8 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
necessary to the cultivation of the farm. If we kill the cow for meat, we jeopardize our agricultural prosperity. With full foresight, the ancient Hindoos tabooed cow-flesh and thus prevented cow killing. But man hardly pays any attention to dry rulings. It must have religious sanction ; hence the grotesque mythology around the cow in old Hindoo religious literature.
II. Organization of Labour, Industry and Commerce :
Be it said to the credit of the Hindoos that slavery paid a very little role in their economic life. Capture, judicial punishment, voluntary self-degradation and debt were the four principal causes by which individuals become slaves. But there is considerable evidence to show that kindly treatment was the rule and manumission was always possible. Besides few slaves there was a considerable amount of free-labour paid in money or food.
From among the industrial classes the following are mentioned :—
(a) The vaddhaki is a genuine term and is an embodiment of a carpenter, ship-builder, cart-maker and an architect.
(b) The Kammara is a generic term for a metal craftsman producing “iron implement, from a ploughshare or an axe or for that matter, an iron house, down to a razor, or the finest of needles, capable of floating in water, or again, statues of gold or silver work.”
(c) The Pasanakottaka is a generic term for a mason “not only quarrying and shaping stones . . . . . . but as capable of hallowing a cavity in a crystal, a matter probably of requiring superior tools.”
“A considerable degree of organization characterized all the trading industries. Certain trades were localised in special villages, either suburban and ancillary to the large cities, or themselves forming centres of traffic with surounding villages e.g. the wood-work and metal work industries and pottery . . . . . . . . . . . within the cities trades appear to have been localized in special streets e.g. those of ivory workers and of dyers.”
The trades were well regulated and were superintended by one or two headmen who were the chiefs or syndics of municipal and industrial organization of the cities.
There were numerous guilds (Seniyo) under the headship of a President (Pramukha) or elder or older man (Jethaka).