Slavery in Ancient India

Social Scientist
Problem of Slavery in Ancient India

Author(s): Sharad Patil
Source: Social Scientist, Vol. 1, No. 11 (Jun., 1973), pp. 32-48
Published by: Social Scientist
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S$HARAD PATIL
Problem of Slavery in Ancient India
'Manusa manusan eva dasa-bhazena bhunjate;

vadha-bandha-nirodhena karayanti diva-nisam.
Atmanas ca apijanatiyad duhkhani vadha-bandhane."
"Human beings, enslaved by human beings,

are exploited by them;
Tortured, shackled, and incarcerated,
are forced to work day and night,
Though they (who do this) themselves know,
the agony evoked by torture and chains !"
-Mahabharata, XII 262 38-39.
DASAS and Sudras were the first ever creators of wealth,

in the sense of surplus product, in ancient India. The
great Indian civilisation, which their ceaseless, back-breaking
toil spread over nearly three millenniums has raised and nou-
rished, had in return fashioned and perpetuated the shackles
of their slavery and servitude. State power had terrorised
them into smouldering submission, religion had preached to
them the preordained birthright of servitude, and philosophy
had revealed to them the evanescence and unreality of 'this'
world of travail and the eternality and reality of'that' world
of bliss.
PROBLEM OF SLAVERY IN ANCIENT INDIA 33
Resurrected Brahminic Hinduism declared through the m

Puranas that Kshatriyas had ceased to exist with the adven
Sudra Nandas (Nanda-antam Kshatriya-Kulam), replacing th
four-caste system with the two-caste system.1 Vishnu Dha
compiled between the third and first centuries BC, coined fo
time the term 'untouchable' (asprsya), thereby legalising t
status of a vast section of Sudra toilers.2 The mediaeval legal
Raghunandana of Bengal (fifteenth century AD) and Naga
Maharashtra (eighteenth century AD), laid down that only tw
exist in the Kali age, namely, Brahmins and Sudras.3
The present day industrial state terrorises the modern Su
the factories and farms into rebellious submission with advanced wea-
ponry of violence, luring them at the same time with the mirage of
democratic socialism. Religion in the persons of the Jagad-guru
Sankaracharya of Puri and Guruji Golwalkar of the RSS3a defends the
divine origin and the resulting eternality of the caste society and the
justifiability of the degradation of the Hindu woman. The Sankaracharya
evidently re-echoes the following passage of Satapatha Bramana:
'... Woman, the Sudra, the dog, and the black bird (the crow) are
untruth; he should not look at them'.4 The Sudra-hating Monistic Idea-
lism of the first Sankaracharya5 has virtually become the state philosophy
of the Indian republic.
With the hour of the final liberation of the Sudras of industrial
society drawing near, the problem of the origin of the slavery of their
Dasa-Sudra progenitors presses for solution. Glorification of the good
and slurring over or minimisation of the evil in the nation's past was th
weapon with which our revivalist scholars countered the attempts of th
British imperialists at national humiliation during the period of freedom
struggle. Slavery in ancient India received the same treatment at the
hands of these scholars. Being one of the foremost of our traditional
scholars and also a follower of Tilak, P V Kane's view represents thi
trend the best:
Slavery was probably not much in evidence in India in the 4th century
B C, or the treatment of slaves in India was so good that a foreign
observer like Megasthenes accustomed to the treatment of slaves in
Greece thought that there was no slavery.6
Tilak was, as were the other leaders of the national movement, a
political representative of the Indian industrial class. His biographer N C
Kelkar records that Tilak started a ginning factory at Latur in Maharashtra
in about 1889.7 Tilak hailed from a Khot landlord family and he wrote
a series of articles in defence of Khot landlordism in 1899.8 These semi-
feudal affiliations made him a staunch champion of Hindu orthodoxy and
led him to offer stiff opposition to the Age of Consent Bill which intended
to prohibit child marrige by raising the minimum marriageable age limit
of girls.9 Hence, it is no wonder that the political philosophy of these
national leaders and their scholarly followers attempted to present exploita-
34 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
tion in ancient India as exceptionally humane with the avowed intention

of endowing the industrialist class with the heritage of this unique
national tradition of 'exploitation without tears'.
If the upper class intelligentsia of the rising Indian industrialists
unfurled the anti-imperialist banner of neo-Hinduistic revivalism for the
right of national exploitation, it was but inevitable that the non-Brahmin
intellectuals of the regional and rural bourgeois elements raised the banner
of anti-Brahminic social reform for the right of exploiting their own
nationalities and castes. The non-Brahmin movement in Maharashtra
took shape in the last half of the nineteenth century primarily under
impact of the violent outbreaks of the Sudra peasantry against t
religious oppression of the Brahmins and against their pauperisation b
usurer landlords mainly drawn from the Brahmin, Marwari and Gujara
non-agricultural castes and nationalities.l0
That is why these two movements, though uterine in their genesis
developed under their own inherent contradictions and hence clash
with each other. The former was anti-imperialist but pro-feudal, whi
the latter was pro-British or pro-western but anti-feudal; but both reli
on the British rulers to gain their objectives. Nevertheless, both being p
marily impelled by the germinating seeds of capitalist development sow
unwillingly by the British themselves, the need of their mutual conflict pas
ed into their urge for national unity in the third decade of this centur
The most influential leaders of the non-Brahmin movement join
Congress and led big masses of Maharashtrian peasantry into the grea
satyagraha of 1930.
A similar situation in Kerala is succinctly summed up by E M
Namboodiripad:
.. It is, however, a historical fact that the first form in which the
peasant masses rose in struggle against feudalism was in the form o
caste organisations. In spite of the fact that they had no clear perspe
tive of changing the social order, of breaking the backs of the land
lords as a class, of ending the rent system and redistributing lands, t
Nayar peasantry rose against the Brahmin jenmis (landlords by birth
and the Ezhava (an untouchable caste) peasantry against their caste-
Hindu oppressors, including the Nayars ...
It has become fashionable for those who consider themselves nationa-
lists to denounce these caste organisations as anti-national and
'reactionary' because they sought the help of the British imperialists in
getting their grievances redressed. They, however, forget the main
point that in spite of their illusions as to the "progressive democratic
character" of the British-an illusion which they shared with the pre-
Tilak generation of nationalists, they roused and organised the masses
against some aspects of the oppressive social order ....
. . . The peasants who were roused by, and organised in, caste or-
ganisations in the early years of the twentieth century were subse-
quently brought into the fold of the anti-imperialist national move-
ment in the twenties and into the class organisation of t

