Post-Mauryan: Growth of Urban Centres, Economy, Coinage

Post-Mauryan Growth of Urban Centres, Crafts, and Guilds

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The five centuries between c. 200 BCE and 300 CE witnessed a marked expansion of urban life across the Indian subcontinent — a transformation closely linked to advances in agriculture, the flourishing of specialised crafts, and the growth of increasingly sophisticated guild organisations. From the occupational villages described in the Jatakas to the great trading cities of North India, the Deccan, and the far South, and from hereditary craft lineages to guilds that functioned as bankers, courts, and civic institutions in their own right, this period reveals an economy of remarkable complexity. For UPSC History Optional aspirants, understanding the growth of urban centres alongside the organisation of crafts and guilds is essential to grasping the social and economic foundations of post-Mauryan India.

Villages

• Considerably more is known about the cities of c. 200 BCE–300 CE than about villages and agriculture during this period.
  • The Kushans promoted agriculture, and the earliest archaeological traces of large-scale irrigation in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and western Central Asia date to the Kushan period.
• The Jatakas speak of gamas (villages) ranging from 30 to 1,000 kulas (extended families), with references to gamas associated with particular occupational groups, such as reed-workers (nalakaras) and salt-makers (lonakaras).
  • There is also mention of villages of potters, carpenters, smiths, forest folk, hunters, fowlers, and fishermen — some of these villages appear to have been located close to cities.
• Early Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions offer brief glimpses into village life in Tamilakam.
  • A second-century BCE inscription at Varichiyur records the gift of 100 kalams of rice.
  • A first-century BCE inscription at Alagarmalai refers to a koluvanikan (a trader in ploughshares) — the kolu being the hard iron tip fixed to a wooden ploughshare.
  • A second-century BCE inscription found at Mudalaikulam refers to the construction of a tank by the assembly (ur) of Vempil village — possibly the earliest inscriptional reference to a village assembly anywhere in the Indian subcontinent.

Growth of Urban Centres

• During this period, a marked growth of urban centres is visible, since this phase registered a distinct advance in building activity — the use of burnt bricks for flooring and roofing, the construction of brick kilns, the use of ring-wells, and the use of red pottery are all in evidence.
  • The period c. 200 BCE–300 CE was marked by urban prosperity across the subcontinent, though the archaeological details of most early historical sites remain rather meagre, generally confined to a few details about fortifications.
• Flourishing trade and crafts, along with the growing use of money, provided a strong incentive to the growth of new towns. During this period, under the Satavahanas, the Kushans, the Indo-Parthians, and the Shaka rulers, India’s trade with Rome, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia reached its zenith.

Maurya Legacy and Secondary State Formation

• A key question worth considering is: what was the impact and legacy of Maurya rule on the so-called “peripheral areas,” and to what extent was interaction with the Maurya state an impetus to “secondary state formation” in these regions?
  • Secondary state formation refers to the emergence of states that have the model of already existing states before them, and which themselves emerge as a result of interaction with those existing states.
• While the Maurya impact cannot be discounted, it should also not be given undue emphasis. The long-term development of urban centres required, and involved, an expansion in agricultural production, developments in specialised crafts, and wider, more intensive and extensive trade networks.

North India

• Vaishali, Pataliputra, Varanasi, Kausambi, Sravasti, Hastinapur, Mathura, Indraprastha, and others were among the prosperous towns of North India during the Kushan period. Kushan kings ensured the security of trade routes, which was one of the causes behind the prosperity of these towns — many of which find mention in old Chinese texts or the records of Chinese pilgrims.
  • The town-sites of Sonpur, Buxar, and Ghazipur in Bihar also flourished during the Kushan age; excavations have likewise unearthed several Kushan-era towns in the Meerut and Muzaffarnagar districts.
  • Ludhiana, Ropar, and Jalandhar in Punjab were among the flourishing towns of the period.
  • Ujjain was an important town of the Shaka kingdom, serving as the nodal point of two trade routes — one from Mathura, and the other from Kausambi.

