Estimating Mauryan-era incomes from the weight of a mung bean.md
Here’s my back-of-the-envelope estimate of incomes for various occupations from the Arthaśāstra. Ideally one would look at the average consumption (+taxes) of a Mauryan household and measure its price in modern terms. This is infeasible, so another approach is to use some real good (mung beans) whose price in paṇas we know as the basis of converting Mauryan-era incomes to modern day:
- If I’m reading Ch 2.19 right, 1.25 paṇas is the price of 1 droṇa of mung beans (māṣa).
- Based on conversions in the chapter, 1 droṇa = 200 pala = 800 karṣa = 12,800 suvarṇa-māṣa = 128,000 māṣa. thus 1 paṇa buys 102,400 mung beans.
- Online estimates of the weight of a mung bean: 50mg 1x(https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Means-of-number-of-seeds-per-pod-100-seed-weight-root-to-shoot-ratio-and-harvest_tbl2_281088333), 38-56mg 3x(https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321633600_Yield_and_Quality_of_Mung_Bean_Vigna_radiata_l_R_Wilczek_Seeds_Produced_in_Poland), 53.4 + 72.7 = 126.1 mg 5x(https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09168451.2016.1176518). Fortunately 2.19 itself gives a conversion: 10 māṣa = 5 guñja seeds. The latter (called “ratti” or “kr̥ṣṇala”) is a standard ancient Indian unit of mass ~ 0.113g; thus 1 māṣa ~ 56.5mg.
- Thus 1 paṇa = 102,400 maṣa = 5.79kg mung beans.
- We can take the modern price of 1 kg mung beans = 80 INR2023 = 0.96 USD2023 = 0.70 USD2011, thus 1 paṇa = 5.79kg = 462.85 INR2023 = 5.55 USD2023 = 4.05 USD2011.
Ch 5.3 gives the annual incomes for various groups, reported here in 2011 dollars:
- Royal priest, royal teacher, ministers, army commander, crown prince, queen: 48K paṇas ~ $194,400.
- Superintendent of harem, collector-general, commander, chamberlain: 24K paṇas ~ $97,200
- Other princes, chief constable, superintendents of various departments, officers of various towns and regions, council members: 12K paṇas ~ $48,600
- Chiefs of each division of the army: 8K paṇas ~ $32,400
- Superintendents of each division of the army: 4K paṇas ~ $16,200
- Army doctors, charioteers, animal trainers, carpenters: 2K paṇas ~ $8,100
- Astrologers, bards, storytellers, fortune-tellers: 1K paṇas ~ $4,050
- Soldiers, trumpeteers, accountants, clerical writers: 500 paṇas ~ $2,025
- Other musicians: 250 paṇas ~ $1,013
- Other carpenters and artisans: 120 paṇas ~ $486
- Unskilled labour: 60 paṇas ~ $243.
Well I’m not completely sure of my calculations. 2.19 also states that 0.75 paṇas buys an āḍhaka (which is supposed to be 1/4 of a droṇa), 6 māṣas buy a prastha (which is 1/16 of a droṇa, and thus 8,000 māṣas according to my calculations?), 1 māṣa buys a kuḍumba (1/64 of a droṇa, thus 2,000 māṣas). Perhaps here māṣa is being used for its weight in silver/gold? IDK.