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Jainism Before Mahâvîra
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Archaeological Evidence to Ascertain the Truthfulness of the Legends:
This legendary account of the existence of Jainism in such an early period on the basis of Jaina scriptures is not reliable, as it is not consistent with the known facts from the archaeological evidence. The archaeologists tell a different story. The earliest man of Early Palaeolithic Culture lived in India in Middle Pleistocene Period i. e. some 2,00,000 years ago. Economically, man was a savage and a hunter, and with the help of stone tools, he subsisted largely on fruits, roots and grubs, and on the chase with the help of bow and arrow. The Middle Stone Age Culture is assigned the later half of the Pleistocene (25,000 years before), and the tools? are of typical flake nature, smaller than those of Early Stone Age Culture. Up to the Mesolithic stage of culture of the Early Holocene Age, man was still a hunter and used tiny stone tools called microliths which are non-geometric. Pottery did not come into existence up till now.
If the evidence of the lowest levels of Langhraj in Gujarat is taken to be a generalized feature, there came the stage when the geometric element made its appearance in the microlithic industry. At Langhraj itself was followed by the appearance of pottery, there is also some evidence though inconclusive regarding agriculture and domestication of animals at this stage. A picture of people using pottery and geometric microliths is also afforded by the cave-shelters of Madhya Pradesh. None of these aforesaid stages have been dated with reasonable approximation.
The carbon 14 datings for the pre-pottery village culture of Kili Ghul Mohammad near Quetta in W. Pakistan confined to the Baluchi hills (Period I viz. 3690+85 B.C. and 3510+515 B.C.) are of great value. It provides the evidence of domestication of animals and of agriculture but not of the use of pottery. Kili Ghul Mohammad III marks the infiltration of copper. Kalibangan and Kotdiji cultures (3000 B. C.) are famous for pre-Harappan deposits such as pottery, and structures. The Harappan civilization with many metropolitan centres such as Rupar in the East Punjab, Kalibangan in North Rajasthan, Alamgirpur in Uttara Pradesh and Rangpur, Lothal and Somanatha in Gujarat is the last and most elaborate phase of long cultural evolution (2500-1800 B.C.).
