Jain Journal 1973 01

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 57

148
even at this early stage, beginnings of settlement in villages, a certain mastery of the production of means of subsistence: wooden vessels and utensils, finger weaving (without looms) with filaments of bast, baskets woven from bast or rushes, and polished (Neolithic) stone-implements. For the most part, also, fire and the stone axe have already provided the dug-out canoe and, in places, timber and planks for house-building. All these advances are to be found, for example, among the Indians of North-Western America, who, although familiar with the bow and arrow, know nothing of pottery. The bow and arrow was for savagery what the iron sword was for barbarism and fire arms for civilization, namely, the decisive weapon." "13
The next stage of Kulakara system is marked with the domestication and breeding of animals and the cultivation of plants, the introduction of pottery14, and the smelting of iron ore15 as they are known from the accounts of the performances of the seventh upto the fourteenth or fifteenth Kulakara in their respective Ages. These records of their activities are well-supported by the facts of history. According to F. Engels, the lower stage of barbarism begins with "the introduction of pottery" which "had its orgin, demonstrably in many cases and probably everywhere, in the coating of baskets or wooden vessels with clay in order to render them fire-proof."16 "The characteristic feature of the period of barbarism is the domestication and breeding of animals and the cultivation of plants."17
The middle stage of barbarism "begins, in the East, with domestication of animals; in the West, with cultivation of edible plants by means of irrigation, and with the use of adobes (bricks dried in the sun) and stone for buildings.18
18"
13
Ibid., pp. 24-25.
14 "tahe samina hatthissa kumbhae kauna darisitam pattayam, evam ta padhamam kumbhakara uppanna, evam ta aharo gato", Avasyakacurni, pp. 155-156.
JAIN JOURNAL
15 Ibid., p. 156. According to K. Marx, after much progress of agriculture, i.e., after the introduction of plough with metal coulter, metal axes, bronze and iron tips for spears, arrows, etc., there came into existence the domestication of animals (See Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, 2nd Edition, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1963); vide The Origin of the Family, etc., p. 25.
Ibid., p. 25.
17 Ibid., p. 25.
16
18
Ibid., p. 26.