DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

338 CONTEMPORARY SURVIVALS [9.7
given the metal and extra payment. Both blacksmith and carpenter
would ask for an assistant for the drudge work, such as operating the
bellows, carrying the heavy logs, &c. The village potter had a pound or
two for seed from each peasant with 1.25 per cent of the grain ; he supplied
the normal earthen pots used for water, rituals, cooking, but charged extra
for special large vessels, say those needed for storing grain. The barber
had lesser perquisites for a normal three tonsures monthly per male head
; the villager has no fancy hairdressing of the type seen in Gupta sculptures,
but still contents himself with a shaven pate with or without some
distinguishing hair-crest. The washerman, the leather-workers, and the
like had similar functions and rewards, with payment in grain, sometimes
in small amounts of labour on the special plots. In spite of different castes,
these craftsmen formed a peculiarly united group with the
collective designation naru-karu ; they did each other’s work without
cavil, or special payments, always stood by each other. Naturally, every
one of these artisans had some special functions at celebrations,
weddings, service of the gods, with minor perquisites. The increasingly
generous medieval grants exempted them explicitly (e.g. EL 5.112) from
the donation to the brahmins, which meant that these grama-karavah
would pay nothing to the new donee, while continuing to receive their
perquisites as before. Thus was settled the basic question that caste
and class had failed to settle. The village priest included in the list was
often not a brahmin, though the astrologer was. The clerk-accountant, like
the goldsmith-money-changer, who decided the rates of exchange
between various coinages before British standardization, might not be
present in every village, though listed among these (traditionally twelve)
village servants. The functions of village porter and guard could be
sh&red by the Camar leather-workers, or the Mahar who had to keep
the village clean. Growth of a particular family caused difficulties
adjusted differently by each particular village, sometimes by emigration,
at others by assignment of additional plots that would add enough to the
income to support the new members of the craftsman’s family.
Two remarks have to be added. Primitive tools and the
dearth of metal made a long apprenticeship necessary. The