The jungle background—Agriculture—Mining—Handicrafts—Commerce—Money—Taxes—Famines—Poverty and wealth
THE soil of India had not lent itself willingly to civilization. A great part of it was jungle, the jealously guarded home of lions, tigers, elephants, serpents, and other individualists with a Rousseauian contempt for civilization. The biological struggle to free the land from these enemies had continued underneath all the surface dramas of economic and political strife. Akbar shot tigers near Mathura, and captured wild elephants in many places where none can be found today. In Vedic times the lion might be met with anywhere in northwest or central India; now it is almost extinct throughout the peninsula. The serpent and the insect, however, still carry on the war: in 1926 some two thousand Hindus were killed by wild animals (875 by marauding tigers); but twenty thousand Hindus met death from the fangs of snakes.1
Gradually, as the soil was redeemed from the beast, it was turned to the cultivation of rice, pulse, millet, vegetables and fruits. Through the greater part of Indian history the majority of the population have lived abstemiously on these natural foods, reserving flesh, fish and fowl for the Outcastes and the rich.2† To render their diet more exciting, and perhaps to assist Aphrodite,3 the Hindus have grown and consumed an unusual abundance of curry, ginger, cloves, cinnamon and other spices. Europeans valued these spices so highly that they stumbled upon a hemisphere in search for them; who knows but that America was discovered for the sake of love? In Vedic times the land belonged to the people,5 but from the days of Chandragupta Maurya it became the habit of the kings to claim royal ownership of all the soil, and to let it out to the tiller for an annual rental and tax.6 Irrigation was usually a governmental undertaking. One of the dams raised by Chandragupta functioned till 150 A.D.; remains of the ancient canals can be seen everywhere today; and signs still survive of the artificial lake that Raj Sing, Rajput Rana of Mewar, built as an irrigation reservoir (1661), and which he surrounded with a marble wall twelve miles in length.7
The Hindus seem to have been the first people to mine gold.8 Herodotus9 and Megasthenes10 tell of the great “gold-digging ants, in size somewhat less than dogs, but bigger than foxes,” which helped the miners to find the metal by turning it up in their scratching of the sand.* Much of the gold used in the Persian Empire in the fifth century before Christ came from India. Silver, copper, lead, tin, zinc and iron were also mined—iron as early as 1500 B.C.11 The art of tempering and casting iron developed in India long before its known appearance in Europe; Vikramaditya, for example, erected at Delhi (ca. 380 A.D.) an iron pillar that stands untarnished today after fifteen centuries; and the quality of metal, or manner of treatment, which has preserved it from rust or decay is still a mystery to modern metallurgical science.12 Before the European invasion the smelting of iron in small charcoal furnaces was one of the major industries of India.13 The Industrial Revolution taught Europe how to carry out these processes more cheaply on a larger scale, and the Indian industry died under the competition. Only in our own time are the rich mineral resources of India being again exploited and explored.14
The growing of cotton appears earlier in India than elsewhere; apparently it was used for cloth in Mohenjo-daro.15 In our oldest classical reference to cotton Herodotus says, with pleasing ignorance: “Certain wild trees there bear wool instead of fruit, which in beauty and quality excels that of sheep; and the Indians make their clothing from these trees.”16 It was their wars in the Near East that acquainted the Romans with this tree-grown “wool.”17 Arabian travelers in ninth-century India reported that “in this country they make garments of such extraordinary perfection that nowhere else is their like to be seen—sewed and woven to such a degree of fineness, they may be drawn through a ring of moderate size.”18 The medieval Arabs took over the art from India, and their word quttan gave us our word cotton.19 The name muslin was originally applied to fine cotton weaves made in Mosul from Indian models; calico was so called because it came (first in 1631) from Calicut, on the southwestern shores of India. “Embroidery,” says Marco Polo, speaking of Gujarat in 1293 A.D., “is here performed with more delicacy than in any other part of the world.”20 The shawls of Kashmir and the rugs of India bear witness even today to the excellence of Indian weaving in texture and design.* But weaving was only one of the many handicrafts of India, and the weavers were only one of the many craft and merchant guilds that organized and regulated the industry of India. Europe looked upon the Hindus as experts in almost every line of manufacture—wood-work, ivory-work, metal-work, bleaching, dyeing, tanning, soap-making, glass-blowing, gunpowder, fireworks, cement, etc.21 China imported eyeglasses from India in 1260 A.D. Bernier, traveling in India in the seventeenth century, described it as humming with industry. Fitch, in 1585, saw a fleet of one hundred and eighty boats carrying a great variety of goods down the river Jumna.
