Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c16.33

c16.33

In backward areas the land grant economy led to the accession of numerous tribes as varṇasaṃkara śūdras; in settled areas it led to the loss of mobility at the lower levels. The loss of mobility was further caused by the decline of foreign trade. One of the reasons of the flourishing trade in the first two centuries of the Christian era was the establishment of stability over large areas on account of the Han, Kuṣāṇa and Iranian (Arcasid) empires, all of which carried trade with one another and the Roman empire. The first three empires disappeared in the middle of the third century,¹ and decline set in in the Roman empire a century later. Trade with the eastern Roman empire continued in a depleted form in Gupta times, for some Byzantine coins of the fifth-sixth centuries have been found in India. But this trade sharply declined from the sixth century. One of the reasons was the acquisition of knowledge of silk by the Byzantium which ceased to depend for its silk on India from the seventh century. Even earlier we have an indication of sharp fall in silk production in western India, for in the middle of the fifth century a guild of silk weavers migrated from the Nausari-Broach region, the hinterland of the Gujarat ports, to Mandasor in Malwa where they gave up their old vocation and proliferated into the occupations of archers, story tellers, religious expounders (teachers), astrologers, warriors, and ascetics.¹ Obviously all these trades were non-productive. On account of fall in demand for trade similar things may have happened to other craft guilds engaged in petty commodity production.