Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c10.144

c10.144

The phrase that a person lived a hard life on a workman's wages commonly occurs in the Jātakas.⁷ At one place, the workman, who is the Boddhisatta, bewails his lot in these words: "I get a māsaka or a half-māsaka for my wages and can hardly support my mother."⁸ The daily earning of a grass-cutter is mentioned as two māsakas, which he gets in the market in return for the grass mown.⁹ The māsaka of this period was probably a punch-marked copper coin. According to the commentaries of the early Pāli texts this coin occupied such a low position in the scale of currency that it was considered next to nothing.¹ The māsaka of the later period was one-sixteenth in value of the silver paṇa,² but we are not certain whether this represents its relation to the silver paṇa in pre-Mauryan times. During this period the māsaka counted in value only when it amounted to five in number,³ but even this paltry sum was not given to a wage-earner. Therefore it is not possible to make much of the story in the Gaṅgamāla Jātaka,⁴ in which a water-carrier proposes to enjoy a city festival along with his wife with the meagre savings of one māsaka, each contributing half of it. It is characteristic of the didactic nature of the story that the water-carrier refuses to part with his petty sum of a half-māsaka even when he is offered unlimited wealth by the Bodhisatta king Udaya. Ultimately he gets half the kingdom, but realises the evils of desire and becomes an ascetic to achieve its final extinction. The evident moral is that a person could remain satisfied even with half a māsaka, although it would be ideal to do even without that. As the gāthā says: “Little desire is not enough, and much but brings pain”.⁵ On the whole the estimate of Fick that wages of the day-labourers in the Jātakas were hardly sufficient to enable them to eke out their livelihood seem to be fair. This may well apply to large sections of the śūdras, who worked as hired labourers.