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The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c9.s4.t1: 1. Archaeological Data

The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c9.s4.t1

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1. Archaeological Data

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Epigraphic evidences in regard to the gild of peasants are practically *nil* for the time being. Cultivators' unions have only to be inferred from the general laws on the subject of "companies". Gautama⁵ (c 550 B. C.), Manu¹ (*c* 150 A. C.), Brihaspati² (*c* 650), Śukra,³ all writers mention the association of agriculturists in their schedule of *śreṇîs*. The association of shepherds, however, is not unknown in the inscriptions. In the eleventh century, under Râjendra Chola, the shepherds of a village in Southern India agreed to become security for one Eran Sattan, a fellow-shepherd “who had received 90 ewes of this temple in order to supply *ghî* (clarified butter) for burning one perpetual lamp”. If he died, absconded, or got into prison, fetters, or chains, the fraternity bound themselves to discharge his duties.⁴ The responsibility was thus considered to be a joint one by the members.

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⁵ XI, 21.

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¹ VIII, 40.

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² I, Constitution of a Court of Justice, 26.

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³ IV, v, lines 35—36.

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⁴ Hultzsch’s *South Indian Inscriptions*, Vol. II, Pt. III, cited in Coomaraswamy’s *Indian Craftsman*, p. 17.

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In regard to the gild merchant more inscriptions may be drawn upon. In Madras of the twelfth century under Vikrama Chola (1118), the hero of an historical Tamil poem, there was a traders’ gild⁵ with a membership of 500. Its activities and interests were coextensive with the South Indian Empire. In Gupta India during the fourth and fifth centuries bankers (*śreṣṭhins*), traders (*sârtthavâhas*) and merchants (*kulikas*) used to close their business correspondence with clay seals. The *nigama* or corporation of these commercial interests, with headquarters probably at Pâtali-putra, was “something like a modern chamber of commerce”.⁶ Such bodies working, as they did, in concert (*sambhûya*) were notorious in the fourth century B. C. owing to their attempts to “corner” the market. The problem of “profiteering” had to be tackled by the Maurya Empire especially because the union of merchants tried to raise prices so high as to yield a cent per cent profit.⁷

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⁵ *Government Epigraphist’s Report*, 1916, p. 121, cited in Majumdar p. 35.

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⁶ *Ann. Rep. of the Arch. Sur.*, 1903—04, p. 104.

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⁷ *Artha*, p. 403.

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The gild merchant must have been in existence in the sixth century B. C. as Gautama’s *Dharma-Sûtra* mentions it as one of the law-“making” or law-“declaring” bodies.⁸ Still earlier, as the *Valahassa*, *Chullaka setthi*, *Supparaka* and other *Jâtakas*⁹ or Buddhist “Birth Stories” narrate, maritime and land commerce used to be undertaken on the joint stock principle by companies of “five hundred trading folk”, “seven hundred merchants", etc. India's experience in commercial unions is therefore at least as old as China's.¹

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⁸ *loc. cit.*

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⁹ Majumdar, pp. 32—33; Mookerji’s *Local*, pp. 45—47, 76, 77.

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¹ Werner's *Chinese Sociology*, Table II; see the Vedic references to gilds in Mookerji's *Local*, p. 41—43.

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The story of Hindu craft gilds may be told with more details and greater confidence. Unions of industrial experts or workingmen's gilds were conspicuous institutions of the Gupta Empire. In 465, under Skandagupta, a gild of oil-men² at the city of Indra-pura presided over by Jîvanta was entrusted with an endowment out of the interest of which a temple lamp was to be maintained. The terms of the deed stipulated that the removal of the corporation from its present headquarters would not invalidate its jurisdiction over the property. Nullification of the trust might ensue only from the dissolution of the gild (or secession of some of its members). In Kumâra-gupta's time (413—455) a gild of silk weavers³ was formed at the city of Daśa-pura. They had migrated from Central Gujarat, but part of their comrades took up other pursuits, e. g. archery and fighting, astronomical studies, and asceticism, at their new place of domicile. Incidentally it appears that the change of hereditary or caste occupations was not rare in Gupta India.

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² *Gup. Insc.*, p. 71; for the Gwalior gilds of the tenth Century *vide* p. 63.

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³ *Ibid*, p. 80.

