Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c16.5

c16.5

With the establishment of a full-fledged agrarian economy based on iron-plough agriculture the ‘Aryan’ society went on expanding through conquests, and the problem of tribal acculturation assumed important dimensions in pre-Maurya times when we find at least sixteen large territorial kingdoms in northern India inhabited by the standard four orders and numerous new tribes. The spread of iron technology in eastern U.P. and Bihar, the beginnings of trade and commerce, the use of coins and the rise of towns in the Gaṅgā basin naturally gave rise to many crafts, whose practitioners had to be given place in the brāhmaṇical social framework. Hence the Dharmasūtras evolved the theory of the anuloma and pratiloma, namely, the mixed castes formed as a result of miscegenation between men of the higher varṇas and women of the lower varṇas and vice versa. The number of such castes arose gradually. The Dharmasūtras mention twenty-four mixed castes, and Kauṭilya specifies sixteen; all of whom except vrātya are common to the Dharmasūtra list, which raises the total number of mixed castes to twenty-five. Obviously the list does not include all the crafts, twenty-eight of which are mentioned in the Digha Nikāya and eighteen of which seem to have been organized into guilds conventionally known as the aṣṭadaśa śreṇi in early Pāli texts.² The craft guilds did not develop into rigid castes so long as there was plentiful use of money, thriving towns meeting the needs of their rural hinterlands and vice versa, and expanding trade and commerce from about the fifth ceutury B.C. to about the fifth century A.D. The economic setup made room for considerable mobility in the case of craftsmen and merchants for whom the taboos regarding food and marriage habits had to be relaxed.