The Deccan

• In the Deccan, the transition to the early historical urban phase must be reconstructed on the basis of archaeology alone, as textual evidence is largely unavailable.
  • During the reign of the Satavahana rulers, several towns flourished — among them Paithan, Broach, Sopara, Amravati, Nagarjunakonda, Arikamedu, and Kaveripattanam, all highly prosperous centres of trade.
• Historians have often treated the Deccan merely as a “passage” between North and South India, explaining cultural developments in the region in terms of the diffusion of civilisational traits from elsewhere.
  • The impact of Maurya rule and Indo-Roman trade on urbanisation in the Deccan has, arguably, been overemphasised, with insufficient attention paid to the region’s own internal processes of cultural change.
  • Further, within the Deccan, there has been an undue focus on certain areas — especially those where Ashokan inscriptions or Buddhist structures have been found — with a corresponding neglect of other areas treated as marginal or peripheral.

South India

• The first phase of urbanism in South India is generally associated with the period c. 300 BCE–300 CE, although recent evidence suggests the possibility of earlier beginnings.
  • Graeco-Roman sources mention many towns and cities, using the term emporium for coastal towns associated with foreign trade; the Tamil word pattinam means “port,” as in Kaverippumpattinam (also known as Puhar).
  • Sangam poems describe the urban centres of early historical South India, though archaeological evidence does not always match these literary descriptions of cities — partly a consequence of inadequate excavation.
• Kodumanal provides important evidence of the transition to the early historical phase in South India, particularly regarding the beginnings of literacy and the development of centres of craft production.
• The historian Champakalakshmi argues that the early historical urbanism of the far south was not induced by deep-rooted socio-economic change, but was instead stimulated by Indo-Roman trade, interregional trade (largely coastal trade between the Ganga valley, Andhra, and the Tamil regions), and, later, by trade with Southeast Asia.
  • She argues that this trade activity led to the emergence of a few urban enclaves, which declined in the third century CE alongside the trade itself.
  • This hypothesis, however, is difficult to accept in full, since trade cannot be considered an independent variable, entirely unrelated to deeper social and economic processes.
• In fact, several pieces of evidence suggest that fundamental transformations in social and economic life were already under way in South India:
  • the literary and archaeological evidence of specialised crafts, such as metalworking, bead-making, and weaving;
  • the descriptions, in Sangam poems, of the markets of Puhar and Madurai;
  • references to wealthy traders and their lavish gifts; and
  • the beginnings of the use of money.

Crafts and Guilds

Crafts

• Archaeological evidence gives very specific information on craft activity across the various regions of the subcontinent.
  • Kodumanal offers important evidence of the beginnings of literacy and the development of centres of craft production; several inscribed pieces of pottery, dated c. 300 BCE–200 CE, have been found here.
  • Most of these were in the Tamil language and Tamil-Brahmi script, though a few inscriptions are in Prakrit and Brahmi script; the writing on the pots includes the names of people, some Tamil and others Sanskritic, and one word appearing in the inscriptions was nikama or nigama, meaning “guild.”

Literary Sources on Crafts

• North India: Buddhist texts such as the Angavijja, Lalitavistara, Milindapanha, and Mahavastu refer to numerous professions, crafts, and guilds of craftspersons and traders — the Milindapanha alone mentions some 60 types of crafts.
  • The localisation of crafts is evident from Jataka stories, which mention villages named after the main profession of their inhabitants — potters, carpenters, metal-smiths, foresters, hunters, fowlers, fishermen, and salt-makers. Within towns, houses belonging to specific types of craftspersons were often concentrated in particular streets and quarters.
• South India: Sangam literature indicates the existence of many specialised crafts, such as weaving, gem-working, shell-working, and metalworking.

