Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c10.93

c10.93

How artisans were remunerated in pre-Maurya times is not quite clear. It seems that some artisans were attached to big households; this can be said of the royal barber and royal potter and also of a few craftsmen attached to big merchants. Other artisans such as smiths and carpenters lived in their own artisan villages, which were situated in the vicinity of towns. Obviously artisans living in suburban villages found their own raw material and produced their own commodities which they took to the town markets for the use of both the urban and rural folk. Five hundred potters' shops under Saddālaputta and a large number of potters working under him were clearly meant for supplying pots to both rural and urban people. People had certainly to pay for the *de lux* NBP ware and possibly for numerous inferior other kinds of pottery such as red ware produced in profuse quantities. We hear of a village trader depositing five hundred ploughs with a town merchant,³ which shows that these ploughs were meant for sale to the peasants. In the layers belonging to the NBP phase in Kausambi 250 iron tools including axes, adzes, knives, razors, nails, sickles, etc., have been discovered.⁴ Many of these may be assigned to the pre-300 B.C. phase, and were probably meant for the use of peasants who purchased them by paying in cash or kind. A third category of artisans lived in villages for catering to the needs of the peasants; they may have been paid by their clients in kind. But it is not clear whether the *jajmāni* system prevailed on any scale. Literary sources are not very helpful; possibly the progress of rural archaeology will throw light on the pattern of settlements and the nature of rural economy. Meanwhile we may venture to suggest that in the age of the Buddha in the midst of clusters of rural settlements lay towns or artisan villages which met the artisanal needs of the peasants, for which payments were made in both cash and kind. The fact that artisans were required to work for kings in lieu of taxes suggests that they were able to earn their livelihood from independent sources but could not earn enough to be able to pay taxes.