in the thirties and forties.l
The conclusion he draws from the contradictory and complex man-
ner by which the caste-divided people of India struggle towards their
objective is bold and far-reaching:
Every progressive popular movement in this caste-ridden part of the
world could not but have its edge turned against caste-Hindu domi-
nation.12
The non-Brahmin movement was founded and initially led by a

great Mali, Mahatma Jyotiba Phule (1827-1890). Marathas, another and
numerically the biggest peasant proprietor caste of Maharashtra, partici-
pated in developing the movement to the fullest extent possible. The
leaders of this movement, in ts final phase, proved themselves to be but
the political representatives of the rising rural bourgeoisie of their own
castes, and hence they failed to transform the anti-Brahmin and anti-
usurer struggle into a thoroughgoing anti-feudal and anti-capitalist
struggle of all castes. That is why when the anti-Brahmin movement by
and large came to an end after becoming a part of the national move-
ment, the movement of the untouchables burst forth and developed under
the leadership of an illustrious untouchable, Dr B R Ambedkar. Apart
from the significant contribution he made to the cause of the uplift of
the untouchables, he attempted to end the age-old religious and social
oppression of the untouchables by their conversion to the Buddhist reli-
gion, and set before them the goal of political liberation by embracing
bourgeois republicanism. It is not for nothing that he considered his
movement as a continuation of the non-Brahmin movement:
It is well known that there is a non-Brahmin movement in this coun-
try which is a political movement of the Shudras. It is also well
known that I have been connected with it.. .13
The tribute he pays to Phule in the dedication of his book, TWho
Were the Shudras, sums up his own credo:
The greatest Shudra of Modern India who made the lower classes of
Hindus conscious of their slavery to the higher classes and who
preached the gospel that for India social democracy was more vital
than independence from foreign rule.
It is for this reason that the movement of the ex-scheduled castes
(neo-Buddhists) finds itself today brought to a standstill at the very
place where the non-Brahmin and similar movements were cremated
by history.
Nonetheless, Ambedkar was the first Sudra who raised on the eve
of independence in 1946 the fundamental question of ancient Indian
history, namely, who were the Sudras, and made a serious attempt to
answer it. He summed up the result of his investigations as follows:
Two questions are raised in this book : (1) Who were the Shudras ?
and (2) How they came to be the fourth Varna of the Indo-Aryan
society ? Mv answers to them are summarised below:
36 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
1) The Shudras were one of the Aryan communities of the Solar

race.
2) There was a time when the Aryan society reco

Varnas, namely, Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishy
3) The Shudras did not form a separate Varna. Th
of the Kshatriya Varna in the Indo-Aryan society
4.) There was a continuous feud between the Sh
Brahmins in which the Brahmins were subjected
and indignities.
5) As a result of the hatred towards the Shudras
tyrannies and oppressions, the Brahmins refu
Upanayana of the Shudras.
6) Owing to the denial of Upanayana, the Shudra
riyas became socially degraded, ftlt below the ra
and thus came to form the fourth Varna.14
Thus, the Sudras, originally a ruling and exploiting people, were

'tricked' into slavery by the villains of Brahmins by withholding upana-
yana from them ! It was upanayana which admitted one to Vedic study
and membership of an Aryan tribe. The capitalist 'social democracy'
permits education (even the Vedic one) to a minority of the modern
Sudras and helps a microscopic section of this minority to the full mem-
bership of the tribe of capitalist aristocracy. The former is the upana-
yana and the latter is the summum bonum of modern times !
The Dasas and Sudras were supposed to have been autochthonous
people who were defeated and subjugated by the invading Aryans. But,
the pre-Aryan civilisation to which the Dasas belonged was comparatively
a far more advanced civilisation, and it had been flourishing at least for
more than one thousand years before the hordes of the pastoral Aiyans
started entering India in the middle of the second millennium before
Christ (B C 1750). Were the Dasas the ruling or servile class of the pre-
Aryan Indus state ? Archaeology is yet to provide a conclusive answer.
The challenge posed by the contention of the revivalist scholars to
Marxist methodology was a basic one. If class society in India did not
commence with a social formation based on production carried on
mainly by slaves, but relied since its inception on the free labour of
Vaisya and later Sudra peasantry, then Marxist methodology becomes
inapplicable by and large to Indian conditions.
Dange's was the first attempt to interpret Indian history by Marxist
methodology. He tried to prove that India passed from the tribal pri-
mitive communistic stage to the slave stage :
A question is raised as to what were the specific features of slavery in
India ? What role did it play in production ?
There are few who would deny altogether the existence of slavery in
India. In the face of explicit records stating the kinds of slaves that
existed, the rules regarding their liberation and their place in pro-
perty inheritance, it is difficult for anyone to say that slavery did not
exist.
. . . It was not the labour slavery of the Roman or Gree

