The Significance of the Gahapati in the Buddhist View of Stratification

The gahapati has been given consistently high status in the Buddhist texts which reveals the real status of the gahapati in society at the time of the Buddha. The existence of the relationship between the king as the head of state and the major economic representatives of the time represents this very clearly. The term of address, ayy putta, sometimes used for the gahapatis^[1] in relation to the people is an evidence of their high status.

Nevertheless, the Buddha’s own recognition of the importance of the economic function as being basic to any society, despite his advocacy of renunciation as a means to salvation is clearly indicative of his specific contribution to ideas on social status. In addition, he ascribed the khattiya, brahmana and gahapati to high status for equating the functions of all three on the same scale. The difference in status of the three ucca kula categories of khattiya, brahmana and gahapati is not indicated in the Pali texts, even though the serial order is always the same. In the same way, the Pali texts do not indicate a hierarchy of status among the low Kulas, even though the serial order is always the same. The question of rebirth in a ucca kula is a good index of the equal status of the three. Rebirth in a ucca kula is equally valued whether in a khattiya kula, brahmana, kula or a gahapati kula. In the same way, kulaputtas, or young men of good families (which include khattiyas, brahmana and gahapatis) pursuing certain occupations such as cattle-keeping, agriculture and trade are placed along with occupations like accounting and joining the king’s service. Importantly, the statement about kulaputtas following occupations such as agriculture, cattle keeping and trade is made to a brahmana and a khattiya and represents the Buddha’s attitude to economic functions. The person who produces is equally important to the one who wields power or who teaches and performs religious functions. The contribution of all the three categories is equal and they perform complementary functions in the social system. In this the Buddha is reversing radically the Brahmanical position wherein the role of the economy is clearly subservient to the role of ritual and power.

We examine an important facet of evidence from the arguments contained earlier: the marked absence of the gahapati from the Brahmanical vanna and jati schemes contained in the Buddhist the Jaina texts. Conversely, the gahapati is an inherent part of the kula scheme depicted in the Buddhist literature. The gahapatis inclusion in the Buddhist scheme is of specific significance because they were intrinsic to the economic domain as a group, and more particularly were the owners and controllers of the primary means of production in the form of land. The gahapatis were neither a caste nor a group whose status was based on birth. In fact the gahapati cut across other social groups because the texts use the word brahmanas-gahapati for brahmanas who were based on land (that is for brahmanas whose identity was based on ascribed status but who performed the functions of a gahapati). The gahapatis were not adapted in the Brahamanical system and this is the greatest failure of the Brahmanical model which clearly shows the model’s rigidity and complete distance from empirical reality.

The politico-economic domain is very difficult and weak for the Brahmanical model to enumerate. On the other hand, the Buddhist scheme became strong with the inclusion of the gahapati in the system of stratification. The gahapati has been clearly represented as an economic category by the evidence of the Buddhist texts but this does not signify that the gahapati can be mechanically equated with the vessa and thereby fitted into the Brahmanical scheme. Such an equation militates against the entire weight of evidence available in the Buddhist sources. The vessa and the suddas are theoretical categories in the Brahmanical scheme based on ascribed status. On the other hand, the gahapati is obviously a category in the system of production. He is one who commands and hires the labour of the dasa-kammakara. The term brahmana-gahapati shows that in order to enumerate existing reality, it is necessary to move beyond the Brahmanical caste categories. It is noticeable that it was not the ordinary brahmana who drew services from the dasa-kammakaras in a relationship that originated from the brahmana-gahapati’s control over land rather than form any notion of ritual superiority of the brahmanas.

The social reality of the period and of the Brahmanical scheme from adapting the gahapati has not described by the caste framework and that resulted in a partial as well as distorted view of the society. This considerable inscriptional evidence for the period 200 B.C. to A.D. 200^[2] but there are no inscriptions available for the pre-Mauryan period with which we are mainly concerned. An analysis strikes us in the sense that the empirical categories of the inscriptions similarizes with the social categories of Buddhist literature. The inscriptions make the sense distinct use of the words gahapati, setthi; likewise, of vanijja, cammakara, karmara and dantakara. The fact that there are no direct references to khattiyas is very important for us. It has earlier been pointed out that there are no references to khattiyas in the Buddhist texts except in the gana-sanghas which were restricted to particular areas north-eastern India. Since the sites of the inscriptions are mostly centred in central and south-central India, the absence of khattiyas assists our conclusion that the khattiyas were numerically important only in the gana-sanghas. Inspite, there are references to occupational categories which include both skilled and unskilled workers. According to Brahmanical theory, if these categories were supposed to be sudas, it was irrelevant to the donors. They, and others, considered themselves as members of an occupational category and that rendered them a sense of identity. The major problem for Buddhists and others at that time was not on the question whether the gahapati was vessa, or the kammahara a sudda, and so it was not the main focus of this study. A more meaningful understanding of social reality can emerge only if the students of the period shed the Brahmanical spectacles that have been in use for a long time.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

S.N., III, p. 269.

[2]:

The inscriptions relate to gifts of various kinds made to the Buddhist singha by donors from a wide range of social groups.