IV. INDO-ARYAN SOCIETY
Herders—Tillers of the soil—Craftsmen—Traders—Coinage and credit—Morals—Marriage—Woman
How did these Aryan Indians live? At first by war and spoliation; then by herding, tillage and industry in a rural routine not unlike that of medieval Europe; for until the Industrial Revolution in which we live, the basic economic and political life of man had remained essentially the same since neolithic days. The Indo-Aryans raised cattle, used the cow without considering it sacred, and ate meat when they could afford it, having offered a morsel to priests or gods;36 Buddha, after nearly starving himself in his ascetic youth, seems to have died from a hearty meal of pork.37They planted barley, but apparently knew nothing of rice in Vedic times. The fields were divided by each village community among its constituent families, but were irrigated in common; the land could not be sold to an outsider, and could be bequeathed only to the family heirs in direct male line. The majority of the people were yeomen owning their own soil; the Aryans held it a disgrace to work for hire. There were, we are assured, no landlords and no paupers, no millionaires and no slums.38
In the towns handicrafts flourished among independent artisans and apprentices, organized, half a thousand years before Christ, into powerful guilds of metal-workers, wood-workers, stone-workers, leather-workers, ivory-workers, basket-makers, house-painters, decorators, potters, dyers, fishermen, sailors, hunters, trappers, butchers, confectioners, barbers, shampooers, florists, cooks—the very list reveals the fulness and variety of Indo-Aryan life. The guilds settled intra-guild affairs, even arbitrating difficulties between members and their wives. Prices were determined, as among ourselves, not by supply and demand but by the gullibility of the purchaser; in the palace of the king, however, was an official Valuer who, like our secretive Bureau of Standards, tested goods to be bought, and dictated terms to the makers.39
Trade and travel had advanced to the stage of horse and two-wheeled wagon, but were still medievally difficult; caravans were held up by taxes at every petty frontier, and as like as not by highwaymen at any turn. Transport by river and sea was more developed: about 860 B.C. ships with modest sails and hundreds of oars carried to Mesopotamia, Arabia and Egypt such typical Indian products as perfumes and spices, cotton and silk, shawls and muslins, pearls and rubies, ebony and precious stones, and ornate brocades of silver and gold.40
Trade was stunted by clumsy methods of exchange—at first by barter, then by the use of cattle as currency; brides like Homer’s “oxen-bearing maidens” were bought with cows.41 Later a heavy copper coinage was issued, guaranteed, however, only by private individuals. There were no banks; hoarded money was hidden in the house, or buried in the ground, or deposited with a friend. Out of this, in Buddha’s age, grew a credit system: merchants in different towns facilitated trade by giving one another letters of credit; loans could be obtained from such Rothschilds at eighteen per cent,42 and there was much talk of promissory notes. The coinage was not sufficiently inconvenient to discourage gambling; already dice were essential to civilization. In many cases gambling halls were provided for his subjects by the king, in the fashion, if not quite in the style, of Monaco; and a portion of the receipts went to the royal treasury.43 It seems a scandalous arrangement to us, who are not quite accustomed to having our gambling institutions contribute so directly to the support of our public officials.
Commercial morality stood on a high level. The kings of Vedic India, as of Homeric Greece, were not above lifting cattle from their neighbors;44 but the Greek historian of Alexander’s campaigns describes the Hindus as “remarkable for integrity, so reasonable as seldom to have recourse to lawsuits, and so honest as to require neither locks to their doors nor writings to bind their agreements; they are in the highest degree truthful.45 The Rig-veda speaks of incest, seduction, prostitution, abortion and adultery,46 and there are some signs of homosexuality;47 but the general picture that we derive from the Vedas and the epics is one of high standards in the relations of the sexes and the life of the family.
Marriage might be entered into by forcible abduction of the bride, by purchase of her, or by mutual consent. Marriage by consent, however, was considered slightly disreputable; women thought it more honorable to be bought and paid for, and a great compliment to be stolen,48 Polygamy was permitted, and was encouraged among the great; it was an act of merit to support several wives, and to transmit ability.49 The story of Draupadi,50 who married five brothers at once, indicates the occasional occurrence, in Epic days, of that strange polyandry—the marriage of one woman to several men, usually brothers—which survived in Ceylon till 1859, and still lingers in the mountain villages of Tibet.51 But polygamy was usually the privilege of the male, who ruled the Aryan household with patriarchal omnipotence. He held the right of ownership over his wives and his children, and might in certain cases sell them or cast them out.52
Nevertheless, woman enjoyed far greater freedom in the Vedic period than in later India. She had more to say in the choice of her mate than the forms of marriage might suggest. She appeared freely at feasts and dances, and joined with men in religious sacrifice. She could study, and might, like Gargi, engage in philosophic disputation.53 If she was left a widow there were no restrictions upon her remarriage.54 In the Heroic Age woman seems to have lost something of this liberty. She was discouraged from mental pursuits, on the ground that “for a woman to study theVedas indicates confusion in the realm;”55 the remarriage of widows became uncommon; purdah—the seclusion of women—began; and the practice of suttee, almost unknown in Vedic times, increased.56 The ideal woman was now typified in the heroine of the Ramayana—that faithful Sita who follows and obeys her husband humbly, through every test of fidelity and courage, until her death.