was 'domestic slavery'. It only means that agricultural pr
large-scale farms owned by slave-owners and worked
slaves was not the dominant form of production. But, i
with this,domestic slavery does not mean that the slave
'personal service' to the master in the household. There
evidence to show that the slaves were set to production
manufactures, on farms and even large-scale estates, alon
peasants and even hired labourers. Slave-owners also hired out their
slaves for work to bring income for their owners.
Large-scale estates cultivated by slaves and hired servants are gener-
ally found near the town-centres and are found to be properties of
kings. A few private landlords also are mentioned, some of whom
are even pious Brahmins. But agricultural production in the country-
side was not carried on mainly by means of slaves. There the free
household community led by the Grihapati or Kulapati cultivated
the common land. The employment of slaves on a considerable scale
prevailed in the town centres of handicrafts and, to some extent, in
the village.
This intertwining of the household community with domestic slavery
supplanting other forms is a specific feature of Indian slavery.15
He reiterated the definition of Indian slavery and feudalism which
he first enunciated in 1949:
We might say that whereas the four Varna system (Varnashrama

Dharma) is the juridical-ethical expression of the period of later stages
of barbarism and also of slavery and civilisation, the caste system
(Jati-Dharma) is the expression of the rise and growth of Indian
feudalism ... 16
If a society in which the main producers are free peasants while

production by slaves plays only a subsidiary role can be characterised a
slave society, then Indian feudal society must receive the same appellation,
for the same classes, free peasantry and domestic slaves, existed side by
side in the whole of the feudal period, and it was quite widespread right
upto A D 1843:
. . . this abolition of slavery in India (which was only realised in 1843)
has given us some valuable information. The documents prove clearly
that slavery was widespread in almost all regions of the country and
everyone was of the opinion that it was in accordance with Hindu law
and has been in existence since ancient times. The existence of this
institution among the Brahmins of Mithila, well known in the middle
ages for their knowledge of sacred texts, is confirmed by the docu-
ments registering sales and purchases of slaves.l7
Kosambi makes a valuable survey of slavery during the period
ranging from the Delhi Sultanate to the abolition of slavery by the British
in 1843:
38 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
". .. Firuz indulged in production for himself, with the help of slaves.
"The Sultan Firuz was very diligent in providing slaves, and he
carried his care so far as to command his great fief-holders and officers to
capture slaves wherever they went at war, and to pick out the best for
the service of the court . . . When they were in excess, the Sultan sent
them to ... all the ... feudal dependencies .... Some (slaves) were
placed under tradesmen and were taught mechanical arts, so that about
12,000 slaves became artisans (Kasih) of various kinds .... The institution
(of slavery) took root in the very centre of the land, and the Sultan
looked upon its due regulation as one of his incumbent duties .... There
was no occupation in which the slaves of Firuz Shah were not employed.
None of the Sultan's predecessors had ever collected so many slaves. The
late Sultan Alauddin had drawn together about 50,000 slaves, but after
him no sultan had directed his attention to raising a body of them until
Sultan Firuz adopted the practice ....
"Slavery was thus an attempt on the part of the Sultan to become
less dependent upon his vassals. The bondsman helped run his private
plantations whose produce not only supplied the palace but was also sold
in the open market, as were the rugs and fabrics woven by his slave
factories. Fifty thousand slaves were guards in royal equipages or palaces.
The total number of these imperial slaves (bandagan-i-khas) was 80,000
.... When we consider that most of the abler previous emperors of
Delhi had been slaves, it is clear that this sort of slavery was not essential
to the productive mode ..... In general, feudal slaves were mostly house-
hold servants, for independence from local retainers who might, in a
crisis, show loyalty to their own caste or community. For smaller land-
holders, particularly soldiers pensioned off, the slave was often the heir,
actually so adopted, who would care for the age and disabled master
during his life time".18
Kosambi thinks that slavery increased in the Mughal period and the
increase was dueto the Mughal policy of breaking the age-old village
communes :
Muslim conquest had broken up the village communes, ex