Internal trade flourished; every roadside was—and is—a bazaar. The foreign trade of India is as old as her history;22 objects found in Sumeria and Egypt indicate a traffic between these countries and India as far back as 3000 B.C.23 Commerce between India and Babylon by the Persian Gulf flourished from 700 to 480 B.C.; and perhaps the “ivory, apes and peacocks” of Solomon came by the same route from the same source. India’s ships sailed the sea to Burma and China in Chandragupta’s days; and Greek merchants, called Yavana (Ionians) by the Hindus, thronged the markets of Dravidian India in the centuries before and after the birth of Christ.24 Rome, in her epicurean days, depended upon India for spices, perfumes and unguents, and paid great prices for Indian silks, brocades, muslins and cloth of gold; Pliny condemned the extravagance which sent $5,000,000 yearly from Rome to India for such luxuries. Indian cheetahs, tigers and elephants assisted in the gladiatorial games and sacrificial rites of the Colosseum.25 The Parthian wars were fought by Rome largely to keep open the trade route to India. In the seventh century the Arabs captured Persia and Egypt, and thereafter trade between Europe and Asia passed through Moslem hands; hence the Crusades, and Columbus. Under the Moguls foreign commerce rose again; the wealth of Venice, Genoa and other Italian cities grew through their service as ports for European trade with India and the East; the Renaissance owed more to the wealth derived from this trade than to the manuscripts brought to Italy by the Greeks. Akbar had an admiralty which supervised the building of ships and the regulation of ocean traffic; the ports of Bengal and Sindh were famous for shipbuilding, and did their work so well that the Sultan of Constantinople found it cheaper to have his vessels built there than in Alexandria; even the East India Company had many of its ships built in Bengal docks.26
The development of coinage to facilitate this trade took many centuries. In Buddha’s days rough rectangular coins were issued by various economic and political authorities; but it was not until the fourth century before Christ that India, under the influence of Persia and Greece, arrived at a coinage guaranteed by the state.27 Sher Shah issued well-designed pieces of copper, silver and gold, and established the rupee as the basic coin of the realm.28 Under Akbar and Jehangir the coinage of India was superior, in artistic execution and purity of metal, to that of any modern European state.29 As in medieval Europe, so in medieval India the growth of industry and commerce was impeded by a religious antipathy to the taking of interest. “The Indians,” says Megasthenes, “neither put out money at usury” (interest), “nor know how to borrow. It is contrary to established usage for an Indian either to do or to suffer wrong; and therefore they neither make contracts nor require securities.”30 When the Hindu could not invest his savings in his own economic enterprises he preferred to hide them, or to buy jewelry as conveniently hoardable wealth.31 Perhaps this failure to develop a facile credit system aided the Industrial Revolution to establish the European domination of Asia. Slowly, however, despite the hostility of the Brahmans, money-lending grew. The rates varied, according to the caste of the borrower, from twelve to sixty per cent, usually ranging about twenty.32 Bankruptcy was not permitted as a li
quidation of debts; if a debtor died insolvent his descendants to the sixth generation continued to be responsible for his obligations.33
Both agriculture and trade were heavily taxed to support the government. The peasant had to surrender from one-sixth to one-half of his crop; and, as in medieval and contemporary Europe, many tolls were laid upon the flow and exchange of goods.34 Akbar raised the land-tax to one-third, but abolished all other exactions.35 The land-tax was a bitter levy, but it had the saving grace of rising with prosperity and falling with depression; and in famine years the poor could at least die untaxed. For famines occurred, even in Akbar’s palmy days; that of 1556 seems to have led to cannibalism and widespread desolation. Roads were bad, transportation was slow, and the surplus of one region could with difficulty be used to supply the dearth of another.
