The Penguin History of Early India

by Romila Thapar

  Land was owned in common by the clan, but was worked by hired labourers and slaves – the dasa-karmakara. This compound phrase makes it difficult to determine the degree to which production was dependent on the dasas, slaves, or on the karntakaras, hired labour. Most descriptions of slavery suggest domestic slavery, rather than the use of slaves in production. In the two-tier system those who worked the land did so under the control of the ruling clan, so management of labour was comparatively simple provided the cultivators did not resist the control. Thus, when trouble broke out over the diversion of irrigation water between those cultivating the land of the Shakyas and of the Koliyas, the ruling families of the two clans intervened directly. The dasa-karmakaras were not represented in the assembly and had virtually no rights.

  Judging by descriptions of the gana-sanghas, the town functioned rather like a capital and was a familiar part of their life. The landowning clansmen lived in the town and participated in the usual urban activities. We are told of a young man of Vaishali who travelled to Taxila to be trained in medicine, a long and difficult journey, and then returned. The gana-sanghas were less opposed to individualistic and independent opinion than the kingdoms, and were more ready to tolerate unorthodox views. It was from the gana-sanghas that there came the two teachers of what were to become the most important heterodox sects: Mahavira, associated with advancing Jainism, belonged to the Jnatrika clan which was part of the Vrijji confederacy located at Vaishali, and the Buddha grew up in Kapila vastu, the town of the Shakya clan.

  Not having a monarchical system, members of the gana-sanghas could also reject brahman political theories. Perhaps the most striking of the nonbrahman theories was the Buddhist account of the origin of the state, possibly the earliest theory approaching that of a social contract. There was a time in the remote past when complete harmony prevailed among all created beings, men and women having no desires, as everything was provided for. Gradually a process of decay began, when needs, wants and desires became manifest. These led to the notion of ownership that resulted in the concept of the family, then led to private property, and these in turn to disputes and struggles that necessitated law and a controlling authority. Thus it was decided that, in order to avoid conflict, one person be elected to rule and maintain justice. He was to be the Great Elect (Mahasammata) and was given a fixed share in the produce of the land as a wage. The Buddhist theory attempts to explain the connections between various institutions that were current at the time – the family, private property and caste. Such a theory suited the political systems of the gana-sanghas and was different from that prevalent in the kingdoms. In the brahmanical theory of kingship, the king as the protector of the people was appointed by the gods, was the patron of the ritual of sacrifice, and was expected to uphold and maintain varna society – the varnasbrama-dharma. By contrast, the Buddhist theory attempts a rational explanation of the need for governance.

  Kingdoms

  In contrast to the gana-sanghas, kingdoms registered a centralized government with the king’s sovereignty as its basis. The polity in the kingdoms was slowly transmuted from chiefship to kingship. The change carried with it a ritual status that added another dimension to the authority of the king. Power was concentrated in the ruling family. Legitimation became an important component, emphasizing claims to kshatriya status often bestowed through brahmanical ritual. Kingdoms point to a state system characterized by new features compared to the earlier period. The king enforced laws that could involve coercion. The latter had to be dovetailed into the customary law of the jatis and the region – a concern that was to continue throughout history. Governance extended over the territory of the hinterland surrounding the main town, and sometimes much further.

  The ruling family became a dynasty, succession to kingship being hereditary, with a premium on primogeniture. Political power was concentrated in the king. He was advised and assisted by ministers, advisory councils such as the parishad and sabha – both terms continuing from earlier times but now with an advisory connotation – and an administration manned by officers. The latter assessed and collected the revenue, bringing it to the treasury in the capital from where it was redistributed in the form of salaries and public expenses, such as the maintenance of an army and administration, gift-giving to brahmans and religious functionaries and, of course, a personal income for the ruling family. Public works would include ways of enhancing production, for this would increase the revenue. The provision of irrigation works, for instance, was once thought to be the prerogative of the state, but routine irrigation that provided much of the water for agriculture in many areas remained an activity of the individual cultivator or the village. Where labour was required on a scale not manageable by local cultivators, such as building canals or reservoirs, the state would intervene. The existence of a state also involved political relations of varying kinds with neighbours, some friendly and some hostile, with a tendency to erase existing social relations and replace them with new ones, often more amenable to those in authority.

  Clan loyalty weakened in the kingdoms, giving way to caste loyalties and a focus on loyalty to the king. The political expansion of the kingdoms over large areas also emaciated the strength of the popular assemblies, since distances prevented frequent meetings. The gana-sangha was based on a smaller geographical area, where it was easier to meet the requirements of a relatively more representative government. In the monarchical system the divinity of the king, with its corollary of the power of the priests and of Vedic ritual, had further reduced the centrality of the popular assemblies of early Vedic times. The competition between elites in the kingdom, and the earlier rivalry between brahmans and kshatriyas, was gradually having to contend with what was to become a new phenomenon in the towns – the rise of wealthy traders. Insistence on the varna hierarchy was an attempt at retaining authority.