form over a small portion of the land, to leave a series of m
landowners.19
The second reason he gives is the increase in commodity produc-
tion.20 But why was there increase in commodity production? Because
there was increase in trade. And why was there increase in trade ?
Due to increase in commodity production ! A fine example of chakraka
(circular) way of arguing referred to by Indian logic.
As for the first reason, the question naturally arises as to how the
Arabs (which term includes all the nations of Islamic Middle East), who
followed a religion the organisation of which was formally tribal and
who themselves had spilled out of tribal communities, could break up
Indian village communities which also had retained tribal vestiges.
The task was fated to be accomplished only by the imperial capital of
Great Britain.
The real cause of increase in commodity production was the collec-
tion of land revenue in cash instead of in kind which, according to Irfan
Habib, came into vogue in the thirteenth century:
The peasant of Northern India or, at least, of the central regions,
paid his revenue in cash as early as the 13th century. In the Mughal
period the methods of assessment, chiefly used in Hindustan, namely,
the Zabt and the form of J\asaq based upon it, involved the direct
statement of the revenue demand in terms of cash. No provision is on
record for allowing a commutation of cash into kind in any circum-
stances. On the other hand, when the methods of crop-sharing and
Kankut, both of which set the demand in terms of the produce, were
used, commutation into cash was permitted at market prices ....21
But, the Arabs were not the innovators of this system, though their
monopoly of foreign trade contributed to its rise. Internal trade was
stimulated by the resurgence of foreign trade. R S Sharma observes:
On the whole in the 11th and 12th centuries Northern India witnessed
an expansion of commercial activities, which seemed to have declined
during the four centuries following the collapse of the Gupta rule.
One of the main causes of the increasing internal trade seems to have
been the revival of foreign trade . . . 22
If trade by itself had been the sole cause of the commutation of land
revenue in cash, then the system should have originated in Gupta
times itself. The spread and increase in the cultivation of cash crops and
the spurt in the caste-based crafts,23 entrance of Marwari and Gujarati
mercantile and money capital in internal and foreign trade, brisk activity
in Indian ship-building, all this taking place in the eleventh century, de-
notes a new and higher stage in feudal production in India.24 These are
the factors taken in their totality that necessitated the commutation of land
revenue from kind to cash. R S Sharma gives concrete instances of this
important change in the Indian revenue system:
We have, however, a very important piece of evidence from Central
India which shows that revenue was assessed in cash and not in kind,
as was the case in earlier times in various parts of the country. A
record of the early thirteenth century (12.3) informs us that a business
document executed apparently by the Mahamandalika Pamparaja,
probably a feudatory of the Kalacuris of Ratanpur, fixed the revenue
of the village Jaipura at 130 Sarahgadama-achus as previously
settled and 140 Vijayaraja-tankas. It also states that the revenue of
another village was fixed at 150 Vijayaraja-tankas .... This need not
be attributed to Muslim influence, for the Delhi Sultanate established
in 1206 hardly covered this part of the country. On the other hand
the existence of the practice under the Sultanate should be taken as a
culmination of the process that had begun in North India in the 1 Ith
and 12th centuries.25
Kosambi attributes the same causes to the heavy percentage of
40 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
slaves in Canara and Kerala:

About 1800, North Canara district had an estimated 16,201 slaves agai
st 146,800 free persons (BJ-2-442); South Canara, 47,358 slaves in a to
population of 396,672 (BJ-3-2-6); Malabar 16,574 slaves, 106,500 fre
(BJ-2-362). This included women and children, yet these proportion
are unusually high. Slaves also had a wage scale but in Malabar were
abominably treated (BJ-2-371). The reason for this brief period
slavery was in part historical and partly the high relative incidence
commodity production at the time and place. Muslim conquest h
broken up the village communes, except in form over a small portio
of the land, to leave a series of middling landowners .... 26
In spite of his encyclopaedic erudition, Kosambi failed to study th
social system of Kerala, which holds the key to the solution not only
the problem of the 'unusually high' proportion of slaves in Kerala, bu
also of the problem of slavery in ancient India. The problem has b
fully dealt with in the body of the book. References to the social syste
of Kerala are made here only to clear up the point raised by the prese
discussion. Kerala has remained matrilineal up to recent times. I
basic social unit is the matrilineal joint family called taravad. It is des
cribed by Iravati Karve as follows:
... When a tharwad becomes too big and splits it generally splits alon
thavazhies. If lands in a distant village need to be looked after by a
household living near the lands, then a junior tharwad it set up in su
a way that a sister or daughter of the old tharwad, together with h
descendants, is given a new house near the lands. The property
held jointly by the mother tharwad and sister tharwad unless a defin
partition with the consent of all has occurred.27
A taravad split up when its members numbered more than a hund
red.28 The land of a taravad began to be partitioned only with the ena
ment of tenancy laws.29 Though all property is inherited in the fem
line, the taravad property including its land is managed by the eldest m
member called Karanaver.30 The vast taravad and temple rice lands used to
tilled exclusively by agrestic slaves, domestic slavery being unknown in Kerala. T
institution of slavery was not of recent advent and brief duration as Kosambi wo
like to think;for it was brought into being by the matriarchal or rather its c
matrilineal agricultural civilisation of Kerala itself.31
As for commodity production, Gujarat was the most advance
province in trade and cultivation of cash crops throughout the Mugh
period:
The most important feature of trade in Western India was the posi-
tion of Gujarat as a great importer of food-stuffs. It obtained wheat
and other foodgrains from Malawa and Ajmer and rice from the
Dakhia. Indeed, it provided a market for the produce of so distant
a region as Gondwana, while rice was also brought by sea from
Malabar. On the other hand, its major exports consisted of cash
crops. Of these, cotton was by far the most important. The crop
raised between Surat and Burhanpur (Khandesh) 'support

