Socio-cultural Reflections on Gemstones: A Bourdieusian Analysis of Śūdraka’s Mṛcchakaṭikā

Abstract

This paper applies Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological framework, particularly his concepts of capital, habitus, and field, to analyse the gemstone casket in Śūdraka’s classical Sanskrit drama Mṛcchakaṭikā (The Little Clay Cart). It argues that the gemstones function as a primary social token whose value is not inherent but continuously produced and redefined through their circulation within the play’s stratified social world. The study traces how the casket operates as symbolic capital for the courtesan Vasantasenā, who entrusts it to the impoverished Brahmin merchant Cārudatta; as economic capital for the thief Śarvilaka, who steals it to secure his beloved’s freedom; and as political capital for the antagonist Saṃsthānaka, who weaponises it within the judicial field to destroy his rival. The paper demonstrates that the central conflict arises from a clash of habitus, the deeply internalised dispositions of the characters, which generate incompatible interpretations of the gemstone’s meaning. The competing definitions are forcefully contested in the field of crisis, which emerges during the trial scene of climax. are forcefully contested. Ultimately, to understand the processes of conversion, contestation, and reproduction of social value within the drama’s complex network of power relations, this Bourdieusian reading reveals the gem-casket not merely as a narrative device but as a critical analytical tool.