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Among Gujaratis of the early Christian era under Ândhra Emperors, there were gilds of weavers, druggists (*gândhikas*), corn-dealers (*dhânyaka-śreṇîs*), and oil-manufacturers.⁴ Like the gilds of the Gupta Empire the Ândhra gilds also discharged the functions of banks. Moneys and real estates were received by them in perpetuity as a deposit or trust fund.⁵ For the use of this property they paid to the beneficiary named in the grants interest varying from 9 to 12 per cent. In 120 A. C. two gilds of weavers⁶ at Govardhana (Nasik) were entrusted by General Uṣavadâta with 2,000 and 1,000 kârṣâpaṇas. In the third century several other gilds of the same city,⁷ viz. those of potters, *odayântrikas* (workers fabricating hydraulic engines or water-clocks), and oil-millers, became trustees of a permanent endowment to provide medicines for the monks of a *Samgha*. The planting of wayside trees was one of the objects for which a gild was similarly endowed with the income of two fields.¹

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⁴ R. G. Bhandarkar's *Early Hist.*, secs. IV and VII.

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⁵ "Nasik Inscriptions" in the *Arch. Sur.*, Vol. IV, p. 102 (cited in Hopkins' *India Old and New*, p. 175).

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⁶ *Ep. Ind.*, 1905—06, pp. 82, 83.

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⁷ *Ibid*, p. 88.

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¹ See details of the five inscriptions in Majumdar, pp. 8—10. *Vide* the south Indian inscriptions in Mookerji's *Local*, pp. 89—99.

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Like the gild merchant the craft gild also must have been prominent in Maurya times. Kautilya's scheme of fleecing the "gold-lords" for the public treasury has reference most probably to the gild of goldsmiths.² His *Artha-śâstra* suggests, besides, that certain wards of the city should be set apart for the corporations of artisans.³ And one of the functions of the Imperial superintendent of accounts was to record all about the customs, professions and transactions of the associations, whether of traders or workmen, rural or urban.⁴

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² p. 305. A "house of the gild" belonging to the Maurya period is described by Marshall in his article on "Excavations at Bhita" in the *Arch. Sur. Ann. Rep.* 1911—12, pp. 30, 31.

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³ p. 61.

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⁴ p. 69.

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Kautilya's idea about the establishment of gilds in the different wards of a city was but a reflex of the actual civic life of his own and previous times. For in the *Sîlavanaga* and other *Jâtakas*⁵ streets (*vîthis*) are sometimes named from a particular class of artisans living in them. Even an entire village of 1,000 families was often monopolized by a single industry, e. g. smithery or timber-work.

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⁵ Fick's *Soziale Gliederung*, 179—181; Mookerji's *Local*, 74.

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Gilds were then prominent institutions among Hindus as early as the sixth and seventh centuries B. C.; and epigraphy traces them down to the Chola Empire. The Buddhist story books open up to us an economic India in which the various orders of manual and skilled workers were organized on the corporate basis. There were gilds of sailors, muslin-weavers, leather-workers, painters, goldsmiths, workers in war-implements, stone-carvers, and so forth.⁶ In addition to the conventional "eighteen gilds" there must be mentioned also the unions or companies of traders and commercial men. For all subsequent periods since then, therefore, the law books could not but devote special attention to the gilds as economic institutions of the land. Gautama's *Dharma-sûtra*⁷ was composed or compiled in the *milieu* of gilds of peasants, herdsmen, traders, moneylenders, and artisans. Gilds held a high place in the Kautilyan theory of finance as important sources of public income.⁸ Authors of the third century A. C. e. g. those responsible for the compilation of Viṣṇu's law-book¹ were living in an age when the gilds of metal workers, especially goldsmiths and silversmiths, were well in evidence in social life. Not only Manu² (*c* 150) and Yâjnavalkya³ (*c* 350) but all jurists down to Nârada⁴ (*c* 500) and Brihaspati⁵ (*c* 650) had consequently to reckon gilds among the subjects of "private law". These public bodies were expressly mentioned in connection with crimes and punishments to which all individuals were liable according to the laws of the state. The violation (*vyatikrama*) of *sambids* (gild compacts or agreements) was accordingly important enough to demand special treatment along with the general law of contract.

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⁶ Majumdar, 4; cf. also *Râmâyaṇa Ayodhyâ-kâṇda*, Ch. XIX.

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⁷ *Loc. cit.*

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⁸ p. 66.

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¹ Hopkins' *India*, p. 170.

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² VIII, 5, 219.

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³ II, 15, 187, 192.

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⁴ X, 5; *Vide* Gibelin's *Etudes sur le droit civil des Hindous*, Vol. I, pp. 299—310 (*Des Sociétés*).

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⁵ XVII, 19. Some of the gilds of Ceylon in later times are described in Coomaraswamy's *Mediaeval*, pp. 55—56.

Cites (10)