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CONDITIONS OF EARLY EXISTENCE 51 ara of our half-cycle. People were then forced to sweat for their living, and the idea of private proprietorship gradually formed itself in their minds.
The foundation of the civilisation of law and order was not laid at once. Wise men arose from time to time, and kept on enlightening the people. The number of the sages who thus appeared is said to be fourteen, the last of whom was one of the greatest of Enlightened Men. He was called Nābhi Rai, and was married to a young lady who has been described as the very soul of female loveliness and virtue. Her name was Maru Devi, and she was destined to give birth to the World Saviour Sri Rişabha Deva, the first Tirthamkara and the original Founder of Dharma (Religion) in this age.
Nābhi Rai was endowed with clairvoyance from birth, and effected much reform in the condition of the society which was then beginning to form. It may be stated that serious crimes were quite unknown in those days, and but little need of law had till then been felt by men.
The first kulakara was Pratiśruti. When the trees that shed strong light around them, in the state of the bhogabhumi disappeared and the sun and the moon became visible, the people, who saw them for the first time, were alarmed.
