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Discussion contribution on:

S t a g e s o f S o c i a l D e v e l o p m e n t

Da

V

id Cra ig

Several contributors to this discussion have

fallen back on guesses as to the extent of slavery

in ancient India, China, and elsewhere. But a fair

amount of facts in this field have already been

assembled, particularly in

Slavery in Ancient India

by Dev Raj Chanana (People 's Publ ishing House .

Bombay, 1960). This scholar finds that slavery

was widespread in almost every region of India

in ancient t imes, and this was probably typical of

the East , The economy of Hindu and Buddhist

temples in Cam bodia was dom inate d by slave

labour, and the Eastern temple , then as now. was

a major landowner. Ceylonese monaster ies spent

large sums on mainta ining slaves; in Chinese

Turkestan Buddhist monks owned slaves and

bought or exchanged them as need arose; in

China the monastery slaves had the job of plough

ing the hilly and virgin areas, and were sent out

to help peasant t i l lers (pp. 14. 85-6).

Comrades Jardine (July Marxism Today) and

Griffiths (December) doubt whether slave-labour

ever dom inated agricul tura l product ion any

where . I t depends wha t you mean by dom inated .

But Dev Raj points out that in one of the big

towns, Mohenjo-daro, of the Indus (Bronze Age)

civilisation, rows of barracks, presumably living

quarters for slaves, were found near the granaries

and the p 'a t forms where r ice was husked wi th

pestle and mortar. This was a society ruled by a

governor who lived in a citadel and controlled

the granaries. The slaves were therefore key

labour in the key indust ry of that econom y. And

that civilisation was very likely identical in social

organ isation with the civilisation of M esop otam ia

(pp.

16-17).

Gifts of Slaves

Evidently i t is impossible to assess the propor

tion of slaves to free workers in ancient India.

But num bers record ed are often larg e: gifts of

fifty or a hundred slaves extorted by the invaders

(Assyrian or Aryan) who overran the Indus area

in the later Bronz e Ag e; 10,000 given by a king

to a priest in the period between the Indus and

Buddhist epochs; a harem including over 15,000

belonging to a prince of the Buddhist period;

hundre ds han ded over as par t of a royal dow ry ;

700 belonging to a governmental minister .

It is true tha t the slaves work w as often m ar

ginal to the economy. They might be wet-nurses,

concubines, menia l ki tchen workers. In a middle-

class household (that of an owner-cultivator or

small merchant), they might carry food to the

til lers in the fields or be hired out to other house

holds when work at home was slack (pp. 47-51).

But they a lso took part in product ive work:

guarding merchants ' caravans (and loot ing the

carav ans of rivals), prosp ecting for gold, and

of course ti l l ing for the monasteries. At certain

periods, slave labour was of key importance in

reorganising the economy. After the creat ion of

the Magadhan empire (which numbered Asoka

among i t s rulers) , the sta te had to ra ise money to

pay for the new centralised administration, and it

i s probable that pr isoner-of-war slaves were used

lo reclaim new land for the imperial farms. Again,

in the Mauryan period (from the fourth century

B.C.) when the empire in the Ganges valley

reached i t s most developed form, great numbers

of slaves were employed to raise money for the

new complex state, working as prostitutes in the

many state brothels and as labourers in the state

workshops and farms and in the mines (pp. Si,

100-1).

The many forms of traific in slaves described

by Dev Raj show how slavery penetra ted into

every corner of society. In certain closed

oligarchies, a slave's children were automatically

slaves. Elsewhere slaves were bought, given in

dowries and presents, inheri ted, taken over a long

with e lephants, and used to pay gambl ing debts

(pp. 34-46). P risoners -of-w ar, i .e. defeated enemies

who had formal ly surrendered, were usual ly

enslaved. So widespread an econom ic se t -up

surely deserves to count as one of the criteria in

the definition of a stage of social development.

Indeed the basic causes of the growth of slavery

are such that i t was highly likely to arise in all

civilisations. Slavery is the social product of the

domest ica t ion of animals and the cul ture of

cereals. Cereals, unlike meat and fruit , can be

stored. Thus Dev Raj points out ( taking evidence


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MARXISM

TODA Y, JANliARV 1* 62

f rom the ep ic s , t he Ram ayan a and Ma haba ra t a )

that hunt ing communi t ies had no slaves, whereas

cereals afforded the possibili ty of nou rishin g a

growing population and a society living by such

means of product ion can accept st rangers, a t least

as slaves. On the other hand this very storage

gives bi r th to inequal i ty in the communi ty wi th

the possibili ty of debt-slavery and of slavery for

nour ishm ent , e tc . (p . 29) .

Social Relations

It is also clear that slavery involved quite

different social as well as economic relations from

other kinds of labour . Al though owners were

piously exhorted to treat slaves decently, e.g., by

the Buddha, a man was not punished for

mutilating or kill ing a slave any more than for

dama ging or dest roying one of his tools. The

slave-til ler was a sheer beast of burden with no

rights whasoever; and there i s one terr ible slory

of a slave woman in Nepal despairing as one of

her chi ldren af ter another was sold by the man

who owned her (pp. 54, 147-8).

Dev Raj emphasises that ancient-Indian slavery

differed from Graeco-Roman in that nowhere in

the Indian economy were slaves the only or the

overwhelming type of labour (p. 110) . India was

so large and (in the Ganges and vSindh valleys that

were cradles of i ts civilisation) so ferti le every

where that the ruling class did not control all

sources of food and therefore could not bring all

the people under di rec t exploi ta t ion. Water was

so plentiful tha t the masses could irrigate their

crops wi thout need for big i r r igat ion schemes

such as laid the basis for the grain surplus and

hence the rul ing-c lass in Egypt and Mesopotamia . '

The polit ical unification of so huge a country

could never last for long, and during the frequent

periods of conquest and anarchy the r ights of

property, inc luding the ownership of slaves, dis

appe ared. Th e semi-t ropical forest was so wide

spread that runaway slaves could easi ly take

refuge in i t and live as food-collectors (hunters

and fishermen) or as brigands (pp. 111-3).

Thus the physical conditions of civiUsation differ

so mu ch that any broad type of econom y, though

genuinely typical, is bound to differ greatly in

specific character from region to region. But we

should not allow this to blunt the usefulness of

the general tool that the theory of the successive

types of society puts in our hands.

Slavery in Ancient India is typical of the new

pioneering studies of Eastern cul ture by Eastern

Marxists which must in future be one of the

first sources for l ight on the history of the

formerly colonia l peoples. There is a lso

Debipra sad Cha t topadhyaya ' s

Lokayata

(P.P.H. ,

Bombay), a study of the charvaka or ancient-

Ind ian ma te r i a l i s t ph i losophya work wor thy to

stand beside Chi lde 's or Thomson's as an outstand

ing piece of Marxist thought that br ings fac ts

from every field of historical studies to the

explanat ion of the given cul tura l theme. The

appearance of t l iese books from India i s indeed a

st r iking confi rmat ion of Thomson's view that the

spread of Marxism in India would throw up solu

tions of i ts hitherto insoluble historical problems.

-

First Philosophers,

p. 7.

' V. Gord on Childe, What Happened in History

(Pelican, 1954), 116-7, George Thomson. The First

Philosophers (1955), 74-6; Childe. 92-6. Thomson,

79-82.

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