UPSC History The vedic period - Early vedic period, Later vedic period and sangam period NCERT Extracts - Sequence of Social Changes

 Tribal and Pastoral Phase

• For the history of society from the time of the Rig Veda onwards we can also use written texts. They tell us that the Rig Vedic society despite its good familiarity with agriculture was primarily pastoral.
• People were semi-nomadic, and their chief possessions consisted of cattle and horses.
• Cattle were considered to be synonymous with wealth. Wars were fought for the sake. cattle and therefore, the main duty of the king was to protect the cows.
• Although artisans, peasants, priests and warriors appear even in the earlier portions of the Rig Veda, society as a whole was tribal, pastoral, semi-nomadic and egalitarian.
• Cattle and women slaves were generally given as gifts.
• The Rig Vedic society did not have a serving order in the form of the shudras.

Agriculture and the Origin of Upper Orders

• When the Vedic people moved from Afghanistan and Punjab to western Uttar Pradesh they became mostly agriculturists.
• But the later Vedic peasant could not contribute to the rise of trade and towns; this feature became prominent in the age of the Buddha.                       
• The later Vedic society did not know the use of metal money.
• The Vedic communities had established neither a taxation system nor a professional army. There did not exist collectors of taxes apart from the kinsmen of the prince.
• The tribal militia of the pastoral society was replaced by the peasant militia of agricultural society. The vis or the tribal peasantry formed the sena or the armed host. The peasantry in later Vedic times was called bala (force).

Varna System of Production and Government

• The use of iron tools for crafts and cultivation created conditions for the transformation of the comparatively egalitarian Vedic society into a fully agricultural and class-divided social order in the sixth century B.C.                                
• Large territorial states resulted in the formation of the Magadhan empire.
• All this was possible because of the iron ploughshare, sickles and other tools.
• The new technique and the use force enabled some people to possess large stretched of land which needed a good number of slaves and hired labourers.
• Slaves and wage-earners engaged in cultivation became a regular feature in the age of the Buddha. The king appointed tax-collectors to assess and collect taxes.
• But it was also important to convince people of the necessity of obeying the raja, paying him taxes and offering gifts to the priests. For this purpose the vama system was devised.
• The vama system authorised the kshatriya to collect taxes from the peasants and tolls from traders and artisans, which enabled him to pay his priests and employees.
• The rate of payment and economic privileges differed according to the vama to which a person belonged. Thus a brahmana was required to pay two percent interest on loans, a kshatriya three percent, a vaishya our percent, and a shudra five percent.

Social Crisis and Rise of Landed Classes

• In the first and second centuries A.D. the Gangetic plains and the adjacent area was marked by bumping trade and urbanism. In this phase art flourished as never before.
• Around the third century A.D. the old social formation was afflicted with a deep crisis.
• The crisis is clearly reflected in the description of the Kali age in those portions of the Puranas which belong to the third and fourth centuries A.D.
• The Kali age is characterised by Vamasankara, i.e. intermixture of vamas or social orders, which implies that the vaishyas and the shudras (peasants, artisans and labourers) either refused to perform producing unction assigned to them or else the vaishya peasants declined to pay taxes and the shudras refused to make their labour available.
• On account of this situation the epics emphasise the importance of danda or coercive measures, and Manu lays down that the vaishyas and shudras should not be allowed to deviate from their duties.
• The kings appear as upholders and restorers of the vama system.
• The state found it convenient to assign land revenues directly to priests, military chiefs, administrators, etc., for their support.
• These beneficiaries were also empowered to maintain law and order.
• New and expanding kingdoms wanted more and more taxes. These could be obtained from the tribal backward areas provided the tribals adopted new methods of agriculture.
• The problem was tackled by granting land in the tribal areas to enterprising brahmanas.
• The most significant consequence of land grants was the emergence of a class of landlords living on the produce of the peasants.
• This prepared the ground in about the fifth-sixth centuries A.D. for a new type of social formation which can be called feudal.