Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c9.54

c9.54

It is held that śūdras were serfs in the Vedic period.¹ The term serf denotes one who is attached to the soil of his master. He owns a patch of land for which he pays taxes to his master and works on his fields, but can be transferred along with the land to other owners. He is allowed to keep his small plot and cultivate it only so long as he works on the much larger plot of his landlord with the result that small plots are attached economically and juridically to larger stretches of land under serfdom. But such a system did not prevail even towards the end of the Vedic period, and hence the interpretation of the word śūdra as serf does not quite suit the relevant references. First, individual ownership of land in the Vedic period was of a very limited nature. Ownership implies free disposal of property, but there are no examples of land grants in the Saṃhitās. There is one such example, however, in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, in which a whole village is granted by the king Jānaśruti to Raikva.² Another instance is to be found in two later Brāhmaṇas. They inform us that land could be given away only with the consent of the clan,³ and even there the earth refused to be transferred.⁴ In the earlier period there is no example of śūdras being given away with the land. The development is to be found in some of the Śrautasūtras, but according to a commentary such śūdras appear to be born slaves (garbhadāsa)⁵ and not serfs attached to the soil. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that in post-Vedic times the śūdras do not appear as peasants paying taxes. In the vājapeya (‘the drink of strength’) sacrifice peasants (viś or vaiśyas) are described as food for the nobility.¹ It is perhaps because of this that the vaiśya is to be afflicted with misery and sin.² In the *Aitareya Brāhmaṇa*³ the vaiśya is described as one paying taxes (*balihṛt*) and oppressed at will (*ajayeyyam*). All this would indicate that the vaiśya had to pay part of their products to the rulers who lived on them. Absence of such a role prescribed for the śūdras shows that they were not supposed to possess any taxable property. In an Upaniṣad Soma is described as eating the kṣatriyas and vaiśyas respectively with his two mouths, the brāhmaṇa and the rājanya.⁴ Here the rājanya is represented as paying tributes to the brāhmaṇa, and the vaiśya to the rājanya. As usual the śūdra is left out on the ground of his inability to pay.