Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c14.23

c14.23

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.