MANORIAL CRAFTSMEN.

(Also for two other carpenters, three-quarters of a share each; and for four tailors, one and a half share each, and for two other tailors, one share each).

But besides the royal and religious manors, and their tenants, craftsmen included, there were also manors in the possession of chieftains and officials, held by them either for life or office, or for ever; granted in the first instance for public service in peace or war. So it came about that just as there were craftsmen working always for the king at court, or bringing in to court the work done for the king at home, so at the local chieftain's manor-house were to be seen craftsmen working for him patiently and contentedly, receiving only their meals, while their families cultivated the lands for which service was due to the chief; and amongst the tenants of the chief's demesne, these craftsmen were by no means the least important or the least honoured.

I give one instance of such a tenant's holding and services. At Pāldeniya, in Ceylon, a tenant held land of something over an acre in extent; for this he had to pay eightpence annually as a fee; to appear twice a year and give a piece of silversmith's work worth 3s. 4d.; to work at the manor-house thirty days a year, being supplied with food and charcoal; to accompany the Lord of the Manor on important occasions twice a year.

VILLAGES OF CRAFTSMEN.

The craftsmen in Ceylon were to a great extent associated in villages; that is to say, a whole village or manor would be sometimes entirely a village of craftsmen. In this we trace a survival of old conditions. In the Sūci Jātaka, for example, we get a picture of just such a village of craftsmen :

"The Bodhisatta was born in the kingdom of Kāsi, in a smith's family, and when he grew up became skilled in the craft. His parents were poor. Not far from their village was another smith's village of a thousand houses. The principal smith of the thousand was a favourite of the king, rich, and of great substance. People came from the villages round to have razors, axes, ploughshares and goads made."*

In another Jātaka, the Alinacitta Jātaka, we read that there was

"once upon a time a village of carpenters not far from the city, in which five hundred carpenters lived. They would go up the river in a vessel, and enter the forest, where they would shape beams and planks for house-building, and put together the frame-work of one-storey and two-storey houses, numbering all the pieces from the mainpost onwards; these then they brought down to the river bank, and put them all aboard; then rowing down stream *"The Jataka," Ed. E. B. Cowell, 1895-1908, No. 387.

VILLAGES OF CRAFTSMEN.

again, they would build houses to order as it was required of them; after which, when they received their wage, they went back again for more materials for the building, and in this way they made their livelihood."+

The Pāli Jātakas supply us with a considerable amount of information regarding the position of craftsmen in early Buddhist times. The most striking features of the social organisation of the craftsmen at this time are: the association of craftsmen in villages, the hereditary character of the craft, and the importance of the Elder, or master-craftsman. These conditions, like so many other early Buddhist social features, have persisted in medieval and even until modern times in Ceylon, where we find, for example, smiths' villages and potters' villages, where all or nearly all the inhabitants belong to one occupational caste. At the same time, it is important to distinguish the social significance of the craftsmen thus associated in villages, and that of the "village craftsman " proper, who is the sole representative of his calling, and is the endowed servant of an agricultural community. In the one case, the purchaser has to seek the maker of wares in his own home; in the other, the craftsman is himself permanently estab

† Loc. cit., No. 156. For potters, see the Kumbhakara Jataka.

SOCIAL STATUS.

lished amongst his patrons. In late mediaval Ceylon the two conditions existed side by side.

Besides the craftsmen thus organised in extraurban communities of their own, we have, on the one hand, craftsmen and merchants (principally the latter) living in the city, in their own streets and quarters; and, on the other, craftsmen of no particular caste, or considered as belonging to despised castes. Thus, wheelwrights and carriage builders belonged to the inferior or lesser castes with which they are classified in the Suttavibhanga, together with the Candala, Nesada, and Pukkusa castes (lesser castes, hinajati), while the basket makers, potters, weavers, leather-workers and barbers are said to be of the lesser trades (hina sippa). The distinction in thought between caste and trade became much less clear in later times; in early Buddhist times caste was less defined and crystalised than it afterwards became, and there was no division of Sūdras so-called.

All workers in wood were comparatively low in social rank, the joiner, however, naturally much less so than the workers in cane, as is the case also at the present day in Ceylon. It should be observed that it was not handicraft itself that gave a low social rank to certain groups of craftsmen, but rather the fact that these groups consisted essentially of aboriginal non-Aryan races practising crafts that

51

SOCIAL STATUS.

were known to them before the arrival of the Aryans (weaving, pottery, basket-making).

It would be a very great mistake, however, to suppose that the social status of the artist or craftsman was invariably low. This certainly cannot have been the case in the finest period of Indian art, when the national culture found expression at least as completely in art as in literature or music. As we have seen, the kammalar in Southern India claim a social status equal or superior to that of Brahmans; and in Ceylon the position of the superior craftsmen, often the grantees of whole villages, and served by tenants and villeins of their own, was, though technically, and as regards the essential point of intermarriage inferior, in other ways considerably superior to that of the European craftsman at the present day. The skilful and noted craftsman was a person to be approached with gifts, and treated with respect on account of his skill and learning.

Just the same thing is indicated in that interesting episode related in the Katha-kosa, where a prince named Amaradatta is described as falling in love with a beautiful statue, and weeping and complaining to his friend Mitrānanda. "At this moment a native of the place, a merchant, Ratnasāgara by name, came into that temple. The merchant asked,