Jain Journal 1980 07

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

Page 27

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JAIN JOURNAL
2012
Jan
Adoration of a naked saint or a hero. Prehistoric painting in a rock shelter at Cogul near Lerdia, Spain.
of man within several thousands of years before the beginning of the Christian era. As famed archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes had observed,
"The self-consciousness that intensified with the elaboration of the cerebral cortex, making man more and more aware of his actions and his separation from nature, was to take two main and opposing directions. One was towards controlling the environment. This led immediately to tool-making and then on to the whole accelerating course of our technical and scientific advance. Here analysis, breaking down of the whole into manageable parts, has been the means, and the ends are wholly practical and material. The other direction is towards reuniting the part with the whole, man with the universe from which his consciousness seemed to divide him. This way led to ritual, art, religious faith, mysticism and some aspects of philosophy."
(Prehistory and the Beginning of Civilization, UNESCO 1963, by Jacquetta Hawkes and Sir Leonard Woolley, pp. 105-6).
As it seems, the mysterious history of the hominids might have sparkled with inspirations and certain realizations in remote antiquity. Such ascent of man appears likely in the perspective of myths and progress of culture. This was perhaps as important as the quest for food before Holocene. Here we may recall the glory of Egyptian god Thoth or Tehuti who is sometimes represented as the divine baboon or dog ape (cynocephalus) worshipping the Sun. The deity being both a divine healer and an embodiment of wisdom was addressed by the great god Ra as follows: