An alternative social scenario: Sharing wealth

Beyond Birth Resources and Status

If you recall the economic relations discussed in Chapter 2, you will realize that various social actors emerged across the subcontinent. These included slaves, landless agricultural laborers, hunters, fisherfolk, pastoralists, peasants, village headmen, craftspersons, merchants, and kings. Their social positions were closely tied to their access to economic resources. In this section, we will delve into the social implications of resource access in specific contexts....

Gendered access to property

Consider first a critical episode in the Mahabharata. During the long-drawn rivalry between the Kauravas and the Pandavas, Duryodhana invited Yudhisthira to a game of dice. Deceived by his rival, Yudhisthira staked everything he owned, including his gold, elephants, chariots, slaves, army, treasury, kingdom, the property of his subjects, his brothers, and finally himself, losing all. He even staked their common wife Draupadi and lost her too....

Varna and access to property

According to the Brahmanical texts, another criterion, apart from gender, for regulating access to wealth was varna. As we discussed earlier, the only “occupation” prescribed for Shudras was servitude, while men of the first three varnas were assigned a variety of occupations. If these provisions were indeed implemented, the wealthiest men would have been the Brahmanas and the Kshatriyas. This aligns somewhat with social realities, as evident from descriptions of priests and kings in other textual traditions. Kings are almost invariably depicted as wealthy, while priests are also generally portrayed as affluent, although occasional depictions of poor Brahmanas exist....

An alternative social scenario: Sharing wealth

We’ve been looking at situations where people got their status based on how much money they had. But there were other cases too. Sometimes, people who shared what they had were respected, while those who kept everything for themselves were looked down upon. This was true in ancient Tamilakam, a place with many chiefdoms about 2,000 years ago. The chiefs there supported poets and singers who praised them. The poems in the Tamil Sangam collections show us that even though there were rich and poor people, those who had a lot were expected to share it with others....

Beyond Birth Resources and Status- FAQs

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