Jain Journal 1974 01

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

Page 40

124
JAIN JOURNAL
parcels of land became hereditary property by the titles of individuals to them, originally assigned by the Kula (tribe) to individuals. The full, free ownership of land implied both the possibilities of unrestricted and uncurtailed possession and of alienating it by shaking off the chains of the paramount title of the Kula, and tearing inseverable bond which tied him to the soil. The land now became a commodity which could be sold, pledged and mortagaged with the introduction of private ownership.
F. Engels presents a similar account of economic conditions of civilization in this manner : “Commercial expansion, money, usury, landed property and mortgage were thus accompanied by the rapid concentration and centralization of wealth in the hands of a small class, on the one hand, and by the increasing impoverishment of the masses and growing mass of paupers, on the other. The new aristocracy of wealth ... forced the nobility permanently into the background (in Athens, in Rome, among the Germans)"11,
As a result of the social revolution the gentile constitution of the Kulakaras stood powerful in the face of new elements that had cropped up without its help at the stage of civilization under the leadership of Rsabhadeva. The sedentary state of Kulakarism was interrupted by the mobility and changes of abode upon which commerce, changes of occupation and the transfer of land were conditioned. Besides, the old wants and interests, new wants and interests had arisen from the revolution in the conditions of earning one's livelihood and the resulting change in social structure.
The interest of the groups of craftsmen created by division of labour and the special needs of the town as opposed to the country required new organs with the growth of population and conflicting interests of the Kula and the heterogenous population of town, as the Kula association confronted these masses as exclusive privileged bodies--a hateful aristocracy. A new society had grown out of a society devoid of international antagonisms and coercive power12 except public opinion. It had to split up into free man and Sūdras (slaves), into exploiting rich and exploited poor by the force of all its economic conditions of existence. Thus the gentile constitution of the Kulakaras was burst asunder by the division of labour and consequently there took place the division of society into classes. The state stepped in its place as a result of the evolution of socio-economic life of the people.
11 Ibid., p. 164. 12 See the digvijaya of Bharata, his polity and administration in Avasyaka Curni.