to be considered, and the relation of the heresy to the social changes was being made known, and principles were being laid down to deal with this creed.
If the political history of the five centuries under consideration is defective, the economic history of the period is still more so. In order to throw some light on this period, we should pay some attention to the economic achievements of India in the period that preceded.
Apart from agriculture, the people were following various other occupations. We hear of about eighteen guilds of different trades. Each guild (pūga or scniya) was presided over by an alderman or a president (a jethhaka or a pamukha). These guilds not only attended to business disputes but also attended to disputes between members of the guild and their wives. There was a president-general (Mahäsetthi) who decided disputes between guilds. The guilds or private individuals issued coinage, as well as credit instruments. There were no banking facilities and the custom of hoarding was common. The trade was done by caravans. There
Timid scholarship is not so frank in its statements, but the school of social reformers in India, which does not hold it to be its duty to be critical, has expressed such opinions more candidly. It is a pity that men holding even the highest judicial offices in India are so without knowledge of Brahminism and of Buddhism that they sometimes express without scruples such Opinions as that Shankara made a great mistake in crushing out Buddhism. Very often Gautama is hailed as a breaker of caste system, while in fact he was no better than the present social reformers in ability to break it and much worse in his intentions and motives and policy, with reference to this question. I do not wish to make a digression here on this point, but shall do justice to the subject in my monograph on "Buddhism and Caste."
