26. Social Change in Ancient India

• In Palaeolithic Age, people lived in small groups in hilly areas and main source of their subsistence was the game they hunted and wild fruits and vegetation roots they collected.
• Man learnt to produce food and live in houses towards the end of stone age and the beginning of metal age.
• The neolithic and chalcolithic communities lived on the uplands not far from hills and rivers.
• Gradually there arose peasant villages in the Indus basin area, and eventually they blossomed into the urban society of Harappa with large and small houses.
• But once Harappan society disappeared, urbanisation didn't appear in India for a thousand years or so.

 

Tribal and Pastoral phase

• The Rig Vedic society was primarily pastoral and their chief possessions consisted of cattle and horses.
• Cattle was considered to be synonymous with and a wealthy person was called gomat. Wars were fought for the sake of cattle and king was called gopati, daughters were called duhitr, one who milks.
• Cattle rearing was the main source of livelihood.
• The main income of a chief or a prince came from the spoils of war, capturing booty from enemy tribes and exacted tributes from hostile tribes and tribal compatriots.
• Periodical sacrifices provided an important occasion for the distribution of gifts and tributes received in war and major portion went to priests as they offered prayers to gods on behalf of patrons.
• Ordinary members of the tribe received a share which was known as amsa or bhaga.
• Although artisans, peasants, priests and warriors appear even in the earlier portions of the Rig Veda society as a whole was tribal, pastoral, semi-nomadic and egalitarian.
• The Rig Vedic society did not have a serving order in the form of the sudras.

 

Agriculture and the Origin if Upper Orders

• When the Vedic people moved from Afghanistan and Punjab to western UP, they became full-fledged agriculturists giving rise to territorial chiefdoms.
• Out of the tributes obtained from peasants and the others, the princes could perform sacrifices and reward their priests. But the later Vedic people could not contribute to the rise of trade and towns.
• The society in which Buddha lived didn't know the use of metallic money.
• The Vedic communities had established neither a taxation system nor a professional army.
• Payment made to the king was not much different from the sacrificial offerings made to the gods.
• The tribal militia of the pastoral society was replaced by the peasant militia of agricultural society.
• In consonance with the tribal practices the rajas were expected to extend agriculture and even to lend their hand to the plough so that the gap between the vaisyas and king was not very wide.
• Although the nobles and warriors ruled over their peasant kinsmen, they had to depend upon peasant militia for fighting against enemies and they could not grant land without the consent of the tribal peasantry.
• All this placed them in difficult position and could not sharpen the distinctions between the rulers and the ruled.

 

Varna System of Production and Government

• The use of iron tools for crafts and cultivation created conditions for the transformation of comparatively egalitarian Vedic society into a fully agricultural and class divided social order in 6th century B.C.
• Large territorial states resulted in the formation of Magadhan empire. All this was possible because of iron ploughshare ,sickles and other tools enabling peasants to produce more than needed for subsistence.
• They could now support artisans, who not only supplied peasants with tools, clothing etc. But also weapons and luxury articles to the princes and priests.
• In Vedic times people cultivated their fields with the help of their family members, but slaves and wage-earners engaged in agriculture became a regular feature in the age of the Buddha.
  

• Since peasants now produced more, the king appointed collectors to assess and collect taxes. And to convince people to pay taxes, the varna system was devised.
• The twice-born were entitled to Vedic studies and investiture with the sacred thread, and the fourth varna  or the sudras were excluded from it.
• The vaisyas although members of the twice-born group worked as peasants, herders and artisans and later as traders and paid taxes which maintained kshatriyas and brahmanas.
• The rate of payment and economic privileges differed according to the varna to which the person belonged.
• Since both priests and warriors lived on the taxes, tributes, tithes and labour supplied by peasants and artisans their relation were marked by occasional feuds for the sharing of social savings.

 

Social Crisis and Rise of Landed Classes

• The climax of old order was reached in about 3rd century as old social order was afflicted with deep crisis reflected in the description of Kali age in Puranas.
• It is characterised by varna-samkara i.e. intermixing of varnas or social orders, vaisyas and sudras declined to pay taxes and refused labour and refused to perform producing functions assigned to them.
• On account of this situation the epics emphasize the importance of danda or coercive measures and Manu lays down that the vaisyas and sudras should not be allowed to deviate from their duties.
• The kings who were regarded as the upholders and restorer of varna system, instead of extracting taxes directly, the state found it convenient to assign land revenues to priests, officials, administrators etc. for their support.
• This development was in sharp contrast to the Vedic practice as formerly only the community had the right to give land to priests and possibly to princes.
• To solve the new fiscal and administrative problems, new lands from tribal and backward areas were brought under cultivation and granted to brahmanas who could tame tribal people and make them amenable to discipline.
• In backward areas land grants to brahmanas and others spread agricultural calendar, diffused the knowledge of Ayurveda medicine and thus contributed to increase in overall agricultural production.
• These grants led to increase in large number of aboriginal peasants who came to be ranked as sudras, who began to be called peasants and agriculturists in early medieval texts.
• But in developed areas these land grants depreciated the position of independent vaisya peasants and thus vaisyas and sudras came closer to each other from Gupta times onwards socially and economically.
• But the most significant consequence of the land grants was the emergence of a class of landlords living on the produce of the peasants.
• This prepared the ground in about the 5th-6th centuries A.D., for a new type of social formation which can be called feudal.