As everywhere, there were extremes of poverty and wealth, but hardly so great as in India or America today. At the bottom was a small minority of slaves; above them the Shudras were not so much slaves as hired men, though their status, like that of almost all Hindus, was hereditary. The poverty described by Père Dubois (1820)36 was the result of fifty years of political chaos; under the Moguls the condition of the people had been relatively prosperous.37 Wages were modest, ranging for manual workers from three to nine cents a day in Akbar’s reign; but prices were correspondingly low. In 1600 a rupee (normally 32.5 cents) bought 194 pounds of wheat, or 278 pounds of barley; in 1901 it bought only 29 pounds of wheat, or 44 pounds of barley.38 An Englishman resident in India in 1616 described “the plenty of all provisions” as “very great throughout the whole monarchy,” and added that “every one there may eat bread without scarceness.”39 Another Englishman, touring India in the seventeenth century, found that his expenses averaged four cents a day.40
The wealth of the country reached its two peaks under Chandragupta Maurya and Shah Jehan. The riches of India under the Gupta kings became a proverb throughout the world. Yuan Chwang pictured an Indian city as beautified with gardens and pools, and adorned with institutes of letters and arts; “the inhabitants were well off, and there were families with great wealth; fruit and flowers were abundant. . . . The people had a refined appearance, and dressed in glossy silk attire; they were . . . clear and suggestive in discourse; they were equally divided between orthodoxy and heterodoxy.”41 “The Hindu kingdoms overthrown by the Moslems,” says Elphinstone, “were so wealthy that the historians tire of telling of the immense loot of jewels and coin captured by the invaders.”42 Nicolo Conti described the banks of the Ganges (ca. 1420) as lined with one prosperous city after another, each well designed, rich in gardens and orchards, silver and gold, commerce and industry.43 Shah Jehan’s treasury was so full that he kept two underground strong rooms, each of some 150,000 cubic feet capacity, almost filled with silver and gold.44 “Contemporary testimonies,” says Vincent Smith, “permit of no doubt that the urban population of the more important cities was well to do.”45 Travelers described Agra and Fathpur-Sikri as each greater and richer than London.46 Anquetil-Duperron, journeying through the Mahratta districts in 1760, found himself “in the midst of the simplicity and happiness of the Golden Age. . . . The people were cheerful, vigorous, and in high health.”47 Clive, visiting Murshidabad in 1759, reckoned that ancient capital of Bengal as equal in extent, population and wealth to the London of his time, with palaces far greater than those of Europe, and men richer than any individual in London.48 India, said Clive, was “a country of inexhaustible riches.”49 Tried by Parliament for helping himself too readily to this wealth, Clive excused himself ingeniously: he described the riches that he had found about him in India—opulent cities ready to offer him any bribe to escape indiscriminate plunder, bankers throwing open to his grasp vaults piled high with jewels and gold; and he concluded: “At this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation.”50
II. THE ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY
The monarchy—Law—The Code of “Manu”—Development of the caste system—Rise of the Brahmans—Their privileges and powers—Their obligations—In defense of caste
Because the roads were poor and communication difficult, it was easier to conquer than to rule India. Its topography ordained that this semi-continent would remain, until the coming of railways, a medley of divided states. Under such conditions a government could have security only through a competent army; and as the army required, in frequent crises, a dictatorial leader immune to political eloquence, the form of government which developed in India was naturally monarchical. The people enjoyed a considerable measure of liberty under the native dynasties, partly through the autonomous communities in the villages and the trade guilds in the towns, and partly through the limitations that the Brahman aristocracy placed upon the authority of the king.51 The laws of Manu, though they were more a code of ethics than a system of practised legislation, expressed the focal ideas of India about monarchy: that it should be impartially rigorous, and paternally solicitous of the public good.52 The Mohammedan rulers paid less attention than their Hindu predecessors to these ideals and checks; they were a conquering minority, and rested their rule frankly on the superiority of their guns. “The army,” says a Moslem historian, with charming clarity, “is the source and means of government.”53 Akbar was an exception, for he relied chiefly upon the good will of a people prospering under his mild and benevolent despotism. Perhaps in the circumstances his was the best government possible. Its vital defect, as we have seen, lay in its dependence upon the character of the king; the supreme centralized authority that proved beneficent under Akbar proved ruinous under Aurangzeb. Having been raised up by violence, the Afghan and Mogul rulers were always subject to recall by assassination; and wars of succession were almost as expensive—though not as disturbing to economic life—as a modern election.*
