A SCIENCE named vārttā is devoted to the study and management of the conditions of material life. Properly the word means both life and means of existence, professional labour. Brahmanism, according to the tradition of Manu, holds that the three sciences which make up human knowledge are vārttā, daṇḍanīti, the science of punishments, and trayī, the three Vedas or religious science. The materialistic tradition of Brihaspati recognizes only two fundamental sciences, vārttā and daṇḍanīti. Kautilya, in virtue of the etymology of vārttā, says that artha is the vṛitti of man, in other words, that it means the whole of human activity. The close connexion of the two lies in the fact that artha raises the question of ends and vārttā that of means. If the object of politics is the possession of land, or dominion, a well-filled treasury and a strong army are needed, and these imply abundant material resources. The idea of this connexion is expressed in mythology. The first human king, according to the Vedic legends, who is sometimes Manu and sometimes Prithu, is not only the first sacrificer, but a fire-bringing Prometheus and the inventor of agriculture.
According to orthodox principles, economic life is the affair of the Vaiśya caste. If that caste, like the two above it, had a literature of its own, we should have valuable information, instead of being reduced to inferring the content of economic life from the form imposed on it by Brahmanic theory and the policy of kings. But it is idle to sigh for the impossible; dedicated to work, the Vaisya caste had neither the education nor the leisure to think about anything but accounts and output.
Yet the Vaiśyas were the aristocracy of the workers. Base and arduous tasks were left to the Śūdras, the slaves (dāsya), and all the dregs of the people who were kept outside the caste system. Of these, the slaves deserve special mention. A free man (ārya) might be a "temporary" slave—if, for example, he pledged his person because he could not otherwise pay a fine or the costs of a law-suit, or if he was carried off in a raid. Also, if a man left his caste to enter a monastic order and then left the order or never entered it, he became a slave of the King. We should note, too, that the King must liberate every free man reduced to bondage by violence, for he is, in principle, obliged to abolish or compensate every injustice, and the proverb says that slavery is not for āryas (natvevāryasya dāsabhāvaḥ. Kautilya, iii, 13, 65). The only case in which a free man who had become a slave could not buy himself off was where he had himself sold his person; he then became like the permanent slaves. Of these there were four kinds—born in the house, bought, captured in a raid, and inherited. In all four cases the only legal duty owed by the slave to his master was obedience, the obligation to serve him in the matter of work.
The economic life of India is chiefly agricultural. The very name of ārya, in which the masters of the country pride themselves, means to them (root krish) the tillers of the soil, as opposed to the other occupants. Yet they came into the country as herdsmen, whose wealth lay in kine and horses rather than in crops. We must even, perhaps, suppose that the methods of irrigation on which the prosperity of the fields in the Indus basin depends were due not so much to these nomadic stock-raisers as to the settled Sumero-Dravidians, doubtless taught by Mesopotamian experience. However that may be, the Vedic Indians very early adapted themselves to the resources of the Punjab, rich in yava and sugar-cane.
At first yava means any grain, and later barley. It is often coupled with vrīhi, rice. This association summarizes the whole of agriculture, for rice, like millet, is sown in summer, and barley, like wheat, in winter. Sesame, beans, maize, and lentils are also important crops. From the earliest times cereals have been used to make surā, a fermented intoxicating drink.
Although certain regions are extremely productive, the country has always been poor and its inhabitants underfed. Famines, an intermittent scourge, were fought with magic formulas from the Atharvaveda; but Kautilya mentions more rational remedies, such as the creation of reserves, providing work for the poor, public assistance, and calling on allies for help. Usually the really effective remedy was improvement of the irrigation, so as to make the land give a regular return. But in case of war or floods these wise measures were useless. So, although Megasthenes gives India the credit of having kept down these endemic evils by wise use of the water, they were a constant danger.
The agricultural population lives in villages, surrounded by a fence and a ditch. Guards keep watch at the gates, and pits are dug to catch wild beasts. For in vast portions of the Ganges valley the jungle is quite close, with only a belt of pasture between it and the village, near which lie the paddy-fields. In the Arthaśāstra methods are sought for counteracting the disadvantages of the people living scattered over such great distances; there are special offices for centralizing the inspection of cattle, pastures, and forests. Distilling and salt-deposits are state monopolies.
