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. He thought he was the country. A famous French king once said L' etat c' est moi- 'The State, it is I' or 'I am the state'. Kings forgot that they were really chosen by the people in order to organize and distribute the food and other things of the country among the people. They forgot that they were chosen because they were supposed to be the cleverest and the most experienced persons in the tribe or country. They imagined that they were the masters and all the other people in the country their servants. As a matter of fact, they were the servants of the country.

Later on, you will see when you read history that kings became so conceited that they thought that the people had nothing to do with choosing them. It was God himself, they said, that had made them kings. They called this the 'divine right of kings'. For long years, they misbehaved like this and lived in great pomp and luxury while their people starved. But, at last, the common people could not bear it any longer and in some countries they drove out their kings. You will read all about this later, how the people of England rose against their King Charles I and defeated him and even put him to death; how the people of France had a great revolution and decided to have no more kings. You will remember that we visited the Conciergerie prison in Paris. Were you with us then? In this prison were kept the members of the king's family, his wife Marie Antoinette and others. You will also read about the great Russian revolution when the people of Russia, only a few years ago, drove out their king, who was called the Tsar.

So kings have had their day and most countries have no kings. France and Germany and Russia and Switzerland and the countries of America and China and many other countries have no kings. They are republics; that is, the common people choose their governors and leaders from time to time. These governors and leaders are not hereditary.

In England, as you know, there is still a king, but he has no power. He can do very little. All the power belongs to the Parliament, where the chosen leaders of the people sit. You will remember seeing the Parliament in London.

In India, we have still many rajas and maharajas and nawabs. You see them going about with fine clothes, in expensive motor cars and spending a lot of money on themselves. Where do they get all this money from? They get it in taxes from the people. The taxes are given so that the money may be used to help all the people in the country-by making schools and hospitals and libraries and museums and good roads and many other things for the good of the people. But our rajas and maharajas still think as the French king did of old: L'etat c'est moi-The State, it is I. And they spend the money of the people on their own pleasures. While they live in luxury, their people, who work hard and give them the money, starve and their children have no schools to go to.

• Book: Letters from a Father to His Daughter, Jawaharlal Nehru foreword by Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, 
• Published by the Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd. Text Copyright © Priyanka Gandhi Vadra 2004

The Patriarch Become the King

We have said enough about patriarchs and kings for the time being. Let us now go back a little and consider the early civilizations and the kind of people who lived in those days.

We do not know very much about these early peoples, but we know much more about them than about the Palaeolithic and Neolithic man.

We have got even now huge buildings in ruins which were built thousands of years ago. And looking at these buildings and temples and palaces, we can form some idea of what the early people were like and what they did. Specially helpful to us are the sculptures and carvings in these old buildings. From these sculptures we can find out sometimes what kind of dress they used to wear and many other things.

We cannot say definitely where men first settled down and developed a civilization. Some people say that there was a great country, which they now call Atlantis, in the Atlantic Ocean. In this country, it is said, people lived and were highly civilized, but the whole country somehow or other was swallowed up by the Atlantic Ocean and no part of it remains. We have no proof of this, only stories. So we can leave this out and need not consider it.

Then again we are told by some people that there were great civilizations in olden times in America. You know that Columbus is supposed to have discovered America. But this does not mean that America was not there before Columbus came. It simply means that the people of Europe did not know of it till Columbus found it out for them. Long before Columbus went there, people lived there and had some kind of civilization. We find ruins of very old buildings in Yukatan, which is in Mexico in North America, and in Peru in South America. We can certainly say therefore that in Peru and Yukatan civilized people lived in very early times. But we cannot say much more about them, as we do not know much at present. Perhaps we may find out many more facts about them later.

In Eurasia, as Europe and Asia together are called, the earliest civilizations were probably in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Crete, India and China. Egypt is now considered to be in Africa, but we may consider it with Eurasia as it is very near.

