Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c11.123

c11.123

During the Mauryan period the economic position of the śūdras seems to have undergone several changes. For the first time the śūdras came to be engaged as sharecroppers on the crown lands. But probably the śūdras were employed on a far larger scale as slaves and labourers in agricultural production by the state. The members of the lower order, who lived in village either working under the individual cultivators or independently, were subjected to *corvée* on a much larger scale than in the period of the Dharmasūtras, when it was mostly confined to the artisans.⁵ The phenomenon had become now so widespread that a class of government servants known as the *viṣṭibandhakās* worked as procurers of forced labour.⁶ Though as workers and artisans the śūdras were the worst paid people in society, fixation of wages may have helped to improve their position. Nevertheless, there seems to have been no appreciable change in their standard of living, except perhaps in the case of the śūdra sharecroppers.