Second Urbanisation and Rural Economy in the Age of the Buddha

At a Glance

• Phase Northern Black Polished Ware, from c. 500 BC
• Gap since Harappa About 1500 years without towns
• Coins Silver punch-marked
• Staple Rice, with transplantation
• Tax One-sixth of the produce
• Exam link UPSC Prelims, Ancient History: Religious Movements, Mahajanapadas and Foreign Invasions

Where Does It Fit?

This is the eighth topic of the category on religious movements. The previous topic covered other heterodox sects, and this one covers the economy that sustained them. The next topic covers the Mahajanapadas. Previous topic: Charvaka…">Ajivikas, Charvakas and Other Heterodox Sects.

What Was the Second Urbanisation?

In short: after the Harappan towns, no towns arose for about 1500 years, until iron-based farming produced the second urbanisation in the fifth century BC.

A picture of material life in eastern UP and Bihar can be drawn from the Pali texts and Sanskrit Sutra literature combined with archaeology. Archaeologically, the fifth century BC marks the beginning of the Northern Black Polished Ware (NBPW) phase in the Gangetic plains, a glossy, shining pottery of very fine material that apparently served as tableware for the rich. With it are found iron implements for crafts and agriculture, and the phase also saw the beginning of metal money. The use of burnt bricks and ring wells began in the middle of the NBPW phase, that is in the third century BC. A survey of Kanpur district shows that the settled area in the PGW phase was thrice the area in the black-and-red ware phase and expanded over two and a half times during NBPW, so population kept increasing.

The Harappan towns disappeared in 1900 BC, and for about 1500 years no towns were established. From about 1200 BC settlements appear in the doab, and in the lower doab in 1000 to 600 BC two types of settlements can be distinguished by size and location, a hierarchy regarded as the most important indicator of urbanisation. Large settlements need crafts, coins, trade and agricultural surplus to grow into towns, and towns arose in the mid-Gangetic basin in the fifth century BC. Many towns named in the texts, such as Kaushambi, Shravasti, Shringaverapur, Ayodhya, Kapilavastu, Varanasi, Vaishali, Rajgir, Pataliputra and Champa, have been excavated and show habitation and mud structures of the early or middle NBPW phase. The wooden palisades at Patna are the earliest wooden enclosures in the mid-Gangetic plains, relating to the seventh to sixth centuries BC. The houses were mostly of mud brick and wood, and the seven-storeyed palaces mentioned in the Pali texts have not been discovered anywhere.

How Did Crafts, Guilds and Trade Work?

Many towns were seats of government but eventually became markets inhabited by artisans and merchants. Champa is called Vaniyagama, a settlement of merchants, in a Prakrit text, and Saddalaputta at Vaishali had 500 potters’ shops. Artisans and merchants were organised into guilds under headmen; eighteen guilds are mentioned, but only smiths, carpenters, leather workers and painters are specified. They lived in fixed localities: there were merchants’ streets in Varanasi and a street of ivory workers. Crafts were generally hereditary. Merchants carried goods, such as fine textiles, ivory objects and pots, in caravans of 500 cartloads. Cities lay on river banks and trade routes: Shravasti linked to Kaushambi and Varanasi, the latter a great trade centre in the Buddha’s age; routes ran through Kapilavastu and Kushinara to Vaishali; traders crossed the Ganges near Patna to Rajgir and via the river to Champa; the Jatakas take Koshalan and Magadhan traders to Taxila, and from Mathura to Ujjain and the Gujarat coast.

Coins stamped by an authority were invented in the seventh century BC in Lydia in Asia Minor. How they came to India is unclear. In Vedic times exchange was by barter and the gift system, and nishka and satamana were prestige objects. Coins made of metal appear first in the age of the Buddha, largely of silver with a few of copper, punch-marked by pieces of metal; the earliest hoards come from eastern UP and Magadha, with some at Taxila. The use of money became so universal that even the price of a dead mouse was estimated in it. The later history is in Money Economy and Coinage in Early India and Milinda Panho Guilds Shrenis; at least two…">Crafts, Commerce and Urban Growth (200 BC to AD 250).

What Did the Rural Base Look Like?

NBPW sherds have been found at over 400 sites in Bihar and eastern and central UP, and it extended over MP and Maharashtra. Urbanisation needed a strong rural base: non-agriculturists in towns had to be fed by villages, which in return received tools and cloth. A village trader is said to have deposited 500 ploughs with a town merchant, evidently iron ploughshares, and Kaushambi has yielded axes, adzes, knives, razors, nails and sickles of about the fifth to fourth centuries BC. The nucleated village, where people lived together and lands lay mostly outside, was first established in the mid-Gangetic plains in the Buddha’s age. The Pali texts speak of three types of villages: typical villages of various castes under a headman called bhojaka; suburban craft villages such as a carpenters’ village near Varanasi; and border villages of fowlers and hunters. Village lands were divided into plots allotted to families, cultivated with agricultural labourers, and fields were fenced and irrigation channels dug collectively under the headman.

Peasants paid one-sixth of the produce as tax, collected directly by royal agents with generally no intermediate landlords between peasant and state, though some villages were granted to brahmanas and big merchants. Rich peasants were gahapatis, close to a section of the vaishyas. Rice was the staple of eastern UP and Bihar, and the term shali for transplantation suggests that large-scale paddy transplantation began in the Buddha’s age; until about 500 BC paddy was sown only in watery areas, and transplantation revolutionised yield. Peasants also produced barley, pulses, millets, cotton and sugarcane. Production more than doubled in the alluvial tract between Allahabad and Rajmahal, and low-carbon steel production began from about 600 BC, with Rajghat tools made of ore from Singhbhum and Mayurbhanj.

As an analytical point, for the first time an advanced food-producing economy spread over the mid-Gangetic alluvium, supporting many who were neither farmers nor artisans, and so enabling long-term taxes and armies, the conditions for large territorial states described in The Mahajanapadas and the Republican Experiment. The religious consequences are in Causes of the Rise of New Religious Movements in the Sixth Century BC.

Why Is This Topic Important?

• Core economic topic Links religion, state and trade
• Terms NBPW, gahapati, bhojaka
• Chronology Gap after Harappa

What Came Next?

The next topic describes the Mahajanapadas and the republican experiment. Next topic: The Mahajanapadas and the Republican Experiment.

Key People and Terms

• NBPW Northern Black Polished Ware
• Punch-marked coin Earliest Indian coin
• Gahapati Rich peasant
• Bhojaka Village headman
• Shali Transplanted paddy
• Guild Association of artisans or merchants

Exam Corner

Mains Angle

Questions ask for the material basis of the new religions and states. These points add depth.

• Urbanisation Second urbanisation
• Rural base Iron and paddy
• Consequence State and religion