The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c15.135

c15.135

As in the previous epoch, the economic life of the community was partly regulated by guilds. The Mandasor Stone Inscription of Kumāragupta and Bandhuvarman records that a number of silk weavers migrated from the Lāṭa Viṣaya (central and southern Gujarāt) into the centre of Daśapura. Some of them adopted other occupations while those who adhered to their original craft constituted themselves into a guild which attained great prosperity. During the governorship of Bandhuvarman this guild built a temple of the sun (437-38 A.D.) and a generation later (473-74 A.D.) the same guild repaired it. We are told that the kings treated the guilds like their sons.¹ Another inscription refers to a guild of oilmen and hints at the possibility of their moving away elsewhere.² The Basâḍh seals show that many guilds had seals of their own.³