DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

98 SLAVE VERSUS HELOT [4.4
cattle. The RV. bards sang occasionally of dasas as well as cattle and
horses allotted by the king- The word pasu, which applies generally
to beasts and particularly to cattle (which are to be tied up) is once
applied to human beings also (RV. “3.62.14), which mentions twofooted
and four-footed pasus, much as the Greeks used andrapodon
for slaves compared to the beasts tetrapodon. Yet the dasa was not a
chattel slave, because individual property among the Aryans had not
developed sufficiently, nor extensive commodity and surplus production
for trade. Inasmuch as the cattle were herded in common and fields
very often tilled in common, the use of the dasa as common tribal property
is quite logical. It would be the assignment—by tribal authority—of one or
more dasas to labour for a particular sub-group which was to give
rise to private property, and to family groups which held that property—
but no longer in common. It may be supposed that these dasas were
the descendants of the Indus settlers who had provided the surplus for
Indus cities, being persuaded thereto by some method other than force,
say religion. This was the beginning of the caste system in India. The
word used here varna means colour, and is justified as the Dasas or
Dasyus in general are spoken of as of dark colour; the Aryans had a
colour of their own, white, or at any rate lighter.
These Indian developments after the Aryan conquest would be all
the more natural, if slavery in the Indus valley had been similar to that
in Mesopotamia. There, we find two classes of slaves. The first, “ whether
they were (originally) prisoners of war, defaulting debtors, or even born
into slavery— could escape from their status and free themselves from
chattel-hood bv three means : They could buy their freedom with their
peculittm ; they could be ransomed by their kin ; or they could be adopted
by their master”. If such a slave of either sex married a free person,
the offspring of the union were free.* This is preciselv as we find it
in the Arthasastra 3.13. On the other hand, the Sirqutu temple slaves
wfere a caste even when they traded and controlled property, for
* For this, and the quotation, I. Mendelsohn : Slavery in the ancient Near East (New
YoVk), p. 56, p. 104; for the ttruqiitu, R. P. Dougherty : The Sirautu of Babylonian
deities, Yale Or. Res. Series 5/2, New Haven. 1923. For the incidence of slavery, I.
Mendelsohn in BASOR 89.25-20.