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Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c14: Chapter VIII: Change and Continuity

Śūdras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c14

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Chapter VIII: Change and Continuity

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The main phases in the history of the śūdras, from their earliest appearance to cir. A.D. 500, may be roughly indicated. The early Vedic society was primarily pastoral in which tribal elements predominated. Although we come across artisans, agriculturists, priests and warriors even in the earlier portions of the Rg Veda, the society of āryans in this period was basically tribal, pastoral and egalitarian. Spoils of war and cattle constituted the main forms of wealth and in the absence of a strong food-producing economy they could not generate such surplus as would fully support priests and warriors. It was possible to have high ranks based on age, seniority, experience and personal qualities, but not high social classes based on the exploitation of social surplus. It was therefore a pre-class society, and at this stage there was little scope for the formation of a serving order in the form of the śūdras. Princes and priests had women slaves for domestic service, but their number may not have been large. It seems that towards the end of the Rg Vedic period the defeated and dispossessed sections of the Āryan and non-Āryan tribes were reduced to the position of śūdras. Both inter-tribal and intra-tribal conflicts contributed to their numbers. But their ranks really swelled on account of the transformation of the pastoral society into an agricultural society in the upper Gangetic basin. For carrying on agricultural operations labourers were needed, and many of them were the poor cousins of "āryan" priests, princes and peasants. Since originally a considerable number of śūdras formed part of the Āryan community, they retained several tribal rights, especially religious, in later Vedic society. On the basis of the fiction of belonging to the same tribe these rights may also have been extended to non-Āryan śūdras. That the śūdras could participate in certain Vedic ceremonies had something to do with the nature of the later Vedic economy. Although it was food-producing and agricultural, agricultural technology was primitive. The use of iron was known, but confined mainly to war. Problems of clearance were very difficult, and large plots needing the help of numerous labourers could not be formed. The result was that the peasants did not produce much over and above the needs of their daily subsistence. Naturally taxes and tributes could not be collected regularly, and differentiation between those who laboured and produced on the one hand and those who lived as parasites and managers of production on the produce of peasants and labourers on the other could not be intensified. The beginnings of class society were still weak, and at such a stage the position of the śūdras tended to be ambiguous.

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When iron tools came to be used for handicrafts, large scale clearance and field cultivation, conditions were created for the transformation of the tribal, pastoral, egalitarian Vedic society into a full-fledged agricultural and class-divided social order in the sixth century B.C. Once the forested areas of the middle Gangetic basin were cleared with the iron axe and brought under the iron ploughshare, one of the most fertile parts of the world was opened to settlement. Probably through gifts made by the community for services rendered to it or through their own machinations princes and priests managed to bring under contol large stretches of land, which they could not cultivate themselves, even ordinary peasant families needed occasional help from outside in their fields. In a well-established agricultural society, when families come to acquire resources which they are unable to exploit on their own, they usually procure labour power by force of arms¹ and perpetuate its supply by force of law and custom. To this they add the compulsion generated by religion and ideology. What is unique in the case of ancient Indian society is the fact that these different elements of compulsion, physical and ideological, were interwoven into a social texture called the varṇa system. The imperial expansion of Magadha and the other powers resulted in territorial aggrandisement and in the social subjection of a large number of people who not only had to pay taxes but also to provide labour power. The labouring masses who did not pay taxes were presumably placed in the category of śūdras.

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¹ M. I. Finley, *The Ancient Economy*, p. 66.

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Once labour was made available by means of force, law, religion and ideology were pressed into the service of the ruling orders to regularise the system so that labour supply could be maintained and augmented. The Dharmasūtras made a clear distinction between the twice-born and the śūdra by stating that the latter was meant for serving the three higher varṇas. Various kinds of social distinctions were drawn between the two on the same ground by the law-books. The śūdras were excluded from Vedic sacrifices and investiture with the sacred thread which were considered to be the ritualistic hallmarks of an ārya or twice-born. The śūdra was saddled with economic, politico-legal, social and religious disabilities. All this could be justified on the basis of his mythical origin from the feet of the creator. This is similar to Aristotle’s justification of slavery on the ground that some people are born to obey and others to command. He adds that the first become slaves, and the second citizens.

