Jinamanjari 1996 04 No 13

Author(s): Jinamanjari
Publisher: Canada Bramhi Jain Society Publication

Page 54

identified and deciphered by Marija Gimbutas in her pivotal studies are found in the early civilization of the subcontinent.20 One particularly striking parallels is that no weapons except hunting implements were found among grave goods in Europe until c.4500-4300 B.C.E.21 The Neolithic cultures in old Europe and the Indus River Valley were formulated on agrarian-based, highly-organized communities that worshipped an omnipotent Goddess. Gimbutas was able to extract from her data a revealing picture of the life of the peoples of old Europe:
Summing (up) archaeological, historical, linguistic, and religious evidence, we visualize Old European society organized around a theacratic, communal temple community, and a higher female status in religious life. This was an endogamous society guided by a highly respected elder -- Great Mother of the clan and her brother or uncle, with a council of women as a governing body. The structure was matrilineal, with succession to leadership and inheritance within the female line. 22
There existed a gender balance in the old European communities; partnership was the prevailing model. The archaeological finds do not "suggest any imbalance between the sexes or a subservience of one sex to the other. They suggest, instead, a condition of mutual respect."23
Although Harappan culture may not have been linked to the civilizatons of old Europe in actual fact, they nevertheless bear some systemic and structural similarities. We may be able to postulate a type of theacratic socialism as the mode of organizing society. Studies of Indus Valley skeletons and teeth demonstrate little or no difference in the diets of the inhabitants. In other words, the distribution of food was equitable. Harappan elites maintained a social order in such a way as "to avoid dietary and pathological privations so osten
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