When the old tribes which used to wander about wanted to settle down, what kind of place would they choose? It must be a place where they could get their food easily; and their food was partly grown in the fields by agriculture. For agriculture, water is very necessary. Without water, the fields dry up and nothing can be grown in them. You know that when there is not enough rain during the monsoon in India, little food is grown and there is a famine. The poor get nothing to eat and starve. So water is essential. The early settlers must therefore have chosen places to live in where there was plenty of water. We find that this was so. In Mesopotamia, they settled down between the two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. In Egypt, they had the great Nile. In India, most of their cities were near the big rivers-the Indus, the Ganges, the Jumna. Water was so necessary for them that they looked upon those rivers which gave them food and abundance, as sacred and holy. In Egypt, they called the Nile 'Father Nile', and worshipped it. In India, you know that the Ganges was worshipped and is still considered holy. It is called 'Mother Ganges' (Ganga mai) and you hear pilgrims shout out 'Ganga mai ki-jai'. It is quite easy to understand this worship as these rivers meant so much to them. They gave them not only water but fine mud and sand which made the fields rich and fertile. Because of the river water and mud, the land gave plenty of food. So the rivers might well be called 'father' and 'mother'. But people have a habit of forgetting why they do things. Unthinkingly, they go on copying others. We must remember that the Nile and the Ganges are considered holy because they gave water and food.

• Book: Letters from a Father to His Daughter, Jawaharlal Nehru foreword by Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, 
• Published by the Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd. Text Copyright © Priyanka Gandhi Vadra 2004

The Early Civilizations.

big rivers and in fertile valleys where food and water were abundant. Their big cities were on the banks of the rivers. You may have heard the names of some of these famous old cities. In Mesopotamia, there were Babylon and Nineveh and Assur. But all of these have long ceased to exist and people sometimes find remains of the cities if they dig deep enough in the sand or earth. In thousands of years, they were covered up completely by sand and earth and no trace of them could be seen. In some places, new cities were built right on top of the old ones which were covered up. People who have been trying to find out about these old cities have had to dig deep, and sometimes they have found several cities one ontop of the other. Of course, they did not exist like this at the same time.

One city probably existed for hundreds of years and people lived in it and died, and their children and children's children lived and died. Gradually, the city became deserted and fewer people lived in it. At last, nobody lived there and the whole place became a heap of ruins. The sand and the dust came and covered up these cities and there was no one to remove it. After many, many years the whole city became covered up with this sand and dust and people even forgot that the city ever existed. Hundreds of years must have passed, and then fresh people came there and built a new city.

One city probably existed for hundreds of years and people lived in it and died, and their children and children's children lived and died. Gradually, the city became deserted and fewer people lived in it. At last, nobody lived there and the whole place became a heap of ruins. The sand and the dust came and covered up these cities and there was no one to remove it. After many, many years the whole city became covered up with this sand and dust and people even forgot that the city ever existed. Hundreds of years must have passed, and then fresh people came there and built a new city. And this new city in its turn became old and deserted and fell into ruins. And that too disappeared in the course of time under sand and dust. So we find sometimes the ruins of many cities one over the other. This happened specially in sandy places for the sand covers everything quickly.

Strange, is it not, that city after city should grow up and shelter crowds of men and women and children, and then gradually die away? And new cities grow where the old used to be and fresh crowds of people come and live in them. And they too die and leave no sign or trace behind. I write about these cities in a few sentences, but think of the thousands and thousands of years that must have passed for these cities to grow and die, and other cities to take their place. We call a man old when he is seventy or eighty years of age. But what is seventy or eighty when we think of these thousands of years? How many little children must have become old and died again and again in these cities when they existed. And now Babylon and Nineveh are but names for us.

Another very old city was Damascus in Syria. But Damascus did not die. It is still there and is a great city. It is said by some that Damascus is probably the oldest city in the world today.

In India, our great cities are also on the banks of rivers. One of the oldest was Indraprastha, which was somewhere near Delhi. But Indraprastha is no more. Benares or Kashi is also very old, perhaps one of the oldest existing cities of the world. Allahabad, Kanpur and Patna, and many others which you can probably yourself think of, are also on the banks of rivers. But these are not very old, though Prayag or Allahabad and Patna or Pataliputra, as it used to be called, are pretty old.'

