Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c15.31

c15.31

In his law of inheritance Manu recommends that the *kināśa* or cultivator should go to the eldest son of a brāhmaṇa.³ This would suggest that certain cultivators or cultivating tenants were attached to the family lands, and although division of landed property is not explicitly recommended by Manu, it is difficult to think of cultivators in isolation from the land they tilled. A Pallava Prākṛt copper plate charter of about A.D. 250-350 transfers sharecroppers to a beneficiary along with the land.⁴ The allied provision in Manu therefore may not have been of an earlier date.