Material Growth and the ruling class

The revolutionized military equipment due to the use of iron weapons flourished the political significance of warriors in contrast to that of priests. A claim of equal position in other fields was naturally aroused by them. There is evidence of the conflict between the interests of brahmanas and kshatriyas. This clarifies the kshatriya origin of Gautama and Mahavira to some textent, and also the fact that the first place is granted to the kshatriyas and the second to the brahmanas according to the older Buddhist texts. The maintenance of the kshatriya rulers was possible only by regular payment of taxes. It has been justified by both the Buddhist and brahmanical texts of the age of the Buddha that the royal share of the peasant’s produce on the ground that the king gives protection to the people. But Digha Nikaya, the Buddhist canonical text is considered to be the earliest Indian source to give a reasoned justification for the origin of the kshatriya ruling class by painting in detail a state of misery brought to an end through the establishment of the kshatriya rule. The kshatriya is known as the protector of fields which were occupied by individuals in north-eastern India in the age of Buddha.^[1] According to the Buddha, one of the five fruits of wealth^[2] include the ability to pay taxes and is meant to serve the political order based on regular taxes.

The time gap between the arrival of substantial settlements based on iron share cultivation and paddy transplantation in the middle Gangetic zone on the one hand and the social and religious changes on the other is very difficult. The texts which include the Buddha’s teachings are assigned to fifth and fourth centuries B.C. and constitute the original Buddhsm irrespective of taking into account the exact date of Gautama Buddha. Most portions of the suttanipata belong to pre-Maurya times and is an evidence of the Buddhist rejection of the sacrifice of animal and the accent on non-killing of cattle. But the Vinay Pitaka enables us to evaluate the lay following of the Buddha and the social dimensions of recruitment in the Buddhist order which have been a work of c. 300 B.C. or of Maurya times. The historical records of the Vinayas do not exist beyond the times of the Vaishali council^[3], which was summoned 100 or 110 years after the death of the Buddha or around 386 B.C. or 376 B.C.^[4] The Vinaya and some texts anterior to it where in we get the socio-economic nature of Buddhism shows its clear linkages with the type of material life that developed in the middle Gangetic basin. The doubts concerning the proficient use of iron in this zone have not been counted before c. 300 B.C. or so. The discussion made by us concerning the socio-economic facts of Buddhism are found in the texts which are not much older than c. 300 B.C. A difference of about a century or so can be guessed between what happened in the material and the religious fields. Buddhism can be considered to be as a product of material milieu created by the second phase of the iron age. In the negative sense, the social and religious practices were undermined by it which further hampered the growth of the new material culture and in the positive sense, it helped a detribalized class-based and state-based socio-economic formation that was reared during the second iron phase.