Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c13.161

c13.161

It may be suggested, very tentatively, that this transition was facilitated by the use of iron on an extensive scale. The *Amarakośa* gives seven names for iron and two names for iron rust,¹ and a Buddhist commentary of the period makes a detailed classification of metals.² The *Amarakośa* also gives five names for ploughshare,³ which may indicate ready supply of this most important agricultural implement and intensive cultivation of land. Without a plentiful supply of such implements former dāsas, karmakaras, aboriginal peoples and the growing number of new families among the higher varṇas could not have carried on agriculture. That there was plentiful supply of iron tools can be inferred from the export of iron goods to the Roman empire in the first two Christian centuries where it had to be eventually banned. The art of making steel had started about from *c.* 200 B.C.;¹ and so widespread had become the use of iron objects that now it was being used for non-utilitarian purposes. The greatest example of such use is the Mehrauli iron pillar. Unfortunately no attention has been paid to the excavation of various phases of village settlements in Northern India, which might throw light on the extent of the use of iron agricultural implements during earlier times. For the lawgivers inform us that hired labourers were supplied with implements, which had to be returned to the masters at the end of the work.² But these labourers could not become agriculturists without their own implements, which were probably provided for them by the growing iron industry of the period.