tensive trade to Agra'. Cotton and cotton yarn were sent b
the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea ports and down the coast t
It was also occasionally exported to Europe. The indigo
in Gujarat, especially the Sarkhej variety, was exported
Europe and the Middle East. A large quantity of opium was
to Kerala and tobacco to Thatta, Persia and the Red Se
Among re-exports, sugar was frequently sent to Europe, s
Middle East and saffron to Malabar.32
In spite of being the greatest producer of cash crops and manu-
factured goods, as well as being the greatest emporium of mediaeval
India, the proportion of slaves in Gujarat was negligible, and whatever
slaves there were, were of exclusively domestic category.
Dange's identification of Indian slavery with varna system, though
ingenious, is not sustainable. Four varnas, according to Dange, were the
basic characteristic of the varna system. But, only two varnas, slaves
and slave-owners, existed in the North Western frontier countries of Yona
and Kamboja in the time of Buddha (Tona-Kambojesu annesu ca paccan-
timesu janapadesu dveva vanna-A)yo ca eva Daso ca).33 The sangha-
ganas of Buddha's and Panini's times had only two varnas, namely,
Kshatriyas and slaves-and-labourers (dasa-karmakaras). According to
the grammarian Patanjali (on Panini, IV. I. 168), only the Kshatriya
masters were entitled to bear the tribal designation, and not only the
servile population, but even the Brahmins and traders who resided in
these sangha-ganas were beyond the pale of the tribal privileges. Among
the Licchavi oligarchs who went to see Buddha, many were of dark colour
(Appekacce Licchavi nila honti nila-vanna nila-alankara,...)34 Bhad-
diya, king of the Sakya oligarchy, was called son of the black Godha.35
Thus, the two varnas in these oligarchies were not differentiated by skin
colour as the four varna system was claimed to have been. No such
differentiation existed even among the Vedic Aryans and in the Brah-
minic chatur-varnya system. A black Angirasa is the composer of the
Rig-vedic hymns VIII, 85-87, X. 42-441 and a dark (Asita) Kasyapa is
the seer of the Rig-vedic hymns IX.5-24. The heroes and heriones of
the two great epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, namely, Rama,
Krishna and Draupadi were dark. And lastly, as the Indus state was
exclusively peopled by pre-Aryans, no such distinguishing feature as
colour (varna) can be attributed to its servile class. Hence, the varna
system standing on the exclusive basis of number four and skin colour,
cannot be the distinguishing feature of Indian slavery at all.
Finding that dogmatic methodology could not succeed in explain-
ing Indian history, the pendulum swung to the other extreme. The fore-
most exponent of this other manner of Marxist methodology is the well-
known scholar Dr Ram Bilas Sharma. He contends that there wss no
slave society even in Greece and Rome, and makes the sweeping formula-
tion that mankind as a rule passes directly from the tribal to the feudal
42 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
society.
The feudal mode of production is generated and developed within the
framework of the old tribal society. It is not generated and developed
within the framework of an imaginary society divided between slaves
and slave-owners. In the Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State,
Engels shows how among different tribal communities the transition
to feudalism takes place. True, there were many slaves in Athens
and Rome. But that does not prove that Athenian and Roman socie-
ties were divided between slaves and slave-owners or that these were
prefeudal societies. In fact before man can be bought and sold like
commodities, the means to buy and sell them-money-should be
sufficiently developed, the mode of production should be developed in
order to utilise their labour power, there must be a market in which
to sell the fruits of their labour, etc. Engels described precisely this
kind of economic activity at Athens in connection with the growth of
slavery there.36
In order to buttress his theory that slave society is an illusion
(maya) and feudal society is the only reality, he puts in the mouth of
Marx and Engels his own formulation that the main conflict in Greek
and Roman societies was not between slaves and slave-owners, but between
the poor and the rich of the free sections of these societies:
The main contradiction in this society is still between the rich and the
poor Athenians; it is these sections of the pauperised people who drag
down with them the whole of the Athenian state.
Things were not materially different in Rome. On March 8, 1855,
Marx wrote to Engels: 'A little time ago I went through Roman
history (ancient) again up to the Augustan era. The internal history
simply resolves itself into the struggle of small versus large landed pro-
perty, specifically modified, of course, by slave conditions.' Here again
the main contradiction is between big and small proprietors.37
The methodology of Marxist scholars like Ram Bilas Sharma
attempts to prove exactly what the bourgeois revivalist scholars had
directed all their efforts to accomplish. Was the proportion of slaves in
Greek and Roman societies so negligible as R B Sharma makes it out to
be? Let us see what Engels himself has to say about it.
. .. When Athens was at the height of prosperity the total number of
free Athenian citizens, women and children included, amounted to
about 90,000; the slaves of both sexes numbered 365,000, and the
dependents-immigrants and freed slaves-45,000. Thus, for every
adult male citizen there were at least eighteen slaves and more than
two dependents. The large number of slaves is explained by the
fact that many of them worked together in manufactories with large
rooms under overseers ... 33
Even before the reforms of Solon (B C 594), slaves outnumbered
free Athenians.39 As for the Romans, their main industry, agriculture,
was exclusively worked by slaves.
Agriculture, the decisive branch of production throughout a

now became so more than ever. In Italy, the immense aggre
of estates (latifundia) which had covered nearly the whole territo
the end of the republic, had been utilised in two ways: e
pastures, on which the population had been replaced by she
oxen the care of which required only a few slaves; or as
estates, on which large-scale horticulture had been carried
masses of slaves, partly to serve the luxurious needs of the ow
partly for sale in the urban markets .... 40
The main conflict in Athenian society in its final phase, ac
to Engels, was between slaves and freemen:
The class antagonism on which the social and political instit
(of Athenian society) rested was no longer that between th
and the common people, but that between slaves and freeme
dents and citizens.41
One of the greatest modern authorities on ancient Greek history,