Under the Moslems law was merely the will of the emperor or sultan; under the Hindu kings it was a confused mixture of royal commands, village traditions and caste rules. Judgment was given by the head of the family, the head of the village, the headmen of the caste, the court of the guild, the governor of the province, the minister of the king, or the king himself.55 Litigation was brief, judgment swift; lawyers came only with the British.56 Torture was used under every dynasty until abolished by Firoz Shah.57 Death was the penalty for any of a great variety of crimes, such as housebreaking, damage to royal property, or theft on a scale that would now make a man a very pillar of society. Punishments were cruel, and included amputation of hands, feet, nose or ears, tearing out of eyes, pouring molten lead into the throat, crushing the bones of hands and feet with a mallet, burning the body with fire, driving nails into the hands, feet or bosom, cutting the sinews, sawing men asunder, quartering them, impaling them, roasting them alive, letting them be trampled to death by elephants, or giving them to wild and hungry dogs.58†
No code of laws applied to all India. In the ordinary affairs of life the place of law was taken by the dharma-shastras—metrical textbooks of caste regulations and duties, composed by the Brahmans from a strictly Brahman point of view. The oldest of these is the so-called “Code of Manu.” Manu was the mythical ancestor of the Manava tribe (or school) of Brahmans near Delhi; he was represented as the son of a god, and as receiving his laws from Brahma himself.59 This code of 2685 verses, once assigned to 1200 B.C., is now referred vaguely to the first centuries of our era.60 Originally intended as a handbook or guide to proper caste behavior for these Manava Brahmans, it was gradually accepted as a code of conduct by the entire Hindu community; and though never recognized by the Moslem kings it acquired, within the caste system, all the force of law. Its character will appear to some extent in the course of the following analysis of Hindu society and morals. In general it was marked by a superstitious acceptance of trial by ordeal,* a severe application of the lex talionis, and an untiring inculcation of the virtues, rights and powers of the Brahman caste.63 Its effect was to strengthen enormously the hold of the caste system upon Hindu society.
This sy
stem had grown more rigid and complex since the Vedic period; not only because it is in the nature of institutions to become stiff with age, but because the instability of the political order, and the overrunning of India by alien peoples and creeds, had intensified caste as a barrier to the mixture of Moslem and Hindu blood. In Vedic days caste had been varna, or color; in medieval India it became jati, or birth. Its essence was twofold: the heredity of status, and the acceptance of dharma—i.e., the traditional duties and employments of one’s native caste.
The head and chief beneficiaries of the system were the eight million males of the Brahman caste.64 Weakened for a while by the rise of Buddhism under Ashoka, the Brahmans, with that patient tenacity which characterizes priesthoods, had bided their time, and had recaptured power and leadership under the Gupta line. From the second century A.D. we find records of great gifts, usually of land, to the Brahman caste.65† These grants, like all Brahman property, were exempt from taxation until the British came.66a The Code of Manu warns the king never to tax a Brahman, even when all other sources of revenue have failed; for a Brahman provoked to anger can instantly destroy the king and all his army by reciting curses and mystical texts.67 It was not the custom of Hindus to make wills, since their traditions required that the property of the family should be held in common, and automatically descend from the dying to the surviving males;68* but when, under the influence of European individualism, wills were introduced, they were greatly favored by the Brahmans, as an occasional means of securing property for ecclesiastical purposes.70 The most important element in any sacrifice to the gods was the fee paid to the ministrant priest; the highest summit of piety was largesse in such fees.71 Miracles and a thousand superstitions were another fertile source of sacerdotal wealth. For a consideration a Brahman might render a barren woman fecund; oracles were manipulated for financial ends; men were engaged to feign madness and to confess that their fate was a punishment for parsimony to the priests. In every illness, lawsuit, bad omen, unpleasant dream or new enterprise the advice of a Brahman was desirable, and the adviser was worthy of his hire.72