Hereditary Principles in Occupations

Kula and Putta

• The Jataka stories often attach the suffix kula (“family”) or putta (“son of”) to various craft terms, indicating that sons tended to follow their father’s profession. There are, accordingly, references to:
  • satthavahakula (family of caravan traders),
  • kumbhakarakula (potters’ family),
  • setthikula (family of merchant-cum-bankers),
  • kammarakula (metal-smiths’ family),
  • atavirakkhikakula (family of forest guards),
  • dhannavanijakula (grain merchants’ family),
  • pannikakula (greengrocers’ family), and
  • pasanakottakakula (stone grinders’ family).
• Terms ending in putta include satthavahaputta (son of a caravan trader), nisadaputta (son of a hunter), and vaddhakiputta (son of a carpenter).
  • An inscription at Mathura records the setting up of a stone slab, part of a naga shrine, by the Chhandaka brothers — all of whom were stone masons (shailalakas), following in their father’s footsteps.
• Although the hereditary principle operated broadly in occupations, there must also have been a certain amount of flexibility and social mobility within this system.

Inscriptional Evidence of Craft Specialisation

• The variety of craft specialisation is also evident from inscriptions across the subcontinent.
  • Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions mention a mason, a master mason, a carpenter, and a goldsmith.
  • Donative inscriptions from sites such as Sanchi, Bharhut, and Mathura record the pious gifts of various kinds of artisans — potters, weavers, masons, goldsmiths, carpenters, sculptors, and ivory workers.
  • Inscriptions from the western Deccan mention occupational groups such as jewellers (manikara), goldsmiths (suvanakara), blacksmiths (kamara), ironmongers (loha-vanij), perfumers (gadhika), and stone masons (selavadhaki).
• Such inscriptions reflect the prosperity of craftspersons, their social standing, and their connections with the burgeoning religious centres of the period.

Guilds

Guilds of Artisans and Craftsmen

• People in ancient India who followed the same occupations and crafts, and resided in a single place, cooperated with one another and formed guilds — artisans organised themselves into guilds specifically to encourage their particular crafts.

Guilds during the Mauryan Empire (c. 320–200 BCE)

• The state participated actively in agricultural and industrial production during Mauryan times, keeping a record of trades, crafts, and the related transactions and conventions of the guilds — indicating a significant degree of state intervention in guild affairs.
  • The state also allotted guilds separate areas within towns for running their trades and crafts. Kautilya, notably, considered the possibility of guilds becoming centres of power in their own right.

The Post-Mauryan Expansion of Guilds (c. 200 BCE–300 CE)

• The next phase of guild development may be bracketed between c. 200 BCE and c. 300 CE. During this period, there was a significant increase both in the number of guilds and in the scale of their activities.
  • The decline of the Mauryan empire (c. 200 BCE) led to political disintegration and a corresponding laxity in state control over guilds, allowing them a better opportunity to grow.
  • The period also witnessed the elucidation of the seasonality of the south-west monsoon winds (c. 46 CE), leading to closer commercial relations with the Roman Empire, in which Indian merchants earned substantial profits; the discovery of a large number of coins from this period further indicates progress in the money economy — vital for the development of trade and industry.
• There is evidence to show that large merchant guilds exercised some degree of control over smaller craft guilds.

Literary Sources on Guilds

• The Jatakas refer to 18 guilds, though they mention only four by name: wood-workers (vaddhakis), smiths (kammaras), leather-workers (chammakaras), and painters (chittakaras).
• The Mahavastu mentions many guilds of Kapilavastu, including those of gold workers, workers in chank shell, ivory carvers, lapidaries, stone carvers, perfumers, silk and wool weavers, oil pressers, curd sellers, sugar manufacturers, sweetmeat makers, flour makers, fruit sellers, and wine makers.
• The evidence of the Manusmriti and the Yajnavalkya Smriti shows an increase in the authority of guilds compared to earlier periods.