George Thomson, goes into more details on the problem of slavery in
ancient Greece:
Some historians, anxious to present 'the glory that was Greece' in

the most favourable light, have discounted the part played by slave
labour and even declared that 'Greek society was not a slave society'.
In order to test such statements it is enough to turn the pages of
Herodotus and Thucydides.
Of the Greek word for 'slave' some were used loosely, but one had a
very definite meaning. The word andrapodon, 'chattel slave', means
literally a 'man-footed' creature, being formed on the analogy of
tetrapoda, 'four-footed' cattle. Similarly, andrapodistes and andra-
podokapetos meant 'slave-snatcher' and 'slave-dealer' respectively....
The word occurs for the first time in the Illiad, where Euneos of
Lemnos offers wine in exchange for metals, oxen, hides, and slaves....
The slaves sold at Kyzikos were andrapoda .... The first Greek city to
employ chattel slaves was Chios, where there was a slave market
throughout antiquity, and it is noteworthy that as early as 600 B C,
the constitution of this island was democratic. About the same time
Periandros, tyrant of Corinth, sent 300 young men from Kerkyra, a
Corinthian colony, to Sardeis, where they were to be castrated, and
serve as eunuchs. A century later we hear, again from Chios, of
one Panionios, who made a handsome fortune by procuring good-
looking Greek boys, castrating them, and setting them at Epheses and
Sardeis. The people of Arisbe, one of the six original cities of Lesbos,
were enslaved by their neighbours of Methymna. Some prisoners
from Lesbos were employed in chain gangs by Polycrates, tyrant of
Samos, on the fortification of the island. A band of emigrants from
Samos, who had settled in Crete, were attacked by the inhabitants
together with some seamen from Aigina and enslaved. One of the
inducements offered to the Persians for subjugating Nassos, which was
44 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
then under a democracy, was that the island had a large slave popu-
lation. When the Persians conquered Ionia the citizens of Samos
sailed away to Sicily, where they seized the Greek city of Zankle.
This they did with the support of Hippokates, tyrant of Gela, who in
return for his assistance took half the slave population, together with
the majority of the citizens, for work in his chain gangs. When the
Persians invaded Greece, they were under orders to enslave the in-
habitants of Eretria and Athens and despatch them to Sousa. They
were able to carry out the order in respect of Eretrians, who were
eventually settled near the Persian capital; but the Athenians eluded
them. ... It seems that even at this period there already existed in
Anatolia large landed estates worked by slave labour; for, when
Xerxes entered Phrygia at the head of his army, he was entertained
by one Pythios, reputed to be the wealthiest of his subjects, who
bestowed on him vast sums in gold and silver, adding that he still had
plenty to live on from his farms and slaves.
Following up the victory over Persia, the Athenians captured Eion in
Thrace and sold the inhabitants into slavery; then they sailed to
Skyros, enslaved the inhabitants, and replaced them with planters
from Athens. Meanwhile Gelon, tyrant of Syracuse, had kidnapped
the common people of Magara Hyblaia and Euboia, two Greek colo-
nies in Sicily, and sold them for export. In 430 B C, at the outbreak
of the Peloponnesian War, the Athenians captured Argos Amphilo-
chikon and sold the inhabitants into slavery. In 427 B C Thebans
stormed the neighbouring city of Plataiai, executed 200 of the men
and enslaved the women and children. In 421 B C the Athenians
captured Torone and Skione. At Torone they despatched the men to
Athens and enslaved the women and children, and resettled the
territory with planters of Plataiai. In 416 B C they subjugated Melos,
massacred the men, enslaved the women and children, and resettled
the island with planters from Athens. During the campaign in Sicily
an Athenian squadron sailing along the north coast put in at Hykkava,
kidnapped the inhabitants, and sold them at Katane. After the rout
of the Athenians, not less than 7000 prisoners, Athenians and their
allies, were thrown into the quarries, where many of them perished,
and the survivors were sold into slavery.42
This is the account of the Greeks enslaved by the Greeks. As for
alien peoples enslaved by the Athenians, Thomson observes:
We learn from Aristophanes and other Attic sources of his time that
the slave population of Athens was drawn from countries as distant
as Illyria, Thrace, Scythia, the Caucasus, Cappadocia, Phrygia, Lydia,
Caria, Syria, Egypt, and Arabia.43
The industries of Athens ran on slave labour and huge profits were
made by slave-owners by hiring out their slaves.
The same author (Thucydides) records that in 413 B C over 20,000
slaves deserted to the Spartans, who had occupied Dekeleia, most of
them being manual workers. It may be inferred that they

employed in the quarries and mines. We know that in this g
Nikios, leader of the ill-fated Sicilian expedition, owned 10
whom he hired out for work in the mines at an annual return of
about 10 talents. Assuming that he had bought them at an average
price of 168 dr. per head (a figure which may well be too high, since
only the cheapest slaves would be sent to the mines), it may be
reckoned that he received an annual return of at least 35 per cent....
It was evidently a common thing for those who owned only a few
slaves to employ them in this way, receiving from each a return of an
obol or more a day. Apart from the mines, the largest concentration
we hear of at Athens is the arms factory of Kephalos, who employed
120 slaves.44
To what extent agriculture of Athens was dependent on slave labour