Ancient industry is merely an extension of the exploitation of the soil, by using wool or textile plants or working clay, metal, or wood. The making of woollens goes back to the nomadic days of the Indo-Europeans. Once they settled in the country, cotton seems to have become the most typical material. Herodotus describes the Indian troops of Xerxes as clad in cotton, and Nearchos admires this vegetable wool, from which stuffs of dazzling white are woven. Tanning and dyeing are two equally ancient industries. Carpets, brocades, and embroideries mark advance in manufacture. Muslin is rivalled in fineness by silk, partly imported from China.
The earliest metal-workers wrought in a matter called ayas. When no epithet is attached to the word, it seems to mean bronze in the Ṛigveda. But afterwards, with the adjective śyāma, "dark," it means iron, and with loha, "red," it means copper. The use of gold goes back to Vedic times. Tin, lead, and silver do not become common until the time of the Brāhmanas. Gems, to which magical values and superstitions were attached, in addition to their ornamental qualities, were prized in all ages.
The manufacture of chariots and waggons gave an importance, or rather a prestige, to work in wood and work in metal. For a long time only timber was used in architecture; religious edifices and royal palaces alone were sometimes built of stone. Delicate wood-carving and inlaid gold delighted the authors of the hymns. The wood-worker again came into request for building ships and boats.
Manufactured goods were exchanged or sold. The Ṛigveda speaks chiefly of exchanges, such as ten cows for an Indra. It was afterwards that the root kri gave the words kraya, vikraya, with the sense of "sale". Yet the Atharvaveda (iii, 15) gives a spell for obtaining success in trade. No doubt, by the simple method of exchange (root pan, "to barter"), a certain social class, the Paṇis, had in Vedic times amassed fortunes which were considered scandalous. This type of man is odious in the eyes of the pious ancestors of the Brahman caste, the authors of the hymns; he is charged with rapacity, usury, and impiety. Perhaps the recognition of a legal standing for trade in the Vaiśya caste was one of the first concessions to the facts that the Brahmanic theocracy had to make in order to ensure at least a nominal supremacy for itself.
There is no certain evidence that markets existed in Vedic times. But towns and villages were already connected by tracks, with wells at intervals. The commercial centres grew up at the more important intersections of routes. This concentration of trade at fixed points must, however, have been long retarded by the itinerant business done by caravans, escorted by armed men. When studying the geography of the country we saw the natural routes by which India was entered from outside. Early Buddhist literature, especially the Jātakas, tells us of the internal roads. "From Maurya times onwards," J. Przyluski writes, "Pataliputra was connected with Gandhara by an imperial highway, drawn on the model of the great roads of the Achæmenids. It played a great part in the political and economic life of India. After the foundation of the Greek kingdom of Bactriana commercial intercourse became very active between the valleys of the Ganges and the Oxus. For caravans loaded with goods of Bactriana and Kashmir, Mathura was the first large city in Madhyadesa as one came out of the Indus valley . . . . From Pataliputra three great roads radiated to the frontiers of the Empire—the south-western to Barygaza by Kausambi and Ujjayini, the northern to Nepal by Vaisali and Sravasti, and the north-western, the longest, to Bactriana by Mathura and the upper valley of the Indus."1 The care of the roads has an important place in the economics of Kautilya, who makes road-making a duty of the King. The provinces bore the cost of their upkeep. From the time of the Maurya dynasty pillars were set along the roads to mark distances.
In the same period much use seems to have been made of the waterways. We are too much inclined to forget that India was one of the greatest marine and colonizing powers of the past. One took ship for Ceylon not only at Tamralipti, the chief port of Bengal, but at Benares and Patna. Services which, it is true, were irregular and dangerous until knowledge of the monsoons became general in the first century, connected Bharukachchha (Broach), the ancient, more northerly, equivalent of modern Bombay, with Babylon on one side and with Suvarnabhumi (Lower Burma) on the other. Either through the Persians and Arabs, or direct, a connexion was established with Egypt by the Red Sea,2 and the advantage of commerce with the east coast of Africa was not neglected. Shipping was, however, chiefly drawn to the Far East, where it linked up with Chinese trade after putting in at many ports in countries colonized from India. This expansion towards the south of modern Indo-China and the East Indian islands began, according to Ferrand, in the third or even the fifth century before Christ; Krom is of opinion that expansion to the islands did not start before the beginning of our era. Kaundinya, who started the Indianization of Fu-nan (southern Cambodia and Cochin-China), should be placed, according to Pelliot, in the second half of the first century after Christ at the latest. In the Champa region, still further away (Southern Annam), this process must have occurred a hundred years later. Sumatra, the Isle of Gold (Suvarnadvipa), and Java, the Land of Barley (Yavabhumi), were highly flourishing in Gupta times, when, for example, Fa-hien landed on the latter island.
