Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c14.18

c14.18

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.