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GUILDS IN BUDDHIST INDIA.

absconds, or gets into prison, fetters (or) chains, we all these aforesaid persons, are bound to supply ghi for burning the holy lamp as long as the sun and moon endure." This inscription ends with the name of a local merchant, who may have been the donor of the lamp.

The origin of the guild has not yet been worked out in any detail. With regard to the existence of actual guilds in early Buddhist times, the Jātakas give us but little information. The craftsmen associated in villages no doubt had their own laws and customs, tantamount to guild regulations, but of guilds in the great cities we hear little. In the Nigrodha Jataka, however, it is stated that to the king's treasurer was given also the judgeship of "all the guilds " (sabbaseninam). "Before that,"

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says the Jātaka, no such office existed, but there was this office ever after." In the Uraga Jataka, a guild quarrel (senibhandana) is mentioned, between two men in the king's service, who were heads of guilds (seni-pamukha).* Such evidence belongs, however, to the period of redaction of the Jātakas rather than to the times described in them. There can be no doubt, however, that at least the germ of the guild system existed at a very early time in the form of co-operative associations within the

*But in Rouse's translation of this Jataka, the quarrel is between two soldiers, not guild masters.

EARLY REFERENCES.

merchant community.*

The merchant (setthi)

himself was at a very early time a man of much wealth and social importance. He was the principal representative of the householder (grahapati) class, the typical burgher in the great town. The word setthi in some cases seems to imply a private trader, in others, a representative of commerce, holding an official position at court.† Many such merchants were evidently exceedingly wealthy; of one we are told that goods were brought to him in a caravan of no less than 500 wagons. But any detailed enquiry into the position of the trader, as a middleman, and not himself a craftsman, would be exceeding the limits of the subject of the present volume.

In slightly later literature the existence of guilds is more clearly indicated. In the Dharma sutras it is stated that the farmers, merchants, cowherds and money-lenders had bye-laws of their own. applicable to their communities, and having due legal validity. In later law books, guilds (sreni) are often mentioned, e.g., Manu, viii. 41, where it is stated that the king must examine and establish the laws of the guilds. Likewise in the epics, the guilds are recognised as an important factor in industrial and political life.†

*Fick, “Indien zu Buddha's Zeit," pp. 172-177. ↑ Fick, loc. cit., p. 172.

CHAPTER III.

THE FEUDAL CRAFTSMAN IN INDIA AND CEYLON.

LET us turn to look at the Indian craftsman as the feudal servant of the king, a baron, or

of a religious foundation.

In the so-called dark

ages of the East and of the West, the patronage of art and craft by kings was a matter of course, and no court was complete, lacking the state craftsmen. He would have seemed a strange king who knew nought of art and craft, and cared less. Even Alfred the Great, amidst all the cares of protecting his troubled land, found time to care for craftsmanship and craftsmen, especially goldsmiths, and we are all familiar with the Alfred jewel that bears the legend," Alfred had me made "; and this interest in jewellery reminds us of the Eastern proverb, that asks "who but the Raja and the goldsmith should know the value of the jewel?" Still earlier evidence of the traditional royal interest in craft in the West may be gathered from such books as the "Mabinogion." When Kilhwch rode to Arthur's hall and sought admittance, "I will not open," said the porter. "Wherefore not?" asked Kilhwch. "The knife is in the meat, and the drink is in the horn," said the porter, "and there is revelry in Arthur's

KINGS' CRAFTSMEN. ‹

hall, and none may enter therein but the son of a king of a privileged country, or a craftsman bringing his craft."

So, too, in ancient Ireland we find it said to a similar applicant at the king's door, " no one without an art comes into Tara."*

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Still later on, in the dark ages, we find, as one may learn from Professor Lethaby's Westminster Abbey and the King's Craftsmen," that the royal masons, carpenters, smiths and painters were attached to the palace as much as a matter of course as the chief butler and cook, and that under the chief master-mason or carpenter a body of skilled journeymen was permanently engaged. We are wiser now, of course, and know that only the chief butler and cook are essential to the royal dignity; the craftsmen have gone, and only the butler, the cook and the clerk remain. Perhaps it is only worldly wisdom after all.

The royal craftsman in the East, however, is our immediate interest, and to him we must return. We find him well established at a very early date. In the reign of Asoka (275-231 B.C.),

"Artisans were regarded as being in a special manner devoted to the royal service, and capital punishment was inflicted on any person who

* In “Lugh of the Long Hand," version in Lady Gregory's "Gods and Fighting Men," 1904, p. 17.

KINGS' CRAFTSMEN.

impaired the efficiency of a craftsman by causing the loss of a hand or an eye. Ship-builders and armour-makers were salaried public servants, and were not permitted, it is said, to work for any private person. The woodcutters, carpenters, blacksmiths and miners were subject to special supervision.”*

Upon this subject of the regulation of the crafts I shall have more to say later.

Passing over a millenium and a half without endeavouring to trace the royal craftsman's footsteps one by one, we come to the time of the great Moghal Emperors in the North. From the Ain-iAkbari or Institutes of the Emperor Akbar, one of the three great rulers in whose mind the conception of a united India had taken shape, and one of the greatest rulers that the world has seen, we are told of the skilled Indian and foreign craftsmen maintained in the palaces of the Moghals.

Akbar had in his service many artists, to the end that they "might vie with each other in fame, and become eminent by their productions." Weekly he inspected the work of every artist, and gave due reward for special excellence. He also personally superintended the making of the weapons forged and decorated in the armoury. He was very fond of shawls, of which many kinds were made * Vincent Smith, "Early History of India," p. 120.

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