Lord Mahavira

Author(s): Boolchand
Publisher: Jain Cultural Research Society

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work, the allusion to a professional winnower of grain indicates a similar division of labour to our own threshing machinists and steamplough-owners who tour in rural districts.” Important handicrafts were organised into guilds, and at the head of each guild was a president (FE) or elderman (555), and these leaders were often important ministers in attendance upon and in favour with the King. There is evidence that regulation of industrial life was on a corporate basis, not only individuals but families were often referred to in terms of traditional calling. (4) The age was marked by freedom of initiative and a high degree of mobility in labour. This finds exemplification in stories like those of enterprising woodworkers who, failing to carry out the orders for which prepayment had been made, were summoned to fulfil their contract and, instead of abiding in their lot, secretly made a mighty ship and emigrated with their families shipping down the Ganges by night and so out to sea till they reached a fertile island. (5) Trade and commerce was fast developing. Partnerships in commerce, either permanent or on specified occasions only, are frequently mentioned in Buddhist and Jain texts. The overland caravans are sometimes represented as going 'east and west' and across deserts that took days and nights to cross. They may have gone from Benares, the chief commercial and industrial centre in early Buddhist and Jain age, across the deserts of Rajputana to the seaport of modern Broach or the seaboard of Sovira and its capital Roruka. Westward of these ports there was traffic with Babylon. The nature of exports and imports is not always specified, but they would seem to include such articles as “silks, muslins, the finer sorts of cloth, cutlery and armour, brocades, embroideries and rugs, perfumes and drugs, ivory and ivory work, jewelry and gold.” It appears that trade was free, in the sense that it was determined solely by supply and demand and unhampered by any system of statutory fixed prices. The use of standard currency and of substitutes for money, like instru