Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c14.2

c14.2

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.