Indian Antiquary Vol 47

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 250

234
times in the narrower sense of that kind of acquisition that is rendered possible by exchange and money. The appended table 5 of the divisions of acquisition will show that he divided wealth into three classes, natural, intermediate, and unnatural. Hunting of wild animals or of slaves, the "living tools", is considered a "natural" mode of acquisition as also the first division of chrematistike, on account of their having the same relation to the household as mother's milk to the young, or ordinary food to the graminivorous or carnivorous animals. The "intermediate" acquisition is thought to be somewhat removed from nature and hence its name. This gulf reaches its farthest limit in the "unnatural", with exchange for its instrument. Wealth is defined to be "a number of instruments to be used in a household or in a state." None of the modes of acquisition should be pursued immoderately, as domestic economy is not identical with amassing wealth, nor statesmanship with finance. The foundations of an "art of acquisition" quite apart from the "art of household management" were thus laid. The term oikonomike continued to denote as before household management', chrematislike (or ktetike) being used to stand for the predecessor of modern economics. "Political economy" as the name of the science of wealth was first used bya French author in the title of his work Traité de l'Economic Politique published in 1615. Aristotle dwells on diverse topics of economics which I need not reproduce. Suffice it to say that with him originated the conception of a distinct science or art of wealth'.
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
Stray expressions of thought in the ancient East on the material interests.
The Chaldæans reached a high degree of excellence in agriculture making the soil yield a good many raw products. Their methods were first transmitted to the Greeks and afterwards to the Arabs, and practised long after the disappearance of the Chaldæan civilization. The people of Irak under the Abbaside Caliphs followed those methods while the
(1) Natural, including
5 The art of acquisition (ktetike; but chrematistike is sometimes used in this wide sense).
I. Hunting (a) of wild beasts, (b) of those who are by nature slaves.'
II. Chrematistike, the science or art of wealth.
(a) keeping of cattle, flocks, &c.
(b) agriculture (including cultivation of fruit-tree's.
(c) bee-keeping.
(d) keeping of fish.
(e) keeping of birds.
(2) Intermediate,
(a) wood-cutting.
(b) mining.
(3) Unnatural (metabletike, exchange).
(a) trade (commerce and retail trade).
1st, ship owning.
2nd, carrying trade.
3rd, shop-keeping.
[SEPTEMBER, 1918.
(b) money-lending (usury). (c) labour for hire.
1st, of the skilled artisan. 2nd, of the unskilled. "
Jowett's Politics of Aristotle (Oxf. 1885), vol. II, p. 35, as quoted in Palgrave, op. cit., Aristotle'.
Palgrave, op. cit., Aristotle', and Ingram, op. cit., pp. 14-17. 7 Ingram, opi cit., p. 45.
Economia' meant but 'domestic management' according to Bacon.