can be realised from the fact that even a poor peasant owned several
slaves.
A generation later we hear of a house in town, two country farms,

and a cobbler's shop employing ten or eleven slaves. Large numbers
of slaves were employed in domestic service and also in brothels.
Glotz has estimated that an ordinary Athenian household might
contain from three to twelve slaves. This is no more than a guess,
but it is important to note that even the poorer citizens seem to have
had one or two slaves. Chremylos, in the Wealth of Aristophanes, is
a poor peasant, yet he owns several slaves.45
Class struggles in ancient societies were not recorded as it is done
in modern times-so many strikes, so many man-days lost, so many
workers involved, and so forth. In the slave societies of both East and
West, slaves were beyond the pale of ordinary law, and their masters
held over them the power of life and death. Nevertheless, though the
histories of these times were written by the scribes of these masters, they
were compelled to record the most serious outbreaks of slaves.
In Sicily the spark which kindled the devastating servile war was
struck by a Syrian slave, who simulated the prophetic ecstasy in order
to rouse his fellow slaves to arms in the name of the Syrian goddess.46
Ancient Egypt, one of the most ancient slave states of the world,
saw a mighty uprising of its slaves and other toiling classes.
Towards the end of the Middle Kingdom in Egypt there was a mighty
uprising of the lower classes in which the destitute peasantry and
craftsman joined forces with the slaves.47
Another ancient slave state, China, followed suit.
There were slave uprisings during the course of many centuries in
ancient China. A mighty uprising began in the 18th century B C.
Its participants dyed their eyebrows red as a means of identification,
and thus the movement came to be known as the Red Eyebrow
Rebellion. The rebels were slaves, freemen, craftsmen, fishermen and
small traders. Having gained a victory over the regular troops, they
46 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
moved on to the capital and occupied it. It was only through

effort that the ruling class was able to suppress the uprisin
though the participants were neither sufficiently well-orga
disciplined.48
The leader of the rebellion of Roman slaves, Spartacus, has passed
into legend.
Spartacus, a gladiator, organised a plot of gladiators in the city of
Capua in 74 B C. The plot was discovered and only several dozen
slaves managed to escape from the city to Mount Vesuvius. This
handful of courageous men formed the core of the army of 60,000 men
that fought under Spartacus in the south and north of Italy, defeating
the armies of the slave-owners. As a result of the joint efforts of all
Roman forces, the slave-owners were finally able to defeat the rebels
in 71 B C.49
What according to Dange is the characteristic feature of Indian
slave society, is taken by R B Sharma to be the distinguishing feature of
Indian feudalism.
The feudal mode of production is small-scale production in town and
contryside. Castes and varnas are the typical features of this
society.-5
He transforms his dogma into a universal truth:
The feudal mode of production matures not within a society of slaves
and slave-owners but within the tribe. When the tribes split and
reunite, new nationalities are formed, where a new division of labour
prevails, and the people are not united by ties of blood kinship as in
the tribe. The basic features of feudalism are the same in Europe
and India.51
Thomson deals with this dogma of small-scale production as

follows:
What remains of Ehrenberg's argument ? Simply this: The Athen-
ian economy was based on small-scale production, and therefore
slave labour cannot have played a large part in it. The fallacy is
obvious.
The truth is that, just because they were based on small-scale produc-
tion, the Greek city-states, having grown up in conformity with the
new developments in the productive forces, especially iron-working
and coinage, were able, under the democracy, to insinuate slave
labour surreptitiously into all branches of production, and so to
create the illusion that it was something ordained by nature. It was
then that 'slavery seized on production in earnest'. This was the
culminating point in the evolution of ancient society.52
The only scholar who has gone to the root of the problem of
slavery in ancient India, pressing into his service his vast erudition,
neglecting no source of information available on that subject, was the
late Dr Dev Raj Chanana. The most significant contribution he makes
to our understanding of ancient Indian society is as follows:
We have... on the one hand regions (oligarchies) where an

section of the population is considered as slaves, and, on the
hand, areas (monarchies) where this criterion does not hold.
In the oligarchies... slavery seems to have been, in spite of the
cient data available, due to birth. The oligarchs possess slav
must work for them. This fact is confirmed, above all, in agri
the principal industry (for commerce is not yet sufficiently devel
where the work is entirely carried out by slaves and servant
are not contesting the existence of Brahmin villages (as for e
among the Sakiyas) mentioned in the texts, nor suggesting th
Brahmin peasants were the slaves of the Sakiyas. We are
observing that the supply of foodgrains (rice, barley, etc.
noble families depended on the slaves who had to cultivate th
of their masters.53
Thus Chanana concludes that slavery in the oligarchies was
communal form. R S Sharma, basing himself exclusively on the
writers who legislated for those regions of ancient India wh
Brahminic four-caste system prevailed, considers the valuable fin
Chanana to be untenable.
Nevertheless the major conclusion of the writer that the practice of
regarding a whole section of the population as slaves fits quite well
into the oligarchic system is open to question. The brahminical law-
givers, who were staunch supporters of the monarchical form of
government, laid down in very clear terms that the Sudra
population was meant for the service of the three higher varnas.54
The institutions of slavery in Kerala and in these ancient oligarchies
have points of great similarity, excepting of course that Kerala is
matrilineal while these ancient oligarchies were patriarchal. The other
similarity between Kerala and these ancient oligarchies is that Brahmini-
cal smriti laws were neither applicable to these digarchies, nor are they
applicable to Kerala. Both social systems, in spite of some important
differences, belonged to the non-Brahminical current of this country.
Both these currents, the non-Brahminical and the Brahminical, have
flown side by side throughout Indian history, clashing, interacting and
sublating each other.
P V Kane, History of Dharmasastras, Vol II, P i, pp 381-382.