Inscriptions on Guilds

• Guilds are also frequently mentioned in inscriptions. Epigraphs from Sanchi, Bharhut, Bodhgaya, Mathura, and sites of the western Deccan refer to donations made by different craftsmen and traders — epigraphic evidence of the period attests both to acts of charity and piety by guilds, and to their bank-like functions.
  • Inscriptions of the western Deccan mention guilds of weavers, potters, flour-makers, oil-millers, bamboo workers, and merchants.
  • An inscription at Junnar records the gift of a cave, consisting of seven cells and a cistern, by a guild of corn dealers (dhanika seni).
  • A third-century Nashik inscription, from the time of the Abhira king Ishvarasena, mentions several guilds of crafts and trades in that city; an early second-century CE inscription from Nashik refers to two guilds of weavers.
• Two Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions from Mangulam, near Madurai, mention the merchant guild (nikama) of Vellarai (modern Vellarippatti).
  • One of these indicates that members of this guild collectively contributed towards the carving of stone beds for Jaina ascetics in one of the caves. The high status enjoyed by members of merchant guilds is further indicated by the title kaviti, given to Antai Assutan, a member of the same guild, who appears as a donor in another Mangulam inscription — kaviti being an honorific title bestowed by kings on ministers, nobles, and merchants; this particular guild member seems to have served as superintendent of pearls in the Pandya administration.
  • The occurrence of the word nikama on a potsherd from Kodumanal offers another important piece of evidence.

Heads of Guilds

• The Jatakas refer to the head of a craftspersons’ guild as jetthaka or pamukkha, with references to the heads of guilds of garland-makers (malakara-jetthaka), metal workers (kammarajetthaka), carpenters (vaddhaki-jetthaka), and caravan traders (vaha-jetthaka).
  • There are also many references to sarthavahas — heads of caravan merchants; the head of a merchant guild was likewise referred to as a setthi.
• The Manu and Yajnavalkya Smritis reflect a considerably more elaborate and complex organisation of guilds than the Jatakas — the Yajnavalkya Smriti, for instance, refers to the qualifications and powers of guild officers, discusses rules regarding apprenticeship, and suggests a judicial role for guilds.

General Economic Functions of Guilds

• Guilds trained workers and provided a congenial atmosphere for work. They procured raw materials for manufacturing, controlled the quality and pricing of manufactured goods, and located markets for their sale.
  • They also provided a measure of safety to their members and merchandise, and accorded social status to their members in turn; the importance of guilds is further evident from the coins and seals they issued (discussed later in this article).
• Dharmashastra texts also refer to partnerships in craft production and trade, and mention the apprenticeship of novices under master craftsmen.

Guilds as Bankers

• The reference in the Arthashastra to the king’s spies borrowing gold, bar-gold, and coin-gold from guilds, on the pretext of procuring various types of merchandise, shows that guilds loaned money to artisans and merchants — though it contains no reference to guilds lending money to the general public.
• Guilds established a reputation for efficiency and integrity, and epigraphic evidence shows that not only the general public, but even royalty, deposited money with them as trust funds — on terms whereby the principal sum remained intact permanently, while only the interest was used to perform some pious act of the donor’s choosing.
  • In Mahayana Buddhism, devotees deposited money with guilds of potters, oil-millers, and others, in order to provide robes and other necessities to monks. The Brihaspati Smriti refers to the philanthropic activities of guilds, such as providing shelter for travellers.
  • No deposit, however, was made solely for the purpose of safety, or for earning simple or compound interest in cash — the guilds’ scope in banking was thus more limited than that of modern banks.

