter (*ṭhāna*). There were also the *hīnā-sippas* or despised callings which were segregated: those of hunters and trappers, fishermen, butchers, tanners; or snake-charmers, actors, dancers, musicians, rush-weavers, and chariot-makers who were mostly the aboriginal folks [*Hindu Civilisation*, pp. 301, 307, 308].