Slavery in Ancient India
Slavery in ancient India was a long-standing but distinctive institution — one that, unlike its counterparts in Greece and Rome, never became central to production, with the burden of labour and taxation instead falling primarily on the Shudras and Vaishyas. For UPSC History Optional aspirants, this topic offers a wealth of specific, citable detail: the categories and legal rights of slaves across the Dharmashastras, the Arthashastra, and the Buddhist canon; the ways one could become enslaved or gain manumission; and the changing character of slavery across the Vedic, post-Vedic, Mauryan, Sangam, and early medieval periods. This article examines the textual references to slaves, the categories and rights of slaves, the ways of entering slavery, and the evolving nature of slavery across each major period of ancient Indian history.
References to Slaves
- The first reference to “Dasis” being given to sacrificial priests as a part of dana (donation) is found in Rig Vedic texts (from the Rig Veda Samhita onward), mentioned in the dana-stutis (donation hymns).
- The Vedic period references suggest that Dasis were meant only for household purposes.
- In the post-Vedic period, we also get references to Dasas, i.e., male slaves.
- References from the post-Vedic period onward suggest that slaves’ association extended to activities beyond the confines of the household, such as agriculture, trade, and even the army.
- This institution continued through ancient times.
Various Categories of Slaves
- Ancient texts mention various categories of slaves:
- the Tripitakas mention 8 kinds of slaves;
- the Arthashastra mentions 5 kinds;
- the Manusmriti mentions 15 kinds; and
- the Narada Smriti also mentions 15 kinds.
- A member of any varna could become a slave, even Brahmins, though most slaves were Shudras.
- There were women slaves as well, though the sale and purchase of Brahmin women was banned.
Rights of Slaves
- The ancient Dharmashastra literature defines the rights of slaves and their relationship with their masters.
- Slaves had the right to earn and the right to property, including the right to inherit property.
- Slaves had no right to sue, and no right to give evidence — meaning their standing in law was almost absent.
- Slaves had the right to manumission (to become free from slavery); this right was subject to the master’s will, though in general, slaves entering sanyasa (renunciation) became free.
- Masters had no right over the life of a slave — a master could not kill a slave.
Freedom to Slaves
- There were various ways through which a person could become a slave:
- by selling oneself in a time of crisis (one could also sell one’s family);
- by being taken prisoner of war; or
- by being born to slave parents (a hereditary characteristic).
Slavery in Different Periods of Ancient India
Slavery during the Vedic Age
Slaves
- There were groups in society who were considered even lower than the Shudras.
- Slaves (dasas and dasis) are mentioned among gift items in the dana-stutis; however, on occasion, children born of slave women could aspire to high status.
- The dasas and the dasyus, who were conquered by the Aryans, were treated as slaves and Shudras.
- The Shudras were meant to serve the three higher varnas, and worked as domestic slaves, agricultural slaves, craftsmen, and hired labourers in post-Vedic times.
Labour and Slavery
- The household was the basic unit of labour, and there is no mention of wage labour; the Rig Veda is, however, familiar with slavery, referring to enslavement in the course of war or as a result of debt.
- The fact that, in later times, dasa and dasi are the terms used for male and female slaves suggests that, initially, ethnic differences may have been an important basis of enslavement.
- Slaves, male and female, generally worked in the household, but were not used to any significant extent in production-related activities; we find domestic slaves, but not wage-earners.
- We repeatedly hear of slaves who were given as gifts to priests — these were primarily women employed for domestic purposes. Princes and priests employed women slaves for domestic service, though their numbers were probably not large.
- Throughout history, there was an important difference in the experience of enslavement for men and women — for women, enslavement generally involved sexual exploitation in addition to the exploitation of their labour.
Gifts of Slaves
- Hymns in praise of gifts (dana-stutis) in the later books of the Rig Veda refer to generous presents of cows, horses, chariots, gold, clothes, and female slaves made by kings to priests.
Slavery during the NBPW Period
- The new techniques and the use of force enabled some people to own large stretches of land, which needed a substantial number of slaves and hired labourers to till it.
- In Vedic times, people cultivated their fields with the assistance of family members only; there is no word for “wage-earner” in Vedic literature.
- However, slaves and wage-earners engaged in cultivation became a regular feature in the age of the Buddha; hence, during the NBPW period, large plots of land were worked with the help of slaves and agricultural labourers.
- The texts of the 600–300 BCE period contain many references to the existence of male and female slaves:
- the Digha Nikaya states that a dasa is not master of himself, depends on another, and cannot go where he likes;
- the Vinaya Pitaka speaks of three kinds of slaves — the antojatako, dhanakkito, and karamaraanito — where the antojatako seems to refer to the offspring of a woman slave, a slave who is bought is known as dhanakkito, and one brought from another country and enslaved is the karamaraanito;
- the Digha Nikaya mentions a fourth type of slave — samam dasavayam upagato — one who has himself accepted enslavement.
- There are a few references to the manumission of slaves; in fact, one of the rules of the Buddhist sangha was that slaves could not join unless they were freed by their masters.
- Given the elitist bias of the literary sources, it is not easy to reconstruct the ways in which groups such as the Chandalas and slaves may have reacted to their subordination and oppression.
- Chakravarti has identified two instances of resistance in the Buddhist canon: one is a reference in the Vinaya Pitaka to the dasa-kammakaras of the Sakyas attacking the womenfolk of their masters in the woods as an act of vengeance.
