Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c10.96

c10.96

The mass of śūdra population seems to have been employed in agricultural operations. The Dharmasūtras assign agriculture to the vaiśyas,¹ who were independent peasant proprietors paying a part of the produce as taxes to the state.² The vaiśyas, mainly as peasants and secondarily as traders, seem to have been the principal taxpayers in post-Vedic times. The fact that the śūdras had not to pay any land revenue shows that they were landless labourers. Āpastamba states that the śūdras, who live by washing the feet, are exempt from taxes.³ This would imply that non-serving śūdras could become taxpayers. But in an older manuscript of this law-book the term pādāvanektā does not occur,⁴ which suggests that it was inserted later to provide justification for the exemption of the śūdras. Generally, therefore, the śūdras possessed no taxable property in the form of land, and as such most of them had to work on the land of others. This is amply clear from a passage of the Majjhima Nikāya, which presents a classification of the earnings of the four varṇas. It informs us that the brāhmaṇa lives on gifts, the kṣatriya on the use of the bow and the arrow, the vaiśya on agriculture and tending of cattle, and the śūdra on the use of the sickle and the carriage of crops on the pole hung over his shoulder.⁵