Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c10.115

c10.115

While some of the slaves, especially women, were employed in domestic service,⁹ others were engaged in agriculture. The slaves and hired labourers worked even on smaller holdings,¹ but more often on larger plots. In the early Pāli texts there are at least two examples of big farms in Magadha, each of a thousand karīsas (8000 acres according to Childers,)² and of another field in Kāsī being ploughed with five hundred ploughs,³ all owned by the brāhmaṇas. Five hundred or a thousand may be conventional numbers, but they provide an indication of the tendency towards consolidation of holdings, which reached its climax with the state control of agriculture in the Mauryan period. It is obvious that larger holdings could not have been worked without a considerable number of dāsas and kammakaras.