DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

10.5] CUMULATIVE FEUDAL GROWTH 383
The strong feudal state not only destroyed the old type of village
ownership, but also destroyed its own basis by not regularising the
new form of ownership, or giving it ‘security and continuity. The
bourgeois state would also dispossess a land-owner for non-payment of
revenue, but with more ceremony, and more profit.
The apparently senseless changes of dynasty, increasing raids
(specially by the Marathas), and increasingly severe famines had always
one systematic cumulative effect, namely the growth of a feudal landowner
class. Not only had they the economic power to survive periodic natural
disasters, but also the force to annex the best lands for private farming
by paid or slave labour ; this was, incidentally, the sole function of
slavery in the means of production. House slaves were for prestige
and ostentation ; but the most difficult lands where tenants could not
be induced to settle were cultivated by the landlords with slaves who
had been purchased for cash but were usually paid by allotment of their
own plots, in addition to some food allowance from the landlord’s
stock of grain. This peculiar type of serf-slavery was rather uncommon.
Slavery had quite heterogeneous origins. Many tribal people had fallen
into servitude in times of famine and one step away were the tribal castes
or poorest cultivators who had at the same time incurred a debt which
could not be repaid by generation after generation. This accounts for the
lowest retainer castes, such as the Cheruman in Malabar, the Koltas of
Jaunsar-Bawar in the Himalayan foothills near Almora, the Hills of
Gujarat, and the like. The process of famine-slavery and debt-slavery
was known to the ancient smrtis (Narada 5.24-6. Ms. 8.415). For that
matter, the Ms. princeling could easily be modified into a feudal baron, or
great feudal landlord. Sometimes, the slave was farmed out and the Wre
taken by the owner. On the whole, however, large-scale slavery did not
pay. There was no law against runaway slaves, no redress except naked
force used by the particular landlord or tax-farmer; often the absconder
was sheltered by some other member of the feudal aristocracy. Some
slaves lost their caste by servitude, others preserved it; some new
castes were formed out of slavery and intermarriage. The endless diversity
is not worth study except for remnants of bygone ages.