Slavery as known from the Buddhist Pali Sources

Drawing on the Vinaya Pitaka, the Nikayas, the Jataka stories and the Dharmasastra literature, this article reconstructs how slavery was conceptualised in the Buddhist Pali tradition and how Buddhist authors described the lives of slaves in ancient Indian society. It notes that both male and female slaves are mentioned; women appear in royal harems and the households of wealthy villagers, while men are recorded as agricultural labourers and household servants. Pali texts emphasise that slaves could be bought, sold or given away, and they record that the standard price of a healthy slave was about 100 karshapanas (silver coins). The author surveys the Buddhist prohibition on monks accepting slaves and explores the categories by which different writers classified people who entered servitude. War captives constituted the first category; a second group consisted of those sold by their masters; a third category included people who voluntarily sold themselves to escape famine, pay debts or survive hardship. Additional categories included children of slave mothers and those inherited as ancestral property. The paper compares Buddhist ideas with Brahmanical norms, noting that the Manusmriti and Arthashastra accepted the existence of slavery but discouraged the enslavement of “Aryas” (non-Shudras). Buddhist sources admonished householders to treat slaves humanely; later Mahayana texts criticised enslavement outright. The article concludes by highlighting that, although Buddhist monks denounced slavery’s cruelties, Pali literature reflects and sometimes legitimises the institution by recognising slaves as property and assigning them monetary value. It stresses that modern interpretations should consider the socio‑economic realities of ancient India rather than imposing later moral judgments.

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