Question

Explain the economic social and cultural conditions under the mauryas

Answer 1

Answer:

The social and economic factors play a decisive role on the political and administrative structure of a country. The Mauryan Empire was also an out­come of these socio-economic developments. We get enough information on the social and economic life from the Greek accounts, Kautilya’s Arthashastra and other literary sources of the period.

Social Conditions:

The state was required to safeguard the social order based on the Varna and Aasram system. In this respect the standpoint of the Arthasastra is not much different from that of the Dharmasastras. But Kautilya is not as rigid on the Varna system as the earlier Smriti writers. It is remarkable that the Arthashastra refers to troops recruited from all the four Varnas.

Still more sig­nificant is the fact that the Arthashastra looked upon the Shudras as an Aryan community, which is distinguished from non-Aryan com­munity. The text forbids the sale or pledging of a minor belonging to any of the four varnas, adding that- the may sell or pledge their children, but that no Arya shall be made a slave. In the Arthashastra an attempt is made to assimi­late the masses of settled communities in the Aryan fold.

Greek and Latin sources refer to caste system in India. The majority of these references may be traced largely to the account of Megasthenes, who states that Indian society was divided into seven classes. These he lists as philosophers, farmers, soldiers, herdsmen, artisans, magistrates and councillors. The ‘Classes’ mentioned above ap­pear to have been economic than social.

By philosophers doubtless Brahmins are meant. The emphasis laid on endogamy and hereditary occupation clearly implies that Megas­thenes did mean to describe the ‘caste system’. Either he did not hear of the theory of the four varnas or of mixed castes which loom so large in our Smriti works or he was carried away by a desire, natural in a Hellenistic Greek, to establish a similarity between Egypt and India in social organisation.

The agriculturists formed the bulk of the population, and Megasthenes observed that their avocation was so clearly defined (by the rules of caste) that they were seen pursuing intellectual classes, the ‘philosophers’ of the Greek writers, commanded respect in the court and society by their learning, integrity, and readiness to serve the king and the people in various way.

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