  A number of kingdoms are mentioned in the literature of the period. Among these, Kashi (the region of Banaras) was initially important. Kosala (adjoining Kashi to the north-east), and later Magadha (in south Bihar), were rivals for the control of the Ganges Plain, a control that had both strategic and economic advantages, since a large part of the early trade in the region was carried by river and was centred on river ports. Finally, there remained only four rival states: the three kingdoms of Kashi, Kosala and Magadha, and the oligarchy of the Vrijjis.

  Kings were supposed to be of the kshatriya caste, although this preference remained theoretical since kings of various castes were to rule, depending on political expediency. That kingship could acquire attributes of divinity was an established idea. It was reinforced from time to time by elaborate ritual sacrifices, initiated by the king, and observing the instructions of the Vedic corpus. They appear to have been more routinely performed by the rajas of earlier times, as now they were tending to become less common. A king performing these rituals could claim ritual power, but the more realistic foundation of kingship lay in a concentration of political power and in the accessing of resources. For the population, the grand sacrificial rituals were vast spectacles to be talked of for years. No doubt they kept the more critical minds diverted and created the appropriate awe for the king, who was depicted as an exceptional person, communicating with the gods, even if only through priests. The priests too were not ordinary mortals, since they were in effect the transmitters of divinity. Despite the earlier rivalries between the brahman and the kshatriya, the throne and the priesthood were mutually supportive.

  The battle for political pre-eminence among the three kingdoms of Kashi, Kosala and Magadha, and the gana-sangha of the Vrijjis, lasted for a long period. Magadha emerged victorious as the centre of political activity in northern India, a position that it maintained for some centuries. The first important king of Magadha was Bimbisara, who realized the potentialities of a large state controlling revenue. Bimbisara became king some time in the second half of the sixth century BC. Alliances included marriage into a high-status family from Vaishali, as well as into the
ruling family in Kosala, and these marriages furthered his expansionist policy. Having thus secured his western and northern frontiers, he went on to conquer Anga to the south-east. This gave him access to routes to the Ganges Delta, the ports of which were potentially important for contacts along the eastern coast.

  Bimbisara established the beginnings of an administrative system, with officers appointed to various categories of work, and recognized the need for ministerial advice. The village was the basic unit of administration and has remained so. Officers were appointed to measure the land under cultivation and evaluate the crop. Each village is said to have been under the jurisdiction of a headman – gramani – who was responsible for collecting taxes, which were brought to the treasury by the officers.

  The voluntary tribute and prestations of the earlier period were now being converted into taxes – bali, bhaga, kara and shulka. The terms used were the same as in previous times but the meaning differed. Bali is thought to have been a tax on the amount of land cultivated, that is, on the source of revenue, bhaga was a share of the produce, and the other taxes were of a variant kind. Taxes were therefore calculated on the size and the produce of the land, with the assessment being carried out by officers who also collected the taxes at a stipulated time, and of a specific amount calculated on the basis of the assessment. These were the seminal activities of later revenue systems of great complexity. Whereas earlier the clansmen or the junior lineages voluntarily provided wealth to the ruling clans, now wealth was being extracted from those who produced it by those who ruled and the two were not connected through kinship ties. A peasant economy was being established. The difference between the ruler and the ruled, between the cultivator and his land, between the rich and the poor was now more easily recognized. The ramifications of governing a kingdom were a contrast to the more direct functioning of the gana-sanghas.

  The landholdings of individuals varied in size and resulted in categories of owners. The richer ones were gahapatis/grihapatis, householders, some of whom became landowners, and the smaller ones were generally referred to as kassakas/krishakas, cultivators. An indication of difference was that the former employed non-kin labour in the form of dasas and karmakaras, while the poorer ones used family labour. When the state began to emerge as the major agency of action and production, there was more frequent mention of varna categories as hierarchies of status. The varna system was perhaps seen, from an upper-caste perspective, as more homogeneous than that of jatis. At the lower end of the social scale, cultivators and artisans were included in the shudra varna. Dependence on shudra cultivators was to increase, with the status of landless labourers being low even within this category.

  Another trend that gained strength was that more and more land was claimed by the state, it being eventually conceded that the state had rights to all wasteland. This influenced the way in which the king was perceived. Initially, he protected his people against external aggression and his qualifications as a warrior were foremost. Subsequently, he was seen as the one who maintains law and order in what would otherwise be a kingless, chaotic society. This was explained by various analogies, the most common being that of what came to be called matsyanyaya – the law of the fish. It is said that in a condition of drought, when tanks dry up, the big fish eat the little fish. This is a chaotic condition which requires someone to maintain laws. Kingship was also explained through a contractual act, but in its working out there was usually the intervention of a deity. The person so selected, sometimes referred to as Manu, was appointed by the gods but carried out his functions in return for a wage that took the form of a tax and various other privileges. Control over wasteland was an implied privilege, made explicit in texts of the subsequent period.

