Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c9.39

c9.39

What was the nature of relations between the śūdra workers and their employers? The authors of the *Vedic Index* say that slaves were certainly included in the term śūdra.⁴ But the number of slaves seems to have been very small. We learn of ten thousands of women slaves, captured from various countries and given away by Aṅga to his brāhmaṇa priest Ātreya.⁵ The number is obviously exaggerated and conventional. Āruṇi, the father of Śvetaketu, boasts that he possesses gold, cattle, horses, maid-servants (*dāsis*), retinue and dress, but does not speak of men slaves.⁶ Tradition has it that the brāhmaṇas received women slaves at the time of the great coronation sacrifice of Yudhiṣṭhira,⁷ which may be ascribed to the later Vedic period. Clearly, then, during this period women slaves were owned on a considerable scale by the ruling chiefs and priests, but the same cannot be said of men slaves. The term *dāsa* is mentioned in the *Aitareya* and *Gopatha Brāhmaṇas*⁸ but not in the sense of a slave. It is remarkable that, in the list of words for servants (*paricaraṇakar-māṇaḥ*) given in the *Nighaṇṭu*,¹ there is no mention of *dāsa*, although there occur ten synonyms for servants. Perhaps the number of men slaves was so negligible as not to attract any notice. This would naturally rule out the possibility of male śūdras being employed as slaves on any considerable scale. Therefore Keith’s statement, that in the period of the Brāhmaṇas the peasant working in his own fields was being substituted for the landowner cultivating his estate by means of slave labour,² may not represent the true state of affairs.