Key Inscriptions on Guild Investments

• Several inscriptions of this period refer to people investing money with guilds as a pious endowment, with the resulting interest given over to Brahmanas, Buddhist monks, or earmarked for some other pious activity.
  • The Gadhwa inscription mentions the investment of 20 dinaras in a guild for the benefit of Brahmanas.
  • An inscription from Junnar refers to the investment of the income from two agricultural fields by Aduthuma, with a guild, for the purpose of planting karanja and banyan trees; another Junnar inscription records the investment of money with guilds of bamboo workers and braziers.
  • The Mathura inscription (second century CE) refers to two permanent endowments of 550 silver coins each, made with two guilds by the donor Kanasarukamana, a subordinate of the Kushanas under the Kushana king Huvishka — the interest from these investments was to provide food for Brahmanas, and for the daily distribution of food to the destitute, hungry, and thirsty.
• Two Nashik inscriptions (second century CE) provide especially detailed evidence:
  • A Nashik inscription from the reign of the Kshatrapa ruler Nahapana records a permanent investment of 3,000 karshapanas, made by the king’s son-in-law, Ushavadata: 2,000 karshapanas were invested with a weavers’ guild of Govardhana (Nashik) at 1 per cent interest, while 1,000 karshapanas were invested with another weavers’ guild of the same place at ¾ per cent interest per month.
    • The interest from the first investment was to provide cloth to monks, while that from the second was to provide them with meals; these investments were proclaimed in the guild assembly (nigama-sabha) and inscribed on stone as a permanent record.
    • This is the only ancient Indian inscription to clearly specify rates of interest on monetary investments — these rates are notably lower than the standard 1¼ per cent per month mentioned in the Arthashastra and the Smritis, and it is interesting that two weavers’ guilds in the same town offered different interest rates.
  • Another inscription from Nashik, from the time of the Abhira king Ishvarasena, refers to an endowment made in perpetuity by a woman named Vishnudatta with four different guilds of the town, in order to provide medicines for Buddhist monks living in a monastery on the Trirashmi hill — depositing karshapanas with the guilds of potters, workers fabricating hydraulic engines, oil-millers, and one other guild.
    • These deposits with four separate guilds, rather than a single guild, were perhaps made with a view to distributing risk, since any individual guild could suffer a setback or even go bankrupt.
• The provision of cloth by a weavers’ guild, or oil by an oil-men’s guild, was a relatively simple matter, directly related to each guild’s own occupation.
  • The provision of light meals by a weavers’ guild, or medicine by an oil-millers’ guild, however, involved work outside their usual profession — in such cases, guilds may have entered into contracts with parties dealing in those specific items, paying them a major share of the interest accruing from the deposits.

Functions Related to Religious Piety and Charity

• Guilds made compacts to alleviate distress and undertake works of piety and charity as a matter of duty, expected to use part of their profits for the preservation and maintenance of assembly halls, watersheds, shrines, tanks, and gardens, and for helping widows, the poor, and the destitute in performing religious rites or alleviating economic hardship.
  • Epigraphic evidence variously refers to gifts of gateways, caves, cisterns, pillars, or seats made by guilds or by individual guild members.
  • The Mandasor inscription records the building and renovation of a Surya temple by a guild of silk weavers; the Gwalior inscription, from the reign of Mihirakula, records the building of a temple dedicated to this same deity.

Judicial Functions of Guilds

• Guilds could try their own members for offences in accordance with their own customs and usages, which came to acquire almost the status of law; a guild member was expected to abide by both guild law and state law, and guilds could even arbitrate disputes between members and their wives.
  • The Brihaspati Smriti refers to guilds meting out justice to their members. Some guild representatives even acted as members of the court presided over by the king himself, advising him particularly in matters relating to traders and craftsmen.
• Significantly, guilds also functioned as courts of justice for the general public. Yajnavalkya enumerates four courts, in descending order, presided over by officers appointed by: the king; the puga; the sreni; and the kula.
  • Though later commentators, Vijnanesvara and Visvarupa, held that disputes could be brought to the king’s court only through the channel of kula, sreni, and puga courts, and not directly, this was not always followed in practice.
  • The Vasishtha Dharmasutra treats the evidence of guilds as valid in settling boundary disputes, and Manu prescribes that, for artisans and merchants organised into guilds, other artisans or merchants of the same or a different guild could act as witnesses.
• The jurisdiction of guild courts was confined to civil cases; cases involving heinous crimes were dealt with by the king alone.
  • Democratic institutions such as guild courts flourish under peaceful conditions, and the view that their presence reflects anarchic conditions preventing state courts from functioning does not hold water.
  • King’s courts would have been difficult for ordinary people to approach, particularly those living far from the capital — sharing judicial and administrative work at lower levels, through local bodies such as guilds and village assemblies, made it possible for the state to successfully administer large kingdoms even without rapid means of communication.
  • All guilds acted as courts for their own members, but likely only the more important guilds, or representatives of various guilds authorised by the state, acted as courts for the general public.
  • Since guilds were organisations of people of different castes following the same profession, they would also have included some Brahmana members — some of whom likely served as executive officers, and who, together with executive officers of other varnas, probably formed these courts of justice.

