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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
Dec., 1920
towns now formed the centre of life. In the towns or before the doors of the towns lay the gront, perhaps the greatest, part of the scenes of the transactions that the Buddhist texts relate. In these cities there had grown up a rich and highly respectable merchant class.** They were the residences of a highly progressive artisan class ramifying into many branches, and it may be considered as probable that the force of circumstances hard driven masses of persons of Aryan descont into the arts and crafts, which at one time probably were MS # rule the occupations of the Sadras.33 Under such conditions, many of the categories that bad governed lite in ancient timew must have faded under the altered circumstances of the new age.34 It is natural that where pretensions of spiritual or temporal nobility came into play, as among the Brahmanas and Kshatriyas, the ancient ways of viewing things held out with a tenacity different from that in the sphere of burgher life. In this sphere, however, guilds or corporations of merchants and artisans-just as in medieval Europe they acquired a great importance in connection with the flourishing of city, kife, similarly also in India, stepped into the foreground as adequately representing the actual situation and its living interests, pushing into the background such concepts as those of the Vaisya or the Sadra. 35. Moreover, wo are entitled to maintain that although those last mentioned concepts had been pushed into the background in comparison with the others, yet they had by no means gone out of existence. A tradesman was of course in the first place designated a tradesman, but the distinction that the people made between the Vessakulam and the Suddakulam, makes us adopt the view that on that account, the fact was not lost sight of, that a particular merchant was & Vessa or that an artisan was possibly a Sudda. 36 And the important rôle that the Gahapati plays in the Pali text justifios the conclusion that here it represents a still living thing rather than a mere decayed reminiscence of an institution nearing extinction : I believe, in fact, that we may take the Gahapatikula of the Pali text as a synonym for Vessakula.37
33 I may so express myself, without the fear of being misunderstood, that I deny that there were any merchants in the Rigvedio times.
3) This was not considered as normal in the Buddhistio times; a touch of inferiority was always attached to the handicrafts. Cf. the above quoted (p. 282) passage of the Suttavibbangs es also the
observations of the Majjhima Niklys (Vol. I, p. 85, ed. Trenekner) about the sippatthanas which were - suitable for the Kulaputta. In this connection we may take into consideration what the Dasabrahmanajátaka says (seo Fick, 142) about the BrAhmaņas who followed agriculture and trade, tended goats and sheep : they resemble the Ambattha aad Vosta; for the Vease, even then agriculture, cattle-breeding and trade, and not the handicrafts, were characteristic occupatione (yet of the modern Banys (merchant) says Ibbetson, op. oit., p. 291 : "he is generally admitted to be of pure Vasáya descent"). It may be observed as singular that the Kumbhakdra appearing in J&t. I. p. 80 been the gotta-Dame Bhagava.
34 This is explained very clearly in certain interesting verses of the Bharidattajataka, Ját, Vol. VI. p. 208, verses 151, 153.
35 Moreover, as regards the spiritual class, we may, I think, compare this, at least distantly, with the fact that by the side of, partly perhaps in preference to the spiritual oleas of the old stylo if I may use this expression--the Brahman casto which was falling off from its old oharnoter, the spiritual clase of the new style, corresponding to the ideas of the new age, that is, the roots of the Bramapas stepped up to tho foreground.
36 I here refer in passing to the V ednom ofthe which is mentioned in Jat, Vol. VI, p. 485. Of. also, p. 418, verse 1477, as also p. 142, vemo 636 : Rathakedrabuleau d publwalules d eu ud.
37 The frequent mention side by side of the three on tegories of khathiya, brdhand and gahapati shows that we have to think of the gahapati category diferent from the two higber castes, and yet of the some kind. The conspicuous and respootable position, on the other hand, that is assigned to the Gahapatia (Fick, 164), seems to proahide the idea that muddas were included among them. I cannot admit a modo of expression like the Jataka pescago (II, 241) cited by Fick (op. cit.), as sufficiently adequate for the purpose of establishing a difference between yesss and gahapati. This holds good also of JM, I 182.