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The śūdra was considered identical with the slave, although only a section of śūdras may have been legally slaves. Therefore it is wrong to render the word “śūdra” by “slave”, as has been done by Hopkins.¹ In spite of the use of money slaves were used on a limited scale, and the private use of land still remained submerged under clan and joint family rights. Just as the clans which formed higher varṇas held landed property in common, so also they held labourers in common to work on the land. Similarly it is not correct to characterise śūdra as a serf, as is done in the *Vedic Index*² for a serf means a person whose service is attached to the soil and who is transferred along with it.

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¹ Hopkins, *CHI*, i, 268.

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² *VI*, ii, 389.

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The śūdra is called helot, but such a characterisation cannot be made without reservations. The helots could be occasionally recruited in the army, but Kauṭilya alone prefers recruitment of the vaiśyas and śūdras on the ground of their numerical strength. Manu is dead against the enrolment of the śūdras, the apprehension being that they might turn their arms against their recruiters. More importantly, the helots lay under the general control of the state which was identical with the citizenry of Sparta. However although the śūdras were considered to be the subordinates of the twice-born comprising the three higher varṇas, the vaiśyas who were mainly peasants could not be regarded as identical with the state power. Further, the agrarian production of Sparta was run primarily by the servile class of helots, but in India independent peasants called vaiśyas played a vital role in agriculture. Helotry is called undeveloped slavery; in a sense śūdrahood can be called undeveloped helotry, for the śūdras were not so thoroughly under the control of the state as the helots were.

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The śūdras' servitude assumed different forms. They served as domestic servants and slaves, agricultural slaves, hired labourers and artisans. A writer condemns them as incapable of constructive efforts,¹ but, undoubtedly the śūdra skill and labour, together with the agricultural surplus produced by the vaiśya peasants, provided the material basis for the development of ancient Indian society, which in this sense was a vaiśya-śūdra formation.

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¹ Valvalkar, *Hindu Social Institutions*, pp. 327-28.

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In the Mauryan period, the tendency to employ śūdra labour in agriculture reached its climax, and never before or after did the state exercise so much control over the slaves, hired labourers and artisans. This was the period when slaves were used in production on a large scale by the state. They were possibly recruited from the lowest order in society, although the Kalinga and similar wars may have been an important source. But the direct control of the servile order by the state was an interlude in India's social history. It was not followed later. The view, that, in the Arthaśāstra of Kauṭilya the śūdras were regarded as āryas² and as such could not be reduced to slavery is not sustained by a close examination of the passages in question.³ And Aśoka's attempt to abolish varṇa distinctions in the administration of justice probably irritated the brāhmaṇas, but did not benefit the lower orders.

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² R. P. Kangle. *The Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra*, Pt. II, p. 271, fn. 1.

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³ AŚ, III. 13.

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The post-Mauryan period (cir. 200 B.C.-A.D. 300), especially the third century A.D. marks critical stage in the position of the śūdras. Manu's fanatical anti-śūdra measures and the Purāṇic denunciations of the śūdras for their anti-brāhmaṇical activities indicate a phase of bitter social conflicts and tensions, which was perhaps aggravated by the intervention of the non-brāhmaṇical foreign elements and the increasing importance of artisans. Probably as a result of this conflict, the disappearance of the strong state power of the Mauryas, and the rise of new arts and crafts we notice signs of change in the position of the śūdra. The first two Christian centuries were an age of crafts, commerce, gold and copper coins, trading ports and inland towns. For crafts and commerce the period of the Kuṣāṇas and Sātavāhanas seems to have been as unique as that of the Mauryas for agrarian expansion under the aegis of the state. In no other period of early history India's international trade thrived so much. Naturally the artisans came to the fore, as can be inferred from the epigraphic records of their guilds and donations. Free from state control the guilds could function effectively, and a large number of towns could provide alternative sources of livelihood to oppressed members of the lower orders from the countryside. On the other hand the descriptions of the Kali age suggest a prolonged social crisis caused by a refusal of the two lower varṇas to perform their functions. It was overcome by a policy of coercion and conciliation. Manu's anti-śūdra measures reflect coercion, but he also grants them some concession. The śūdras were given a few minor religious rights.