Administrative Functions of Guilds

• Guilds exercised a good deal of administrative control over their own members — for instance, it was necessary for the wife of a guild member intending to join the Buddhist sangha to first obtain the guild’s permission.
  • Some guild heads are known to have acted as mahamatras, and guild heads were themselves present in royal courts, perhaps in some official capacity; epigraphic evidence from the Gupta period shows that heads of different guilds served as members of the advisory boards of district administration.

Relationship of Guilds with the King

• Guilds appear to have maintained a close relationship with kings.
  • The Jatakas refer to the heads of the eighteen guilds being part of the official entourage of a king; to the head of a blacksmiths’ village being described as a favourite of the king (raja-vallabha); to the royal officer known as the bhandagarika possessing some authority over guilds; and to the head of a guild being appointed a mahamatra.
• The Arthashastra recommends that officials keep a record of the transactions and conventions of guilds, and that guilds be provided with specially designated areas within towns for pursuing their crafts and work.
  • The term shreni-bala in the Arthashastra appears to refer to a guild or corporate organisation of warriors, rather than troops maintained by ordinary guilds.
• The Dharmashastra texts of this period give the king the right to interfere in guild affairs under certain circumstances.
  • The Manu Smriti states that if a guild member broke an agreement out of greed, the king should banish him.
  • The Yajnavalkya Smriti asserts that in the event of a quarrel among guild members, the king should compel them to follow accepted usage; it further states that if a guild cheated the king of his share of its profits, it should be punished by being made to pay eight times the amount, and that a guild was also to be punished if it relocated to another place.
    • However, the Mandasor inscription of a later period indicates that guilds did, in fact, migrate — apparently without incurring any such royal punishment.

Numismatic and Sigillographic Evidence of Guilds

• The importance of guilds is further evident from coins and seals issued by them.
  • Some coins found at Taxila bear the legend negama on the reverse, in Brahmi letters of the third/second century BCE, with the names of localities on the obverse; the legends pamchanekame and hiranasame also appear on certain coins.
    • Some scholars consider these to be coins issued by city administrations, while others believe they were issued by guilds; the term pamchanekame may refer to a corporation of five guilds, while hiranasame may mean “an issuer of coined money” — these coins may have been issued by a guild of traders responsible for issuing coinage.
  • Seals and sealings bearing the terms nigama or its variants have been found at sites such as Rajghat, Bhita, Hargaon, Jhusi, and Ahichchhatra, with scripts ranging from the third century BCE to the early centuries CE.
    • Two copper coins from Kaushambi, bearing the legend gadhikanam in letters of about the second century BCE, were probably issued by a guild of perfumers.
  • Belonging to roughly the same period are a number of coins bearing the names of cities such as Varanasi, Kaushambi, Vidisha, Erakina (Eran), Ujjayini, and Mahishmati — these may have been issued by city administrations, or by guilds influential within city administration.
  • Some of these coins bear symbols, and a few bear personal names.
    • A sealing found at Rajghat bears a svastika symbol and the legend gavayaka (guild of milkmen), in Brahmi letters of the first century BCE.
    • A Bhita sealing bears the legend shulaphalayikanam, in second-century BCE letters — possibly a reference to a guild of makers of arrowheads or spearheads.
    • A seal from Ahichchhatra bears the legend kumhakara seniya (“of the guild of potters”), in writing belonging to the first century CE.

Conclusion

The post-Mauryan centuries reveal an economy far more sophisticated than the meagre archaeological record of individual villages might suggest — one in which occupational hereditary lineages, specialised craft communities, and above all, well-organised guilds, came to perform functions ranging from banking and philanthropy to civil justice and local administration. Whether in the growing cities of North India secured by Kushan trade routes, the contested urban landscape of the Deccan, or the trade-driven port towns of the Tamil south, the growth of urban centres in this period was inseparable from the rise of guilds as genuine institutions of economic and civic life. For UPSC History Optional aspirants, this evidence — drawn from the Jatakas and Dharmashastra texts to donative inscriptions and guild coinage — offers a rich, multidimensional picture of how ancient Indian society organised its economic and urban life in the centuries following the Mauryan Empire’s decline.