Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-18T12:41:53.206Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Art. XXXI.—Notes on Early Economic Conditions in Northern India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Caroline Foley Rhys Davids
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The following classified references may prove useful and suggestive to the student of the economic conditions of ancient India. The work accomplished by Professor Zimmer in his Altindisches Leben, which contains, among so much of varied interest, almost all that may be gleaned on the political economy of Vedic times, has not been carried on with respect to the advancing civilization of the succeeding centuries. Mr. Romesh Chunder Dutt's important compilation, the Civilization of Ancient India, cannot, from the magnitude of its scope, treat adequately of what the literature of that era lets us see concerning rural economy, organization of industry, and methods of exchange. Dr. Fick's Sociale Gliederung im Nordöstlichen Indien is most valuable and suggestive as far as it goes. But it is compiled from a sociological and not from a specifically economic standpoint. Yet if we consider the ancient records now accessible, contemporary respectively with the age which preceded and with that which saw the rise of Buddhism and Jainism, and with the times of the earlier and succeeding ‘law-books’ —covering, from b.c. 800, let us say, a thousand years,— we may find materials sufficient to justify at all events some initial efforts to gain a coherent outline of economic institutions. I do not pretend that the passages noted are at all exhaustive; I am confident that much valuable material remains embedded both in edited and unedited texts.

Type
Original Communications
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , October 1901 , pp. 859 - 888
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1901

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 863 note 1 A professional winnower of grain is instanced in Mil. 201, but this is a doubtful rendering. See Questions of King Milinda, i, 285. With the bi-annual grain harvests mentioned by Megasthenes (McCrindle, op. cit., 54) this trade might afford a relatively continual employment. Gleaning, too, was reckoned as a means of livelihood ‘in good years.’ (Vin. i, 238; Jāt. iv, 422.)

page 863 note 2 It is not clear how far the craft of a thapati (e.g., M. i, 396; iii, 144) or of a tacchaka (Dhp. 80) coincided with that of a vaḍḍhaki

page 863 note 3 Mr. Rouse (Jâtaka, iv, 203, n.) compares it with τέκτων.

page 864 note 1 The expression in Jāt. i, 356, tantavilataṭṭhānaṃ, seems to me to refer simply to the weaver's ‘workshop,’ whether or not this may hare been, as the translator renders it, in the ‘weavers' quarter.’

page 864 note 2 Cf. especially the united action in Jāt. iv, 159.

page 865 note 1 Cf. the mahā-vaḍḍhaki (Jāt. vi, 332).

page 865 note 2 Of the other corporate authorities here referred to, the pūga and the gaṇa, practically nothing is known, but they were probably not formed on an economic basis. In the Canon Law a gaṇa of bhikshus means a number not exceeding four persons.

page 865 note 3 It is not without interest to note that this advance in central organization was made at a time when the monarchy is represented as having been elective, not hereditary, and when the king who appointed and the man who was appointed were the sons of a merchant and a tailor respectively. This is the only passage known to me stating explicitly the connection between guild-organization and the minister commonly called ‘treasurer’ (seṭṭhi). The Indian seṭṭhis were wealthy commoners, one of whom, termed sometimes mahā-seṭṭhi, with or without a colleague or subordinate, the anuseṭṭhi, was known as The Seṭṭhi par excellence and was in daily communication with the king. Thus we read of 500 seṭṭhis welcoming the Buddha to the new college of Jetavana at Sāvatṭhi, and of Anāthapindika as The Seṭṭhi or mahā-seṭṭhi. Dr. Fick speaks of this position as, involving generally the “ representation of the merchant profession.” In the Mahāvagga the passage mentioning the services of the Seṭṭhi of Rājagaha to the Townsman (negama) is rendered “to the merchant guild,” but in the Cullavagga ‘ Townsman’ is retained. (Jāt. i, 92, 93, 269, 349, 452; ii, 64; iii, 119, 299, 475; iv, 62, 63; cf. Vimāna Vatthu Atth. 66, seṭṭhichattam dadāti; Vin. i, 273; ii, 157; Vin. Texts, i, 102, n. 3. On anuseṭṭhi, Jāt. v, 384, cf. Vin. i, 18.)

page 866 note 1 Dr. Fick renders the term myyāmaka by fisherman, a trade for which there are other terms. The Jātaka in question is apparently dealing with navigation on the open sea.

page 868 note 1 Cf. Manu, iii, 151 foll.; Fick, op. cit., 7, n.

page 870 note 1 Dr. Fick quotes the passage from Sūdraka's Mṛcchakaṭika, Act ii—“He lives in the seṭṭhis' quarter”—as evidence, at least at a later date, of localization in the mercantile profession. But unless every seṭṭhi was a vānija, the statement is too general to apply, with any significant force, to the latter class. (Fick, op. cit., 180, n.)

page 871 note 1 Compare also the expressions samuddā nikkhametvā nadiyā Bārāṇasim gantvā, (the sea-fairy bringing them on the magic ship) “ from off the ocean by (or on) the river to Benares ” (Jāt. ii, 112).

page 871 note 2 These instances show that paṭṭana can mean a river-port, as we speak of the port of London.

