Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c10.56

c10.56

We may indicate some steps by which land and labour came to be appropriated in the age of the Buddha. The well-known story of Videgha Māthava, the existence of northern brāhmaṇas and close affinities of the NBP with the PGW and black slipped ware suggests that the middle Gaṅgā settlements were pioneered by people from the upper Gaṅgā basin. The colonisers may have encountered a few pockets inhabited by the chalcolithic people in the middle Gaṅgā basin and the lands of the original settlers may have been seized by the newcomers. The chiefs of the advancing colonisers may have appropriated village lands to the exclusion of those who did not belong to the clan or those clansmen who had been impoverished or dispossessed. As reward for the initiative, enterprise and fighting qualities of their chiefs the kinsmen may have presented to them the best piece of land or a good portion af land. In later Vedic times such leading princes as Janaka and Duryodhana¹ were supposed to lend their hands to the plough, and till the end of the period the clan was considered to be the owner of the land. Even in post-Vedic times the king performed the ploughing ceremony called *vappa-maṅgala*² in Pāli, which is still observed by the Buddhist king of Thailand. But it is clear that during this period some princes, priests and seṭṭhis/gahapatis came to occupy large stretches of land, although the process of this appropriation can be guessed only by extrapolating anthropological evidence.