Features and Functions of Corporations in Ancient India
NEXT, WE CAN EXAMINE just the barest contours of the main features and functions of guilds and corporations in ancient India.
Guilds and corporations could own land and property in the corporate’s name.
They could formulate rules and regulations and draw up charters like memorandum and articles of association in modern parlance. Any member who violated it invited penal action.
Corporate representatives transacted business with the court of law where they commanded respect.
The office named Kārya-cintaka resembled today’s board of directors. It consisted of people who were, above all, “pure and virtuous” over and beyond their professional qualifications and competence. The Yajnavalkya Samhita has a beautiful line describing such men: Kartavyam vacanaṁ tēṣāṁ samūhahitavādinām. The compound word, samūhahitavādinām is truly poignant. What it really means is that the corporate heads had to be advocates not only of their own guild but also advocates of public welfare in the most expansive sense of the word. The Sanskrit word hita has a range of meanings which can’t be easily translated into English. Does this remind us of what is today known as corporate social responsibility?
Although each guild or corporation had a chief or Śrēṣṭhi, real power was vested in the board of directors or executive council.
A mandatory clause included in the charter of each guild or corporation was a list of measures to prevent corruption. At the outset, it was compulsory for any member engaged in the business of the guild who received anything of monetary value—clothes, money, gifts, etc. – to deposit it in the guild’s treasury. If he did not, he had to pay eleven times that amount as fine.
Any member who violated his agreement with the guild or corporation immediately invited various punishments including but not limited to penalties and expulsion. An expelled member would no longer be able to conduct business with anyone, almost for life.
No member could enter into contracts with third parties using a clause that did not exist in his guild’s charter.
Rules and regulations of a corporation had to be consistent with the sacred texts and the laws laid down by the King.
And now, we can briefly examine a rather interesting element. This is the ubiquitous commercial term Nigama, which even today means what it originally meant in ancient India: Corporation.
Interestingly, Nigama also means the following: Veda, city, marketplace, street, merchant, caravan, oath, an act of logical reasoning or deduction, a kind of tax… In fact, a study of the morphology of just this term undams a vast river of India’s commercial and cultural history.
We’ll look at just one example here. A number of clay seals discovered in the ancient Buddhist city of Vaishali between 1902-15 mentions the following terms:
1. Shreshti-Sarthavaha-Kulika-Nigama
2. Shreshti-Kulika-Nigama
3. Shreshti-Nigama
4. Kulika-Nigama
Illustrious scholars like Sri D.R. Bhandarkar, R.C. Majumdar etc., have deciphered it with great effort. Purely going by what these seals contain, they deduce that Nigamas were cities administered either jointly or severally by Shreshtis, Kulikas and Sarthavahas.
Kulikas were generally artisans such as sculptors, heads of specific guilds, and so on. In early medieval India, a Kulika also meant the member of a Panchayat Board. It might be interesting to learn that an inscription mentions Kulikas as warriors who protected the Kullu valley in Himachal Pradesh.
Sarthavahas were the heads of merchant caravans.
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