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In the Gupta Period (cir. A.D. 300 - cir. 600) the śūdras gained some religious and civic rights, and in many respects were placed on a par with the vaiśyas. The bracketting of the vaiśyas and śūdras is not unknown in the earlier texts, but it becomes more frequent in the texts of the post-Mauryan and Gupta periods, and considered in the light of other developments it carries a new significance during the Gupta period. Apparently the status of the vaiśya was degraded towards servitude, that of the śūdra raised towards freedom. Numerous land grants made to the brāhmaṇas in the developed areas tended to depress the position of the old peasants by creating a class of intermediaries between them and the king.¹ Possibly this was the result of a prolonged social crisis which made it difficult to collect taxes from the vaiśyas and labour from the śūdras. Priests and administrators therefore had to be paid through grants of land. Land grants to brāhmaṇas in the undeveloped areas added to the number of śūdras, for aboriginal peasants were recruited into the brāhmaṇical social organisation as śūdras. In the earlier periods the service of the śūdras consisted in supplying labour to the higher varṇas, but from the Gupta period onwards their service and subordination consisted in supplying part of their produce as artisans, traders, and especially as peasants. The theoretical position about their servitude still continued, but its practical content underwent a change. Of course the śūdras did not cease to be slaves, domestic servants, craftsmen and agricultural labourers, but now their ranks mainly consisted of peasants, though of a servile nature.

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¹ The earliest epigraphic evidence for land grants can be traced back to the first century B.C. (Sircar, *Select Inscriptions*, i, p. 188, Inscr. no. 82, line 11), but such grants become common in Gupta period.

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We may consider the position of the śūdras in the economic system on the one hand and their social and ritualistic status on the other. Religious disabilities imposed on them in *c.* 500-200 B.C. persisted mostly till *c.* A.D. 300, so long as this category consisted mainly of slaves, artisans, domestic servants and agricultural labourers. But when large numbers of aboriginal peasants began to multiply the śūdra ranks and when the slave element in agrarian production declined substantially, giving way to less servile workers, the social and ritualistic status of the śūdras, as laid down in the Dharmasūtras, became incongruous with their new role in production. This anachronism was gradually removed by enlarging the existing religious rights of the śūdras, by conferring on them more such rights in Gupta and post-Gupta times. At the same time the śūdra community was kept divided by throwing a good many tribal and artisans into the order of untouchables. Those who still continued in their old servile position and were further reinforced by the growing number of untouchables came to be known ritually *asat* or impure śūdras, and their religious conduct was accordingly laid down. Apparently peasant castes supplemented by some artisans accounted for the pure or *sat* śūdras, and the untouchables consisting of agricultural labourers and some low artisanal occupations stood for the impure śūdras or mixed (*miśra/saṃkara*) castes, which clearly marked the social configuration of Gupta and post-Gupta times. A late chapter of Manu mentions more than sixty mixed castes. They resulted from the process of consolidating continuous conquests through the mechanism of land grants by which numerous tribes annexed to the brāhmaṇical order were converted into śūdra castes. Tribals at lower stages of culture were made untouchables, whose number shot up suddenly and became considerable enough to attract the attention of the Chinese travellers. From towards the end of the Gupta period the decline of crafts and commerce added to the number of castes, for guilds lost mobility and tended to become rigid, hereditary organisations.

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Changes in the position of the śūdras in the period of our study did not alter the status of their basic servility. They cannot be called slaves, but they functioned as substitutes for slaves. Except in the period from about 500 B.C. to A.D. 300 in northern India slaves were not an important element in production. On the other hand the śūdras supplied the main labour power to an economy in which land, cattle and other instruments of production lay under the effective control of the three higher orders who constituted some kind of ārya citizenry. Very roughly the twice-born comprising the first three social estates in India can be compared to citizens of Greece and Rome, and the śūdras to their non-citizens. The varṇa system was not only an instrument for regulating social relations, but what is more significant, a mechanism for carrying on production and distribution and consequently for governing the relations between different classes involved in these processes. As a mechanism for the appropriation of surplus produce and labour by those who were not directly and primarily engaged in production, the varṇa system of ancient India roughly served the same purpose as the citizenship system in classical antiquity. The Dharmaśāstras gave it the same legal validity as was enjoyed by the scheme of citizenship in Greece and Rome. But there were two differences. First, the varṇa system was presented under a religious garb while the citizenship system was given mainly a politico-legal garb. Secondly, although the vaiśyas were "citizens" till Gupta times they continued to be the principal taxpayers as peasants on account of which they had to function as primary producers. Unlike the Indian system the social formation of classical antiquity did not provide for a large segment of producing citizens. This is however not to ignore the perpetual tensions and conflicts that raged between rich and poor citizens, between patricians and plebians in classical antiquity. In the Indian structure whatever may have been the nature of tensions and conflicts within the ārya body of citizenry, for a long time the myth of the twice-born was successfully cultivated to keep the community of śūdras in isolation from the vaiśya peasants. Their form of servility underwent a significant change probably on account of a social crisis in around the third century A.D. but the element of servitude continued. For a long time the śūdras supplied surplus labour as slaves, artisans and agricultural labourers; from Gupta times onwards they supplied surplus produce as peasants and supplemented it with occasional forced labour. Since the social fabric of ancient India was based on the vaiśya tax and the śūdra labour, it may be called a vaiśya-śūdra society, but from the ideological and ritualistic point of view it may be called a brāhmaṇical society.