page 872 note 1 The fact of this general absence of explicitness, even in connection with regular traffic, hardly bears out Dr. Fick's assumption that there was probably no regular intercourse between India and other countries. Gold was exported to Persia as early as the time of Darius Hystaspes, yet there is no explicit mention of this export in the Jātaka. (Fick, op. cit., 174.)

page 872 note 2 Cf. Jāt. iv, 21, where the brahmin, disappointed through shipwreck of the expected profits on his merchandise, is by the kind fairy recouped with a great ship filled with the ‘ seven treasures,’ viz., gold, silver, pearls, gems, cat's eyes, diamonds, coral. Cf. also Jāt. iv, 139–141, where an experienced skipper brings his merchant passengers to those seas where most of these treasures lie hidden.

page 873 note 1 ‘ From the store’ is sometimes described as antarāpaṇato (Jāt. i, 55, 350; iii, 406). The commodities purchased on these occasions were yellow cloths, spirits, and rice gruel, things that would not be exposed to light and heat in the open āpaṇa.

page 873 note 2 My attention was drawn to this passage by Professor Bendall.

page 874 note 1 My attention was called to this interesting point by Mr. Wm. Irvine, late I.C.S. The hāṭh, he tells me, “is to this day universal in India, to my personal knowledge, from Patna to Dehli, and, I believe, from Calcutta to Peshawur.”

page 875 note 1 In one instance we find the king making over the octroi collected at the gates of his capital to a subject. (Jāt. vi, 347.)

page 876 note 1 This was evidently meant to include all current coins, the old Vinaya Commentary explaining rajataṃ as meaning the kahāpaṇa and the bronze, wooden, and lac māsaka. (Vin. iii, 238; quoted in Asl. 318, where the reading must be corrected accordingly.)

page 876 note 2 In translating the Vāruṇi Jātaka (The Jātaka, i, 120), Mr. Chalmers speaks of selling spirits for gold and silver as a ‘ Jewish’ proceeding, as opposed to normal barter. I venture to think that the text does not suggest any such distinction. Literally rendered it runs thus:—“A trader in spirits having prepared fiery spirits and selling them, having received gold suvaṇṇas, etc., a numher of people being gathered together (at his shop), he went in the evening to bathe, bidding his apprentice in these words: ‘ My man, do you, having taken the price (mūlaṃ), give the spirits.’” I do not see here any hint as to barter being normal. I only gather that, whereas the drink called surā was very cheap and could be bought with a copper coin (Jāt. i, 350; iii, 446), vāruṇī, and perhaps especially tikhinā vāruṇī, was, though popular, much dearer.

page 877 note 1 The translator has rendered kahāpaṇa and kaṇsa by ‘ gold’ coins. (Chalmers, , Jātaka, i, pp. 255, 256.)Google Scholar

page 878 note 1 Rapson, loc. cit.

page 880 note 1 Dr. Neumann's translation gives a different rendering. The text runs—

sākaṭikakulamhi dārikā jātā

kapaṇamhi appabhoge dhanikapurisapātabahulamhi.

Tām man tato satthavāho ussannāya vipulāya vaḍḍhiyā

okaḍḍhati vilapantiṃ acchinditvā kulagharassa.

In the second line, rendered by him “ Vom Tische Reicher lasen wir die Reste auf,” the compound should, I think, be taken to mean “ fallen into the power of usurers.” This leads up to the next line—“ Me for this reason, the interest having swelled up abundantly, a caravan - leader carries off lamenting,” etc. Dhammapāla defines vaḍḍhi as ‘debt-interest,’ and ‘usurers’ as ‘debt-making men.’ Dr. Neumann renders the latter half of line 3 simply by “ Gab vieles Geld und Gut um mich dahin.” (Par. Dīp., p. 271; Lieder der Mönche, etc., 367, 368.)

page 880 note 2 A parallel case occurred this year in Paris, one Mme. Barbière inviting her creditors only to find her hanging dead with the label on her breast, “ I have hanged myself in full settlement of all my debts.”

page 880 note 3 Naṭṭāyiko, cf. Mil. 201.

page 882 note 1 Probably copper kahāpaṇas. See above, p. 878; also Jāt. vi, 29, where the contents of the royal treasury, which are taken by the court on its forest pilgrimage and ground into sand, are called kahāpaṇas.

page 882 note 2 The lowest wages paid to a king's servants was one kahāpaṇa a day. (Manu, vii, 126.)

page 882 note 3 Except where the coins are specified I have used the word ‘pieces,’ the original stating merely the figure.

page 882 note 4 Mr. Yatawara, translating from the Sinhalese version, speaks of the chameleon's ‘cat's meat’ as purchased by gold half-māshas. Professor Fausböll's MSS. do not mention gold, and the context and humour of the story agree better with copper coins.

page 883 note 1 Apparently the Sinhalese MS. says ‘gold coins.’ (Yatawara, Ummagga Jātaka, p. 120.)

page 883 note 2 Massas (māshas) in the Yatawara translation.

page 884 note 1 This, given to a young archer, aroused the jealousy of his older colleagues.

page 885 note 1 In the Nidāna (Jāt. i, 33) the dole is called five bushels of kahāpaṇas.

page 886 note 1 Chandakaṃ, lit. ‘voluntaries.’