Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c15.12

c15.12

The provision for land gift in the fourth chapter of Manu may suggest its contemporaneity with the Smṛtis and inscriptions of the early Christian centuries. Manu recommends gift of land and points out the merit of granting it,⁴ which is touched on only in some Dharmasūtras. But it is in consonance with the teachings of the Śānti Parvan, of Viṣṇu,⁵ Yājñavalkya⁶ and Bṛhaspati.⁷ We have a section called *bhūmidānapraśamsā* in the Anuśāsana Parvan.⁸ The later text and the Viṣṇudharmottara Purāṇa⁹ (eighth century) declare the gift of land to be the best of all the gifts. But Manu holds a different view. According to him the gift of the Veda or learning (*brahmadāna*) is superior to all the other gifts including that of land.¹⁰ Manu does not favour the acceptance of land by a brāhmaṇa on the ground that such *pratigraha* destroys the merit of the recipient.¹¹ This obviously points to a situation in which land grants had become the order of the day, and Manu’s model of a puritan brāhmaṇa was in danger of being subverted. But the practice being widespread, Manu reluctantly allows a brāhmaṇa to accept land; provided untilled (*akṛta*) land is preferred to tilled (*kṛta*) land.¹ The epigraphic reference to the faint beginning of land grant can possibly be pushed back to the first century B.C., but clear evidence belongs to the second century A.D. in Maharashtra under the Sātavāhana rulers. However Manu’s law-book was applicable to the Āryāvarta, where we have hardly any instance of land grant in the first two-three centuries of the Christian era. It seems that by the fourth century or so the practice may have become common enough to have invited the attention of Manu. His recommendation regarding acceptance of the uncultivated land reminds us of the grant of *khila* or *aprahata* land to the brāhmaṇa according to the principle of *bhūmicchidranyāya*,² mentioned first in inscriptions of the fifth century. Manu also uses the term *kūṭa-śāsana* in the sense of forged land grant,³ which term is used in the law-books of Gupta times and in a land grant of Harṣavardhana.⁴ All this helps us to fix the lower limits for dating his law-book.