8 Ibid., pp 172-173.
3 Ibid., pp 381-382; D R Chanana, "The Sanskritist and Indian Society", Enquiry,
Vol II, No 2, 1965.
3a Interview to the Marathi daily Navakala dated January 1, 1969.
4 The Sacred Books of the East, Vol XLIV, p 446.
5 Ibid., Vol XXXIV, pp 223-229.
P V Kane, op. cit., Vol II, P i, p 183.
7 N C Kelkar, Lokamanya Tilakyanche Charitra (Marathi), pp 237, 394-395.
8 Ibid.,p 668.
9 R P Dutt, India Today, p 269.
48 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
6 N C Kelkar, op. cit., pp 77-78; V Pavlov, The Indian Capitalist Class, pp 273-275,
299, 304 if.
" E M S Namboodiripad, Kerala : resterday, Today, and Tomorrow, pp 115-116.
12 Ibid., p 2.
'" B R Ambedkar, Who were the Shudras ?, p XXI.
14 Ibid., pp XIV-XV.
Is S A Dange, India: From Primitive Communism to Slavery, pp XI-XII.
16 Ibid., p XVI.
17 D R Chanana, Slavery in Ancient India, p 3.
18 D D Kosambi, An Introduction to the Study of Indian History, pp 348-349.
't Ibid., p 350.
20 Ibid.
21 Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India, pp 233-237.
22 R S Sharma, Indian Feudalism: c. 300-1200, pp 248-249.
g3 Ibid., pp 251-253.
24 Ibid., pp 246-247, 249-250, 269.
25 Ibid., pp 258-259.
2a D D Kosambi, op. cit., p 350.
27 Irawati Karve, Kinship Organisation in India, p 366.
28 0 R Ehrenfels, Mother-right in India, p 61.
2t Irawati Karve, op. cit., p 11.
?2 Ibid., p 366.
t1 Padmanabha Menon, History of Kerala, Vol II, pp 272-273.
s2 Irfan Habib, op. cit., pp 73-74.
23 J Kashyap, (Ed.), Majjhima-nikaya-pali, II 43-1-3.
34 J Kashyap, (Ed.), Vinaya-pitaka, Mahavagga-pali, VI, 18-30; The Sacred Books of the
East, Vol XXII, p 106.
35 J Kashyap (Ed.), Anguttara-nikaya-pali, I. 14-6.
BB R B Sharma, "Feudalism, Varna, Caste and Nationality", Marxist Miscellany, p 188;
also his Bhasa aur Samaja (Hindi), pp 133, 211-212.
27 Ibid., p 119.
38 F Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, p 117.
39 Ibid., p 112.
40 Ibid., p 146.
41 Ibid., p 117.
42 G Thomson, Studies in Ancient Greek Society, Vol II, pp 197-200.
48 Ibid., p 200.
44 Ibid., p 201.
e5 Ibid., pp 201-202.
46 J G Frazer, Adonis Attis Osiris, Vol I, p 74.
47 An Outline of Social Development, Part I, p 62.
48 Ibid.
4' Ibid,, p 109.
50 R B Sharma, op. cit., p 119.
&1 Ibid.
52 G Thomson, op. cit., Vol II, pp 204-205.
58 D R Chanana, op. cit., pp 23, 43-44.
4 R S Sharma, Light on Early Indian Society and Economy, p 35.

Slavery in Ancient India

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Problem of Slavery in Ancient India

Problem of Slavery in Ancient India

'Manusa manusan eva dasa-bhazena bhunjate;

"Human beings, enslaved by human beings,

-Mahabharata, XII 262 38-39.

DASAS and Sudras were the first ever creators of wealth,

Resurrected Brahminic Hinduism declared through the m

tion in ancient India as exceptionally humane with the avowed intention

ment in the twenties and into the class organisation of t

The non-Brahmin movement was founded and initially led by a

1) The Shudras were one of the Aryan communities of the Solar

2) There was a time when the Aryan society reco

Thus, the Sudras, originally a ruling and exploiting people, were

. . . It was not the labour slavery of the Roman or Gree

We might say that whereas the four Varna system (Varnashrama

If a society in which the main producers are free peasants while

Muslim conquest had broken up the village communes, ex

Kosambi attributes the same causes to the heavy percentage of

slaves in Canara and Kerala:

raised between Surat and Burhanpur (Khandesh) 'support

Agriculture, the decisive branch of production throughout a

One of the greatest modern authorities on ancient Greek history,

Some historians, anxious to present 'the glory that was Greece' in

them being manual workers. It may be inferred that they

To what extent agriculture of Athens was dependent on slave labour

A generation later we hear of a house in town, two country farms,

moved on to the capital and occupied it. It was only through

Thomson deals with this dogma of small-scale production as

We have... on the one hand regions (oligarchies) where an

P V Kane, History of Dharmasastras, Vol II, P i, pp 381-382.

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