Jaina Political Thought

Author(s): G C Pandey
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

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taken by natural grains. An age of food gathering thus began. It also became necessary during this period to demarcate rights and take measures to prevent their violation. These measures still consisted of nothing more than social disapproval in different grades. The lowest grade was deprecation, the second grade was admonition, the third was condemnation. These are the first three forms of punishment or Dandaniti called Hakara, makara and dhikkara.
We can, thus,notice three features of the age of patriarchs. Men live by gathering wild grains which were sufficient for them. Theylived in small families with a leader who acted as their law-giver or adviser. Rudimentary distinctions of property existed, society disapproved the disregard of such distinctions but no need was felt of any physical coercion. In contrast to the earlier conditions of a mythical and imaginary nature, this condition of society, simple, innocent and peaceful where state and society were hardly distinguishable, could well have been real. Father Schmidt's version of prehistory agrees closely with such a picture. In the usual anthropological and archaeological reconstructions of the life of man in the age of food gathering, hunting and fishing are generally added as important activities. The Puranic account does not regard food-gathering as a mark of savagerybutrather of innocence. The last of the Kulakaras was Nabhi and his son from Manu Devi was Rsabhawhowasthefirst king and Tirthankara. With him the condition of Bhogabhumi finally ended and the conditions of Karmabhumi began. Instead of merely gathering and enjoying the fruits of nature's bounty, man had now to toil and earn with the sweat of his brows. According to the archaeologist such an age of toiling or food-producing began in the new stone-age and developing through the chalcolithic age produced the phenomenon of civilization including the arts of agriculture, industrial crafts and trade, the art of writing, the science of heavens and priesta aft, social distinctions, accumulations of property, villages and towns, kingship and empire. The modern historian traces the emergence of this complex fabric of civilization to the tentative efforts of numberless of men and communities over millennia. The source of this vast and unprecedented process is attributed by modern ingenuity to successful aspects of such traditions. Briefly civilization is the growing transformation of human life wrought by discoveries and inventions prompted by the needs of survival, comfort and curiosity.
The Puranic version also traces the origin of the elements of civilization but regards them as instituted by one wise teacher and ruler of mankind at the beginning of the history of homo faber. It is difficult to treat this account as the record of some single past event which passes modern credibility. Nevertheless, it does express a certain philosophy of civilization,
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