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In spite of the servile status and miserable conditions of the śūdra masses, particularly in pre-Gupta times, there is hardly any direct evidence of śūdra revolts, excepting the references to their violent anti-brāhmaṇical activities during the second and third centuries A.D. The epic and Purāṇic descriptions of the Kali age and statelessness (arājaktā), which focus on social convulsions and mixing of the social orders (varṇasaṃkara) and highlight the manifestation of the śūdra antagonism towards the brāhmaṇa, may be taken as echoes of śūdra revolts, but their exact time and place cannot be fixed. In comparison with the slave revolts in Rome, occasional and sporadic anti-state activities of the śūdras are insignificant. The śūdras may have contributed to people's wrath called janapada-kopa¹ and prakṛti-kopa² it is suggested that the lower vaiśyas constituted the middle class ('petty bourgeoisie'), which held the balance between the śūdra and dvija classes.¹ The use of the term dvija classes is inaccurate, for the vaiśyas were also regarded as such. But even the fact of the vaiśyas acting as a stabilising sector between the first two varṇas on the one hand and the śūdras on the other can be true only of the period before the beginning of the Christian era, since roughly from that time the two lower varṇas began to approximate to one another till in the Gupta period they practically lost their independent identities.

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¹ AŚ., I. 13.

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² Ibid., V. 6, VII. 6. Eva Ritche presented a paper on this subject to IV World Sanskrit Conferences, Weimar 1979.

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¹ Bose, *op. cit.*, ii, 486-87.

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We may, however, suggest some other reasons to explain the comparative calmness of the śūdras in ancient Indian society. It seems that money economy had not developed in India to the extent to which it had in Greece² and Rome, and hence notwithstanding the theoretical servitude of the śūdras, very few of them could be reduced to slavery through failure to pay debts, which was a major source of slavery in Greece.³ Except in the pre-Mauryan and Mauryan periods, there is very little evidence of the employment of agricultural slaves. Slavery was mostly domestic, under which there subsisted intimate relations with the master, and the slaves formed not a sharply marked class, but merely the lowest rung of the household ladder.

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² Cf. Thomson, *Studies in Ancient Greek Society*, ii, pp. 194-96.

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³ Cf. Solon's Debt Laws towards the beginning of the sixth century B.C.

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In the case of oppression the śūdra labourers may have taken refuge⁴ among the free tribal population, or have migrated from one state to another. The oppressed seem to have offered passive resistance; we have hardly any concrete instance of revolt or active resistance. Further, in contrast to the brāhmaṇas and kṣatriyas, the śūdras were not a well-organised, closed community, capable of making any combined efforts against their masters. As time passed, they fragmented into numerous sub-castes of unequal social status, which went on multiplying through the accession of numerous tribes. It is suggested that in the *Amarakośa*, craftsmen such as garland-makers, potters, masons, weavers, tailors, painters etc. are noted in an approximately descending order.⁵ The theory of the origin of mixed castes through hypergamy (*pratiloma*) was cleverly used to create a hierarchy of degraded śūdra castes, separated by ideas of purity and pollution from one another,¹ with the result that they found it difficult to make a common cause. The division between the pure (*sat*) and impure (*asat*) śūdras became marked from Gupta times.

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⁴ A case of the desertion of the Pāñcāla kingdom by the oppressed subjects is reported in a Jātaka.

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⁵ Kosambi. *JOR*, xxiv, 61.