- The second is the story of the dasi Kali and her mistress, the gahapatni Vaidehi, in the Majjhima Nikaya: Kali was submissive and hard-working, and concluded that her mistress’s even temper was the result of her own exemplary conduct. She decided to test Vaidehi by waking up late and failing to respond to her mistress’s calls for three days in a row. Vaidehi could not take it — she grew increasingly angry and finally attacked Kali in fury. Kali was proved right.
Slavery during the Mauryan Period
- Megasthenes states that he did not notice any slaves in India, but there is little doubt that there had been domestic slaves from Vedic times onward.
- The Arthashastra, on the other hand, has a very detailed discussion of dasas (slaves) and ahitakas (those pledged to creditors when contracting a debt); various types of slaves, and situations of both temporary and permanent enslavement, are mentioned.
- The Arthashastra mentions village labour, bonded labour, and slave labour, with reference to slaves in the service of private individuals as well as the state.
- Kautilya lists various rules for the treatment of male and female slaves and lays down penalties for their transgression — for example, punishments are prescribed for those who sell or mortgage a pregnant woman slave without any arrangement for her maternity, and for those who cause such a slave to have a miscarriage.
- There is reference to the manumission (freeing) of slaves on payment of a sum of money; Kautilya also states that if a dasi bore her master a son, she was released from enslavement, and the child was considered the father’s legitimate son.
- According to the Arthashastra of Kautilya, a striking social development of the Maurya period was the employment of slaves in agricultural operations on a large scale, working on large state farms maintained by the state, on which numerous slaves and hired labourers were employed.
- About 150,000 war-captives brought by Ashoka from Kalinga to Pataliputra may have been engaged in agriculture, though this figure seems to be exaggerated.
- However, by and large, slaves in ancient India were meant to undertake domestic work; generally, the small peasant, occasionally aided by slaves and hired labourers, played the dominant role in production.
Ashoka’s Rock Edicts
- Ashoka’s Rock Edict 9 mentions courteous behaviour towards dasas and bhatakas (bhritakas, i.e., servants) as part of dhamma, describing the practice of dhamma as consisting of proper courtesy to slaves and servants, respectful behaviour towards elders, restraint in one’s dealings with all living beings, and liberality to shramanas and Brahmanas.
- Rock Edict 11 refers to the gift of dhamma as being the best of all gifts, said to include proper courtesy to slaves and servants.
Buddhist Texts
- Buddhist texts refer to dasas, dasis, kammakaras, and porisas working in households and on land.
- The words dasa and dasi, for male and female slaves, are known from earlier sources; but kammakara is new, and refers to someone who hired out his labour in return for wages.
- In post-Maurya times, in the republics of the Malavas and the Kshudrakas, the kshatriyas and the brahmanas were given citizenship, but slaves and hired labourers were excluded from it.
Slavery during the Sangam Age
- The Sangam texts speak of the Yavanas coming in their own vessels, purchasing pepper with gold, and supplying wine and women slaves to the natives.
- Agricultural operations were generally the task of members of the lowest class (kadaisiyar), whose status appears to have differed little from that of a slave.
- In the 2nd century AD, the famous Chola king Karikala constructed 160 km of embankment along the Kaveri river; this was built with the labour of 12,000 slaves who were brought as captives from Sri Lanka.
Slavery during 300–600 CE
- Forced labour (vishti) became more common than before during this period.
- The fact that it is mentioned alongside taxes in land grant inscriptions suggests that it was considered a source of income for the state — a sort of tax paid by the people.
- The fact that most of the inscriptions referring to vishti come from the Madhya Pradesh and Kathiawar regions may suggest that this practice was more prevalent in these areas.
- The Narada Smriti has a detailed discussion of slavery and lists 15 types of slaves.
- This enumeration is greater than that in the Arthashastra and the Manusmriti, but basically consists of elaborations or sub-divisions of already known types, including war captives reduced to slavery, debt enslavement, and voluntary enslavement.
Slaves as Property
- Slaves could be handed down to descendants of their erstwhile owners, along with other items of property; they are generally mentioned as domestic servants or personal attendants.
- A child born of a woman slave in a master’s house was considered his slave as well.
- The Narada Smriti asserts that a slave can be pledged or mortgaged, and that the master could hire out his services to another.
- The Narada Smriti prescribes the amputation of the foot of a person found guilty of abducting a slave woman.
Manumission of Slaves
- The Narada Smriti discusses the manumission of slaves — a slave born in the house, bought, obtained, or inherited could be freed only when the master desired to do so.
- The ceremony of manumission is described: the master was supposed to remove a jar of water from the shoulder of the slave and break it, then sprinkle some parched grain and flowers over the slave’s head, and say three times: “You are no longer a dasa.”
Conclusion
- However, ancient Indian society was not a slave society: the tasks that slaves performed in Greece and Rome were undertaken by the Shudras in India.
- The Shudras were regarded as the collective property of the three higher varnas, and were compelled to serve them as slaves, artisans, agricultural labourers, and domestic servants.
- Unlike Roman society, ancient Indian society did not employ slaves in production on any significant scale; in India, the principal burden of production and taxation fell on the peasants, artisans, merchants, and agricultural labourers, who were placed in the categories of Vaishyas and Shudras.