This great radiation of Indian influence, extending from Madagascar to Tongking, was not merely an endeavour to acquire material wealth. It also aimed at religious ends. Vishnuism, Sivaism, and Buddhism all sought to take root in new soil, apparently without their rivalry giving rise to violent conflicts. The Indianization of the Austro-Asiatics and of the Malayo-Polynesians does not seem to have been the result of ferocious wars. Although these conquests were so far away, they were simply an extension of the policy by which the Deccan had been, though very unequally, subjugated.
In what we call India and outside it, every civilizing effort of the Aryans is of a colonizing character. One might say without paradox that the first colony of the Indo-Aryans was the Punjab and the second the valley of the Ganges. We know that, in spite of that sense of a vocation and that obstinate will, displayed over thousands of years, an immense amount of colonization has still to be done in India itself.
Indian trade was connected with that of Central Asia by a mountain track which ran from Kabul to the upper valley of the Oxus, east of Bactra (Balkh). Here it was crossed by the route which, running from west to east, passed round the north of the Hindu Kush, crossed the Pamir, and by the upper Tarim came to Chinese Turkistan, and so to Yarkand. North of the Pamir one could go from Maracanda (Samarqand) in Sogdiana to Kashgar on a tributary of the Tarim.
By these routes the silk travelled from China to Syria. By them, apart from the sea-route, Indian expansion and Chinese expansion met, and came into conflict at the time of Pan-ch'ao's expedition to Persia between 73 and 102. From its beginnings Buddhist missionary enterprise had travelled along the trade-routes of Hindustan. Spreading to Bactriana and Kashmir, it reached Turkistan, and did more to unite India and China than economic needs had been able to accomplish. The relationships which were established between the two countries from the first century of our era onwards were subjected to various vicissitudes; from the fourth to the seventh century they were intensive, and the homogeneity of culture established by Buddhism from the north of Iran to the west of China could not but encourage commercial dealings.
Economic organization seems never to have coincided with the abstract order of the castes. It involves special groups, the name of which is śreṇi (seṇi in Pali). This term, which in the Vedic period means a row, an alignment, takes in the Smṛitis the sense of a corporative association for all kinds of workers—tillers of the soil, herdsmen, sailors, artisans, traders, bankers, even Brahmans expert in Veda (Manu, viii, 41, commentary of Medhatithi). The Mūgapakkhajātaka (iv, 411) mentions, among eighteen guilds not otherwise named, the wood-workers, metal-workers, leather-dressers, and painters. At the head of each corporation was a "deacon" (jeṭṭhaka), who acted as president (pamukha) and was an important personage at the King's court. It is characteristic of Indian society that a man standing alone counts for nothing. Just as the casteless sought to found pseudo-castes of their own, so there were śreṇis even to protect the interests of bandits, highwaymen, and ascetics.
Professional occupation is often handed down from father to son, like caste. Thus there were families of smiths, carpenters, potters, which were themselves grouped so as to form villages of smiths, carpenters, and potters. The powers of the guild were legislative, judicial, and executive. Order within the corporation was maintained by rigid discipline, and the King was strictly obliged to safeguard the customs of the guilds (Narada, x, 2, 3) and to accept their decisions.1 The admission of new members and the expulsion of old ones required a decision by the assembly. The merchant guilds did not develop so far as those of the craftsmen. The latter did not all enjoy equally high consideration; wheelwrights, basket-makers, potters, weavers, leather-workers, and above all barbers were regarded as men of inferior calling, as were butchers and fortune-tellers.
The production and distribution of wealth depend on the system of ownership. This, in primitive Aryan society, took the form of family ownership. The father had the right to distribute his goods among his sons, and land in particular (kshetra) might be distributed differently in successive generations. In the case of joint families, in default of the father his eldest brother took his place. Where the inheritance was divided up among the sons, all received a share, the eldest getting slightly more than the rest. Failing a son, the inheritance fell to the son of the daughter.
The type of ownership varied as the land was of one or another of three kinds—arable (vāstu), pasture, and forest. Arable land was the object of private ownership; pasture was owned in common by the various families of the village; forest belonged to whoever cleared it.
All this was changed by the institution of the castes and the introduction of monarchy. Only a free man can lawfully own property. For instance, there is no legal inheritance for a casteless man. Even the property of the lower castes becomes insecure. The Vaiśya is by nature a tax-payer, and it is very usual for him to be exploited by the nobles. The Śūdra is a serf, who can be dispossessed and slain at will. No doubt practice was less insane and barbarous than theory. There were Śūdras who amassed great fortunes in trade. In reality the position of the lower castes depended on the actual standing given them by the Kshatriyas more than on the regulations evolved a priori by the Brahman legal writers.
