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A History of Agriculture in India v1.c27.s5: Rural Economy

A History of Agriculture in India v1.c27.s5

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English

Contents

Rural Economy

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The rural economy of India at the coming of Buddhism was based chiefly on a system of village communities of peasant proprietors. There were no landlords. The Jataka bears very clear testimony to this. The king had a right to a tithe on raw produce, collected as a yearly tax; and only to this extent could he be considered the ultimate owner of the soil. All abandoned, all forest land the king might dispose of; and under this right was included the reversion to the crown of all property left intestate [Figure: Fig. 166. The Buddha subjugates the mad elephant Nalagiri. Women, nude above the waist, watch from the balconies of houses. Amaravati, late second century, Madras Museum [Figure: Fig. 167. Buffaloes muddying a pool. The circular hut in the background resembles the Navadatoli huts. On the left are archers carrying bows. An illustration to a Jataka story, West Gate, Sanchi.

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or ‘ownerless’. The sovereign was moreover entitled to ‘milk money’, a perquisite paid by the subjects when an heir was born to him. Besides these privileges he could impose forced labour or *rajakariya* on the people, limited to the confines of his own estates. Thus the peasant proprietors enclose a deer-reserve for their king, so that they might not be summoned to leave their tillage to beat up game for him. The tithe on produce was levied in kind, measured out either by the village headman (*gama-bhojaka*), or by an official (a *mahamatta*) at the barn doors, or by survey of the crops. Some of the rice and other grain were stored in the special granaries kept filled for urgency, in war or famine. The amount levied seems to have varied from 1/6 to 1/12, according to the decision of the ruling power or other circumstances. And the contributions raised at one or more *gamas* (villages), rural or suburban, could be made over by a monarch to anyone he wished to endow, e.g. to a daughter on her marriage, a minister, a Brahman, a merchant. Again, the king, could remit the tithe to any person or group.

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The land might, at least in the kingdom of Magadha, be given away, and in that of Kosala, be sold. In the former case, a Brahman landowner offers a thousand *karisas* of his estate as a gift; in the latter, a merchant entangles an unwilling noble in the sale of a part. And in the law-books we read that land might be let against a certain share of the produce. The holdings too in the arable land, called the *khetta*, of each village would be subject to redistribution and redivision among a family, as one generation succeeded another. It is not clear whether any member of a village community could give or sell any of the *khetta* to an outsider. It is just possible that the old tradition expressed in the *Brahmanas* when a piece of land was given as a sacrificial fee—‘And the Earth said: Let no mortal give me away!’—may have survived in the villages as a communal, anti-alienizing feeling concerning any disintegration of the basis of their social and economic unity. It will be seen that conditions regarding land-holding were similar to those prevailing now in the Punjab, which is the land of peasant proprietors *par excellence*.

Village

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‘A *gama* might mean anything from a group of two or three houses to an indefinite number. It was the generic, inclusive term for an inhabited settlement, not possessing the fortifications of a *nagara* or the ruler’s palace of a *rajadhani*. The number of inhabitants in the *gamas* of the Jataka tales varied from 30 to 1,000 families. The houses were all together, in a group, separated by narrow lanes. Immediately adjoining was the sacred grove of trees of the primeval forest left standing when the forest clearing had been made. Beyond this was the wide expanse of a cultivated field, usually a rice field.

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‘Around the *gama*, which appears to have been classed as of the country (janapada), of the border (paccanta), or as suburban, lay its khetta, or pastures, and its woodland or uncleared jungle: primeval forest like the Andhavana of Kosala, the Sitavana of Magadha, the Pacinavamsadaya of the Sakiya Territory. Different from these were such suburban groves as the Bamboo Grove belonging to Magadha’s king, the Anjanavana of Saketa, the Jetavana of Savatthi. Through those other uncleared woodlands where the folk went to gather their firewood, and litter, ran caravan routes, roads that were at times difficult because of swampy passages after rain, and dangerous on account of wild animals and brigands.

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‘Adjoining or merged into these wilder tracts were supplementary grazing pastures of herds of cattle and goats—herds belonging to the king or commoners. Commoners customarily entrusted their flocks to a gopalaka. We find him either penning his herds at night in sheds, or, more often, bringing them back every evening and counting them out to the several owners, varying the pasturage from day to day.

