World Leaders Biography

The old patriarch has taken up a lot of our time, has he not? We shall finish with him soon, or rather he will change his name. I started by promising to tell you how kings came and what they were. And in order to understand kings one has to go right back to the patriarchs. You must have guessed that these patriarchs became later on kings or raja and maharaja. The word patriarch comes from the Latin 'Pater' or father. He was the leader and father of his tribe or people. 'Patria', which means fatherland or one's own country, comes from the same Latin word. You know that in French it is 'Patrie'. In Sanskrit and Hindi, we think of our country as the mother or motherland-Matribhumi, the motherland. Which do you prefer? When thS patriarch's office became hereditary, that is son succeeded father, there was little difference between him and a king. He developed into a king and the king got the strange notion that everything in the country belonged to him...

What kind of people lived in these cities and villages of early times? We can find something about them from the great buildings and structures that they made. Also from the writing on stone tablets which they left. Then we have a few very old books which tell us a great deal of those times. In Egypt we still have the great pyramids and the Sphinx and ruins of enormous temples at Luxor and other places. You have not seen these although we were not far from them when we passed through the Suez Canal. But you have seen pictures of them and probably you have got picture postcards of them. The Sphinx is a lion with a woman's head. It is an enormous thing. Nobody knows why it was made and what it represents. The woman's head has got a strange faint smile and people wond~r what this smile is about. To say that a person is like the Sphinx means that you do not understand him. In Egypt also, in those days, they made fine canals and lakes to take the water for irrigation and a...

I hope you do not find my account of the old tribes and their patriarchs very dull. I told you in my last letter that everything in those days belonged to the whole tribe and not to each member separately. Even the patriarch had nothing special to himself. As a member of the tribe, he could only have a share like any other member. But he was the organizer and he was supposed to look after the goods and property of the tribe. As his power increased, he began to think that these goods and property were really his own and not the tribe's. Or rather he thought that he himself, being the leader of the tribe, represented the tribe. So we see how the idea of owning things for oneself began. Today we are always thinking and talking of this thing being 'mine' or 'yours'. But, as I have told you, the men and women of the first tribes did not think in this way. Everything then belonged to the tribe. The old patriarch, however, began to think that he was the tribe, and so...