DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

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fisheries, reservoirs, trade in vegetable produce, the king would set up trade
routes and market centres.
These sudra settlers were enticed from other places, or deported from the
king’s own overpopulated cities. This should explain the 150,000 people
who were apavudhe during Ashoka’s Kalinga war. The system could not
have originated with the Mauriyans, hence must belong to the late Sisunagar
and Nanda period, and been most extensively practical along the river, rather
than along the old road past Himalayan foothills. Thus Megasthenes would
see mostly crown sita lands if he went to Patna by the logical route, down
the Ganges, the sudra-karsakas were his placid georgoi. A rigid system of
costly passports, (Arth. 2.34) and the frontier guards at every janapada made
it impossible for the cultivator to leave his district for his not emigrating
except to another tax-paying village.
In fact, there was no escape for the proletarian from a crown village. He
could become an ascetic only after passing the age of procreation, and
distribution of his property to other producers; otherwise he would be fined.
Anyone taking to ascetism without provision for his wife and dependents
was punished, as also anyone converting a woman to ascetism. This concerns
only the sita villages, as nuns had existed from the days of the Buddha. No
ascetic other than one who had taken to individual renunciation (was not a
proselyter) was allowed in the royal villages. No association or grouping of
any sort was permitted except of sajata kinship groups derived from the
semi-nomadic grama of Yajurvedic days, or temporary bands for public
works (such as dykes, or reservoirs). No public gathering place for relaxation
or building for amusement was permitted. “Actors, dancers, singers,
musicians, raconteurs, bards are not to disturb the work. From the
helplessness of the village there comes concentration of the men upon their
fields, hence increase of taxes, labour supply, wealth and grain.” (Arth 2.1).
The idiocy of village life was carefully fostered as a state economic measure;
for the increased wealth which was hardly of any use to the villager found
its way into the hands of the state, which supplied him with cattle, tools
utensils on its own terms and charged heavily for irrigation or any special
service.