But the Kshatriyas, who in principle were the lawful owners of landed property, like the priestly class, gradually found their rights restricted as the power of the King increased. The whole of the land becomes, at least in theory, the property of the sovereign, and the proof of it is that all property which has no owner or loses its owner reverts to him. Therewith the nobles fall into the position of feudal lords, and the Vaiśyas to that of tenant farmers.
As government becomes more and more centralized, the King is no longer the holder of a vague overlordship, but the organizer and user of all property. Of the different kinds of agricultural produce, part is set aside for him by the mayor of the village or a state official, the proportion varying between a twelfth and a sixth. A tithe may also be exacted on human labour, in the form of corvees.
There is no doubt that the flow of wealth of all kinds, particularly of taxes, to the central government was simplified and also stimulated by the use of money. According to Arrian, the Hindus had gold coins before the invasion of Alexander—probably the nishkas with various types (viśvarūpa), of which necklaces were made, and the śatamānas, which weighed ten kṛishṇalas (the berry of Abrus pecatorius, a unit of weight) and, according to the Veda, were equivalent to a hundred cows. Another coin, about the value of which we have no information, was the kārshāpana, which was at first of copper and later of silver and gold. Under the Guptas the use of the word dīnāra, from Latin denarius, for a gold coinage points to Roman influence. It was generally allowed, about the Christian era, that money should produce interest, which was reckoned at 15 per cent per annum. Exemption from the tithe collected on income was enjoyed by "learned" priests, women, children under the age of puberty, Brahman students, ascetics, slaves, cripples, and sick persons.
The needs of the different states raised an infinite number of impediments to trade—duties to be paid on crossing frontiers, town octrois, customs dues, tolls, etc. Travellers had to provide themselves with passports, their declarations as to the value of the goods which they transported were checked minutely, and the tax-collector, the policeman, and the spy vied in zeal for the profit of their master, the head of the state. He, not only as King but as the manager of the national property, which, whatever its real size, was large compared with that of individuals, had a direct interest in the public wealth. Kautilya shows the extent to which economics contribute to politics, and advises princes to have superintendents to control mines, weaving, irrigation, stock-raising, and trade, all the sources of wealth. Business would have been subject to the most absurd red tape if the Arthaśāstra had ever had the force of law—checking of prices, the profit being laid down at 5 per cent for local trade and at 10 per cent for foreign goods, and increasing penalties in case of infringement of the regulations. All these are significant features of Indian society, which was developing under the influence of monarchy into a sort of "enlightened despotism”, which was practically state socialism.
But the development was theoretical rather than actual. The only political ideal of the countries of India was a wise administration, of which a few potentates of the first magnitude gave different models. But that administration was, let us say it again, an ideal much rather than a permanent reality. In spite of all its possibilities of opulence, India was and remained a poor country. Even more than by the treasury, the peasant is perpetually victimized by the money-lender; for he is too ignorant, and often too far away from markets, to sell his own produce. "The money-lender therefore buys the whole available harvest at a price which he fixes by his own authority, pays the required amount of rent and land revenue to the state, and keeps all the rest as interest on his loan."1
This wretched existence of the immense majority of Hindus explains some of the forms of thought which we shall find when we study individual religion and philosophy. It created a melancholy pessimism, a hatred of life, at least among the unprivileged castes. It inspired, by the transposition of facts into ideals, the conviction that under-nourishment and diminished activity were means to salvation. While the Brahman sets himself up as a god to whom honour and profit are due, the materialistic ascetic, who denies dharma, the Yogin, contemptuous of ritual, and the Jain or Buddhist monk, who as an individual owns nothing, will preach forms of religious life in which money does not matter. Sacrifices are very costly, and only possible for the rich. On the fringes of aristocratic orthodoxy sects of the non-possessors will rise in swarms, full of ardour and audacity. They will not aim at changing the social order, but they will take to themselves mighty compensations and incomparable reparations in the spiritual order. Not having enough property to win the favour of the gods, they will dispense with all worship, or they will teach that the only true sacrifice consists in knowing, or else in loving.
1 CCVI, p. 9.
2 Pliny declares that the Roman Empire bought goods to the value of fifty million sesterces from India every year (LXIX, p. 68).
1 Santosh Kumar Das, The Economic History of India, p. 251.
1 CLVII, p. 44.