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‘The arable ground of the gama lay without the clustered dwellings, since these were apparently enclosed by a wall or stockade with gates gamadvara. Fences, snares, and field watchmen guarded the khetta or gamakhetta from intrusive beasts and birds, whereas the internal boundaries of each householder’s plot were apparently made by channels dug for co-operative irrigation. These dividing ditches, rectangular and curvilinear, were likened, at least in the Magadha khettas, to a patchwork robe of a mendicant, called gudri in Punjabi. The limits of the whole khetta might be extended by the fresh clearing of forest land. And whereas the majority of holdings were probably small, manageable single-handed or with sons and perhaps with a hired man, estates of 1,000 karisas (acres?) and more occur in the Jatakas, farmed by Brahmans. In the Suttas, again the Brahman Kasibharadvajais employed 500 ploughs and hired men (bhatika) to guide the plough and oxen.

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‘We hear of no instance of a shareholder selling or mortgaging his share of the village field to an outsider; and it was impossible for him to do so, at least without the consent of the village council. We have three instances of sales of land in the books. But in one case it was the forest land cleared by the proprietor or his ancestors. A very old text apparently implies that a piece of ground was given as a sacrificial fee. But it is at once added that the earth itself said—and Mother Earth was a most dread divinity—“No mortal must give me away!”

Headman

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‘Instances of collectivist initiative reveal a relatively advanced sense of citizenship in the gamas. The peasant proprietors had a nominal head in the bhojaka or headman, who was paid by certain dues and fines. But all the village residents met to confer with him and each other on civic and political matters. And carrying the upshot of their counsels into effect, they built new mote-halls and rest-houses, constructed reservoirs and parks, and took turns at a voluntary corvee in keeping their roads in repair. Women too considered it a civic honour to bear their own part in common work. A further glimpse into the sturdy spirit in gama-life is caught in the Jataka sentiment that for peasants to leave their tillage and work for impoverished kings was a mark of social decay. Relevant to this is the low social rank assigned to the hired labourer, who is apparently classed beneath the domestic slave.

Scarcity

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‘Scarcity owing to drought or to floods is not infrequently referred to, extending even over a whole kingdom. The times of scarcity in Buddhist records apparently refer only to brief periods over restricted areas.

Status of Farming

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‘The pursuit of agriculture was not associated with either social prestige or social stigma. In both Jatakas and Suttas, Brahmans are frequently found pursuing tillage, cow-herding, goat-keeping, trade, hunting, woodwork or carpentry, weaving, caravan-guarding, archery, carriage-driving, and snake-charming, but also no reflection is passed upon them for so doing.

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‘In the Punjab, the old tribal system was still prevalent. There the actual cultivator would still be a man of the three upper classes, whereas in Magadha he was generally Shudra. It is to this period that we must ascribe the great complexity of the caste system, and the beginning of the association of caste with craft. A number of castes arose by intermixtures of the old four divisions.

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‘The Kshatriya clansmen of the republics were largely cultivators of the soil. For instance, in the Kunala Jataka, it was the workmen in the fields of the Sakiyan and Koliya bhojakas, amaccas and uparajas who began to quarrel over the prior turn to irrigate. In the earliest Indian literature, agricultural and pastoral concepts play a great part.’⁸

Dasas and Dasis

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The slave or servant (dasa, dasi) was an adjunct in all households able to command domestic service; but slaves do not appear to have been kept, as a rule, in great numbers. Slavery might be incurred through capture, commuted death sentences, debt, voluntary self-degradation, or judicial punishment; on the other hand, slaves might be manumitted, or might free themselves by payment. They might not, while still undischarged, be admitted into the religious community (sangha).

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⁸Rapson, E.J. Cambridge History of India, Vol. I, pp. 176-182, 370, 371 and 433

Landless Labourer

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The hireling, the wage-earner, or the day-labourer was no man's chattel, yet his life was probably harder sometimes than that of the slaves. He was to a great extent employed on the larger land-holdings. He was paid either in board and lodging, or in money-wages. Manu prescribes regular wages both in money and kind for menials in the king's service.

Cites (5)