On the other hand, agricultural production seems to have more than kept pace with the growing population. The use of heavy ploughs drawn by eight oxen or more, the widespread adoption of rice and the development of irrigation are all well attested by 500 BC: ‘Buddhist texts describe rice and its varieties with as much detail as the Rig Vedic hymns refer to cows.’10 It has been suggested that the wetter soils of northern Bihar were so unsuitable for barley that only some understanding of wet rice-cultivation would have made them worth settling. The effort of clearing such lands and building embankments for water retention would still have been arduous; yet it paid off. By the sixth-fifth centuries BC the Lichhavi and other republics north of the Ganga would together represent a formidable power well capable of meeting a challenge from their monarchical neighbours, notably the Koshala/Kashi kingdom in the south-west and, south-east across the Ganga, the aggressive new dynasty of Magadha.
More intensive farming regimes also made for new attitudes towards the land. The grazier’s seasonal parameters had given way to the fixed dimensions of the ploughman’s field. Anchored to a dependable supply of water and labour, the grama grew into a village of mud-brick housing which was home both to families of clan descent and to a growing band of socially differentiated dependants and subordinates. From the village there now spread a quilt of carefully supervised plots within a network of ditchings. The common rights of ownership typical of a pastoral society were being edged out by local initiative and the use of subject labour. Quick to claim the fields which they had reclaimed, the grhpatis, or heads of households, pressed for title to land, labour and water as the best way to meet their obligation of supplying the livestock and, increasingly, the grain needed for the leadership’s ritual sacrifices. Imperceptibly terms like bali, which originally meant an offering intended for the clan-chief’s sacrificial disposal, came to denote a fixed and regular contribution which, when subject to record and assessment, duly became a tax. Similarly bhaga, originally a ‘share’ of the spoils of war exacted by the chief, came to signify a tax on produce, usually of one sixth.
As cultivable land came to be considered as familial property, so the wider but ill-defined janapada, the ancestral territory of a particular clan, assumed fixed boundaries. The Gangetic basin’s abundant rivers and riverbeds made convenient frontiers for the newer janapada in the east. Buddhist texts list sixteen maha-janapada, or major janapada, as having been extant in the sixth century BC. They extended from Gandhara and Kamboja in the north-west of what is now Pakistan to Avanti and Chedi in central India and Anga and Kalinga in Bengal and Orissa. Soon to be known as rashtra, or ‘kingdoms’, many still retained their tribal names; Kuru was still the land of the Kuru, and Malla of the Malla. But allegiance was now dictated less by the horizontal bonds of kinship and more by the vertical ties of economic and social dependency. Instead of being focused on tribe or clan, loyalty was increasingly to the territory itself, to the individual or body which had sovereignty over it, and to the town or city where that power resided.
CITY AND CASTE
India’s second urbanisation (the first being that of the long-forgotten Harappans) may be attributed partly to this process of state-formation and to the institutions it engendered, and partly to the surplus generated by the new agricultural regime pioneered in the east. The post-Vedic texts, of course, would have us believe that towns and cities had dotted the land for aeons. But it is only from C600 BC that archaeology lends any weight to their optimistic imagery. Earthen ramparts of about this period have been uncovered at Ujjain (in Malwa), Varanasi and Kaushambi (the post-Hastinapura capital of the Kuru, west of Allahabad). These ramparts have ‘civic dimensions and must have enclosed real cities’.11 Other sites like that of Sravasti, the post-Ayodhya capital of Koshala, and Rajgir, the Magadha capital, seem soon to have followed suit. In the west, Taxila and Charsadda may have preceded them; but that was under a different impetus if not a different dispensation. In the north-west, with stone plentiful, there is also evidence of monumental structures.
Nothing comparable is found in the city sites of the Gangetic basin; even kiln-fired brickwork, the Harappans’ speciality, does not reappear until the last centuries BC. Buildings, including state edifices and royal residences, were evidently of timber and mud. The first Buddhist stupas (commemorative mounds, often erected over relics of the Buddha) were of just such perishable materials, although it was precisely these sacred structures which would be amongst the earliest to be clad, then gloriously cloistered, in stone. Of architecture and sculpture, the signposts to so much of later Indian history, nothing remains.
Although unused, the technology for kiln-fired bricks was familiar enough, for what distinguishes this period of urbanisation is a new and invasive ceramic ware. Known as the northern black polished (NBP), it first appears after 500 BC, rapidly supersedes the earlier styles (PGW, BRW) in Bihar and UP, and eventually extends west across the Doab and deep into Panjab, east to Bengal and south to Maharashtra. Were there no other evidence for urbanisation, the concentrated finds of this high-quality ware would prompt the idea of city life. Similarly, were there no other evidence than its widespread distribution, one might yet guess that such standardisation amongst the numerous kingdoms and gana-sanghas of north India during the last half of the first millennium BC must presage some major new integrational influence. Sure enough, within two centuries of the NBP ware’s first appearance, all of north India (plus much more besides) would be conspicuously linked by the first and the most extended of India’s home-grown empires.
Trade, of course, also played its part. The first coins are datable to the mid-millennium and are found mostly in an urban context. Of silver or copper, they were punch-marked (rather than minted) with symbols thought to be those of particular professional groups, markets and cities. They ‘were therefore a transitional form between traders’ tokens as units of value and legal tender issued by royalty’.12 The cash economy had evidently arrived, and with references to money-lending, banking and commodity speculation becoming commonplace in Buddhist literature it is clear that venture capital was readily available. Items traded included metals, fine textiles, salt, horses and pottery. Roads linked the major cities, although river transport seems to have been favoured for bulky consignments.
All of which presupposes the existence of specialised professions: artisans and cultivators, carters and boatmen, merchants and financiers. It was all a far cry from the clan communities of the Vedas. North Indian society had been undergoing structural changes every bit as radical as those affecting its agricultural base and its political organisation. These changes are usually interpreted in terms of the emerging caste system. They have to be extracted, with some difficulty, from the changing terms used to designate individuals and social groups in the different texts. And it would appear that the process of change was gradual, uneven and complex.
Basically the Vedas and the epics portray the concerns, and celebrate the exploits, of a society consisting almost entirely of well-born clansmen. Known as ksatriya and rajanya, these warrior families acknowledged a chief with whom they shared a common ancestor. The chief was their raja, a term rich in potential for misunderstanding in that it later came to mean a king in the monarchical states and an elector, or a participant in government, in the republics. Thus Vaisali, the capital of the Licchavi gana-sangha in northern Bihar, is said to have housed 7707 rajas, or in another account ‘twice 84,000 rajas’. As well as the leadership of their rajas, the ksatriya also acknowledged the ritual insights and sacerdotal authority of a non-ksatriya priesthood, the brahmans. The latter, their profession becoming hereditary and exclusive through emphasis on their descent from certain ancient risis or seers, assumed the status of