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¹ "... *pratiloma* is a convenient intellectual device for generating various disapproved categories, assigning them degraded positions, and ideologically explaining and rationalising why so many groups in the caste hierarchy are placed in low or downtrodden positions." S. J. Tambiah, "From Varṇa to Caste through Mixed Unions," in Jack Goody (ed.), *The Character of Kinship*, p. 207.

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There is no doubt that among the śūdras domestic servants, sharecroppers, herdsmen and barbers were regarded as higher in the social scale than most other types of śūdras, for their food could be taken even by the brāhmaṇa master.² Greater weakness of the lower orders lay in their division into śūdras and untouchables, which appeared in the time of Pāṇini, was perpetuated in later times and accentuated in the Gupta period. The śūdras gained in status not only through their levelling up with the higher varṇas but also through their exaltation above the untouchables, so that, with a class of people lower than they, they might satisfy their sense of vanity in the brāhmaṇical hierarchy.

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² *Yāj.*, I. 166.

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And, lest perchance the discontented śūdras resorted to arms, the lawgivers prescribed a consistent policy of keeping them disarmed, which was possibly modified in the Gupta period.

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A powerful factor which helped to preserve the essentials of the varṇa system and thus to keep the śūdras down was the indoctrination of the masses in the theory of *karma* and of the bad consequences following the non-performance of the varṇa or *jāti* duties ordained by gods. It is argued that since the masses were widely educated and endowed with critical acumen, they could not believe in the natural superiority of the higher varṇas,³ but there is no basis for such a wild claim. On the contrary, the minds of the labouring masses were so strongly enchained by the brāhmaṇical ideology that there was only a limited scope either for direct coercion against the śūdras or for violent revolts on their part.

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³ K. V. Rangaswami Aiyanger, *Aspects of the Social and Political System of Manusmṛti*, p. 134.

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But the brāhmaṇical ideologues were not always the slaves of their theories. Considerations of birth did not prevent them from inventing suitable kṣatriya genealogies for aboriginal and foreign chiefs.¹ Probably the few adventurous śūdras, who may have risen to influential status from time to time, were neatly fitted into the brāhmaṇical system as kṣatriyas, so that they could defend the dominance of the higher varṇas with the usual enthusiasm of new converts. The traditional account of the brāhmaṇa Kauṭilya’s support to the śūdra-born Candragupta shows that such developments were not impossible.

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¹ This process has continued even to recent times. *Census of India*, 1891, 13 (Madras), p. 213. Quoted in *ZDMG*, 1, 510.

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The Jainas, Buddhists and Ājīvikas were condemned as śūdras, who could be admitted to the fold of those sects without any discrimination. Their influence may have been felt especially in the period from B.C. 500—A.D. 300 and seems to have been confined to artisan śūdras; Buddhism, the strongest of all, did not admit slaves and debtors to the saṃgha. The impact of Vaiṣṇavism was felt in post-Maurya and more particularly in Gupta times, but the worship of Viṣṇu was exploited by the brāhmaṇas to maintain the principle of social stratification and economic discrimination involved in the varṇa system. Tantricism admitted women and śūdras to its cakra or ordination and popularised the folk and aboriginal cult of the mother goddess towards the end of the Gupta period and in post-Gupta times, but it soon came to develop a religious hierarchy, typical of a feudal society, giving the lowest place to its lay devotees. The reforming sects responded to the religious aspirations of the various sections of the śūdras at one stage or the other. The Jain and Buddhist sects catered to the needs of śūdra artisans, and the śaivite, vaiṣṇavite and tantric sects (although all early medieval sects were affected by tantricism) catered to the needs of śūdra peasants, but none of them could substantially alter the servile position of the fourth varṇa. None of the reforming religious movements of Buddhism, Jainism, Śaivism and Vaiṣṇavism questioned the fundamental theory of *karma*, which provided the doctrinal basis of the brāhmaṇical social order. They tried to contain social discontent rather than channalise it into revolutionary directions. By promising religious equality in place of other forms of equality they helped to reconcile the lower orders to the existing social system. The spirit of protest against social inequities, which characterised these movements in their earlier stages, withered away in course of time, and they identified themselves with the essentials of the varṇa organisation. Thus the complex of all these factors helped to maintain the comparative calmness of the śūdras and to secure their permanent servitude.

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