ABSTRACT
Skilled artisans, labourers and self-employed service providers were free, mobile and self-assured people, depending not on the sufferance on any individual or class, but on their own skill that was inevitably seeded by the entire society for the fulfilment of its economic and social requirements. In the workshops—karkhanas, smiths, carpenters, weavers, and many more, had to do manual labour for their masters. Wages or remuneration received by artisans, collateral service providers, labourers and others, has been a subject of debate and discussion among the scholars of the economic history. Why blanket terms like ‘wretched’, ‘mean’ or ‘poor’ have been used for majority of the professional groups including labourers and artisans, was due to their standing in the social hierarchy and lifestyle. Some of these groups have been dealt with briefly in some of the secondary works, while others like A.I. Chicherov have mainly concentrated on the role of labourers and artisans in the rural society.
