Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c9.346

c9.346

We also detect a close connection between material culture and social organisation. The type of material life provided by PGW archaeology suggests possibilities of social differentiation, but it also indicates constraints on the production of social surplus. We have very little evidence regarding the use of iron tools for craft and agriculture, for the supply of iron to the upper Gaṅgā basin seems to have been limited and the technology of hardening iron tools through carburisation unknown. The later Vedic society seems to have been a small-scale non-monetary peasant society, strongly supplemented by cattle-rearing. Because of the difficulties of clearance in the upper Gangetic basin large agricultural fields may not have existed. The economy therefore generally did not need slaves and hired labourers for agricultural operations; every family looked after the land under its cultivation. The economy certainly needed artisans and herdsmen, but they still seem to have maintained ties of kinship with the princes and priests. Literary evidence suggests that tribal elements were considerably strong. The formation of a serving order had started, but its crystallisation into a class required certain conditions which appeared only in post-Vedic times. Wooden ploughshare based cultivation in later Vedic times allowed only marginal surplus for the support of priests and warriors although the latter could benefit from the use of iron weapons.²