Artisans and craftsmen fleeing the decline or destruction of cities often ended up as suppliant refugees and, gradually, low-caste clients. The result was increasingly complex local patronage systems in the countryside—jajmani systems, as they came to be known—where the refugees provided services for the landowning castes, who took on many of the roles once held by the state, providing protection and justice, extracting labor dues, and so on—but also protected local communities from actual royal representatives.
