Vaishya (vaiśya)

A vaishya is a member of the productive class of farmers, herders and traders, on whose work the other classes depend. The Mahabharata gives them less narrative room than kings and priests but grants them one of its sharpest teachers in Tuladhara, a merchant who tells a proud ascetic that his own honest scales and refusal to harm any creature outweigh years of austerity. Krishna's upbringing among cowherds also colours the epic's attitude, since the god of the Gita spent his childhood in a herding village.