  Beyond the village were fields and pastures, and still further away lay the wasteland and the jungles. This juxtaposition had been expressed in the duality of the grama, settlement, and the aranya, forest or wilderness, later to incorporate the terms kshetra and vana, with the same meaning. That wasteland belonged to the king further underlined his right to take a certain percentage, generally one-sixth of the produce, as tax on the land that had been cleared and was under cultivation. The term shadbhagin – he who has a share of one-sixth – was to become a customary term for the king. Actually, of course, the tax could have been higher, as it sometimes was. Land set aside for royal farms, which was an idea that developed later, grew out of the notion of the king controlling wasteland. The king being a symbol of the state, it was probable that his ownership over land was conceded but in a somewhat ambiguous manner. Gradually, as the distinction between king and state became blurred, the king’s claim to ownership was not seriously challenged.

  Another social category came to be added below the varna hierarchy. The Chandalas were reduced to a status lower than that of the shudras and were to be designated as the untouchables. They are referred to in various ways in sources that could be of this period, although some would be of a later time, such as the Buddhist Jataka stories. It has been argued that the Chandalas, who came to be treated as untouchable, appear to have been people on the edges of settlements, either forced there by encroaching settlers or requiring a habitat where they lived by hunting and food-gathering. They are described as having their own language, incomprehensible to Indo-Aryan speakers. Their occupations, such as weaving rush-mats and hunting, came to be looked upon as extremely low. Others have argued that they were groups who had been increasingly marginalized by the growth of towns, where they were required to perform menial tasks which became the source of their association with pollution in the hierarchy of ritual stratification. Expanding urbanization often trapped people at the margins of settlements into becoming landless and unable to use their skills and thus gradually forced them into performing lowly tasks. The presence of such groups, which became the epitome of social disabilities and prohibitions, points to the increasing authority of the upper castes in the kingdoms. The two categories of brahman and untouchable act as social counterweights, and the power of the higher required the depression of the lower in the varna scheme. Untouchability was perhaps the most degrading status clamped on any social group and was ethically quite unjustified. The combination of hereditary status with economic deprivation and social disabilities ensured a permanent and subjugated labour force.

  The Pre-eminence of Magadha

  Ajatashatru, the son of Bimbisara, impatient to rule Magadha, is believed to have murdered his father in about 493 BC to become king. He was determined to continue his father’s policy of expansion through military conquest. The capital of Magadha, at Rajagriha, was an impressive city surrounded by five hills which formed a natural defence. Ajatashatru strengthened Rajagriha and built a small fort at Pataligrama, on the Ganges, which was a centre for the exchange of local produce. This was later to become the famous Mauryan metropolis of Pataliputra. His father having conquered the eastern state of Anga, Ajatashatru turned his attention to the north and the west. The king of Kosala was his maternal uncle, but this did not prevent Ajatashatru from annexing Kosala and continuing the advance west until he had included Kashi in his dominion. The war with the Vrijji confederacy over the control of the river trade, which was also a con frontation between two divergent political systems, one a kingdom and the other a gana-sangha, was a lengthy affair. It lasted for many years, with Ajatashatru’s minister appropriately named Vassakara – the rainmaker – working towards a rift in the confederacy. A description of this war mentions the use of two weapons that appear to have been new to Magadhan military technology. These were the mahashilakantaka, a large-sized catapult used for hurling rocks, and the rathamusala, a chariot fitted with a mace for driving through the enemy’s ranks to mow them down. Soldiering as a profession, with the need for a standing army, began to surface as a feature of the monarchical state. Finally, when Vassakara’s attempts to sow dissension among the Vrijjis succeeded, victory was conceded to Magadha. It was a victory for monarchy in the Ganges Plain. Bimbisara’s ambition had
been fulfilled.

  The rise of Magadha was not due merely to the political ambitions of Bimbisara and Ajatashatru, for, although the latter was succeeded by a series of unsatisfactory rulers, Magadha remained powerful. Magadha controlled nodal points in the Ganges river system that gave it access to the river trade. Fortifying the exchange centre at Pataligrama is an indication of the importance of this revenue. The conquest of Anga linked this trade to more distant places. Magadha was favoured by natural resources: the soil was fertile, especially for the cultivation of rice, and the expansion of agriculture brought in further revenue of another kind; the neighbouring forests provided timber for buildings and elephants for the army, with ivory as a prestige item; and local iron and copper deposits added to the wealth and activity of the area.

  Ajatashatru died in about 461 BC. He was succeeded by five kings and tradition has it that they were all parricides. The people of Magadha, finally outraged by this, deposed the last of the five and appointed a viceroy, Shishunaga, as king. The Shishunaga dynasty lasted barely half a century before giving way to the usurper Mahapadma Nanda, who founded a dynasty, short-lived but significant. The Nandas were of low social status, being described as shudras, and were the first of a number of non-kshatriya dynasties. Most of the leading dynasties of northern India from now on belonged to castes other than kshatriya, until about a thousand years later when royalty started claiming kshatriya status irrespective of whether or not they were born as such. The reference to the Nandas destroying the kshatriyas could be to their incorporation of the gana-sanghas of the middle Ganges Plain into their kingdom.