The Patriarch – How He Began

I am afraid my letters are getting a little complicated! But the life we see around us is itself very complicated. In the old days it was much simpler, but we are now considering the time when complications first began. If we follow up our inquiry slowly, and try to understand the changes in life and society as they came in, we shall find it easier to understand many things today. And if we do not try to do so, we shall never be able to understand all that is happening around us. We shall be like children lost in a dark forest. It is for this reason that I am trying to take you right back to the edge of the forest so that we may be able to find a way through it.

You will remember that you asked me in Mussoorie about kings, and what they were, and why they became kings. We are now going to have a little peep in those far-off days when kings began. They were not called kings to begin with. But if we try to find out something about them, we shall know the origin of kings.

I have told you already about the formation of tribes. When agriculture came, and there was some division of work or labour, it became necessary for some person in the tribe to organize the work. Even before this, the tribes wanted someone to lead them to battle against another tribe. The leader was usually the oldest man in the group. He was called, or rather we call him now, the patriarch. As the oldest, he was supposed to be the most experienced and to have the most knowledge. This patriarch was not very different from the other members of the tribe. He worked with the others, and all the food that was produced was divided between all the members of the tribe. Everything belonged to the tribe. It was not like we have now, each person having his separate house and money and many other things. Whatever a man earned was divided up as it all belonged to the tribe. The patriarch or the organizer of the tribe did this dividing.

But changes came in slowly. There were new kinds of work, especially on account of agriculture, and the patriarch had to spend most of his time in organizing, and seeing that work was properly done by all the members of the tribe. Little by little, the patriarch gave up doing the ordinary work or labour of the people. He thus became quite different from the rest of the people. We see now another kind of division of work or labour: the patriarch doing the organizing and ordering people about, and the other people working in the fields and hunting and going to battle, and obeying the orders of their leader, the patriarch. If there was a war or a fight between two tribes, the patriarch became even more powerful, for in wartime it was not possible to fight well without a leader. So the patriarch became very powerful.

As the work of organization increased, the patriarch could not do it all by himself. He chose other people to help him. So we have many organizers, but of course the patriarch was the chief. The tribe was then divided up into organizers and ordinary workers. Men were no longer more or less equal. Some men, who were the organizers, had power over the other men, who were the ordinary workers. We shall see how the patriarch developed in our next letter.

Source:  http://indiragandhi.in/en/philosophy/letters/2