So also there are ancient cities in China.

• Book: Letters from a Father to His Daughter, Jawaharlal Nehru foreword by Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, 
• Published by the Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd. Text Copyright © Priyanka Gandhi Vadra 2004

The Great cities of the Ancient World

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 agriculture. There was especially the famous Lake Meridu. This shows how clever and advanced the ancient Egyptians were. They must have had fine engineers to build these canals and lakes and the great pyramids.

The little island of Crete or Candia is in the Mediterranean Sea. We passed near it when going from Port Said to Venice. On this little island, there was a fine civilization in the olden days. At Knossos in. Crete, there was an enormous palace and we have the remains of this palace still. In this palace there were bathrooms and water pipes, which some ignorant people think are modern inventions. There were also beautiful pottery and sculpture and paintings, and fine metal and ivory work. In this little island of Crete, the people lived peacefully and made great progress.

You must have read of King Midas who got into great difficulties because every thing he touched became gold! He could not eat because his food became gold, and what is the use of gold as food? He was punished for his greed in this way. This is, of course, a fanciful story. It is meant to show us that gold is not such a fine oruseful thing as people imagine.

There is another story of Crete which you may have heard. It is about the Minotaur, which is supposed to have been a monster, half man and half bull. It is said that young men and young girls were given to this monster as his food! I have told you before that the idea of religion first came through the fear of the unknown. And because of this fear, not understanding nature and much that happens around us, people used to do many foolish things. It is quite possible that boys and girls were sacrificed in this way not to a. real monster, because I do not think such a monster ever existed, but to an imaginary monster!

All over the world, in those ancient days, there was what is called human sacrifice, that is, men and women were sacrificed to imaginary beings whom people worshipped. In Egypt, girls used to be thrown into the river Nile be- cause it was thought that this would please Father Nile. Fortunately, human sacrifices do not take placenow, except perhaps very seldom in some far corner of the world. But even now some people kill animals and sacrifice them to please God! It is a curious way of worshipping anybody.

• Book: Letters from a Father to His Daughter, Jawaharlal Nehru foreword by Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, 
• Published by the Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd. Text Copyright © Priyanka Gandhi Vadra 2004

Egypt and Crete

We have seen that the early civilizations began and developed in Mesopotamia and Egypt and the little island of Crete in the Mediterranean Sea. About the same time, in China and in India also, great civilizations began and developed in their own way. In China, as elsewhere, people settled down in the valleys of great rivers. These people were what are called the Mongolians. They made beautiful vessels out of bronze and later of iron. Canals and fine buildings were made, and a new way of writing was evolved. This writing was quite different from our writing in Hindi or English or Urdu. It was a kind of picture writing. Each word and sometimes even a short sentence was a picture. In ancient Egypt and in Crete and Babylon also, there used to be picture writing. This is now called hieroglyphic writing. You must have seen this writing in the museums and in some books. In Egypt and in the West this writing is only found in very old buildings. Nobody has used this writing there for a very long time. But in China even now, the writing is a kind of picture writing and it is written from top to bottom; not from left to right as in Hindi or English or right to left as in Urdu.

In India, many of the oldest remains of buildings are perhaps still buried in the earth and the sand. They are hidden from us till someone digs them up. But some very old ruins have already been found in the north.

We know, however, that long long ago, even before the Aryans came to India, there were Dravidians here, and they had a fine civilization. They used to trade with people in other countries. They sent many of their. goods to Mesopotamia and Egypt. Specially they sent across the seas rice and spices, like pepper, and teak wood to build houses. It is said that some of the ancient palaces of the city of Ur in Mesopotamia were made of teak wood which was sent from South India. It is also said that gold and pearls and ivory and peacocks and apes were sent from India to western countries. We thus see that there must have been a great deal of trade between India and other countries in those days. Trade can only exist when people are civilized Both in India and China, there were then little states or kingdoms. Neither of these countries was all under one government. Each little city with some villages and fields had a separate government. These are called city states. Many of these were republics even in those early days. There were no kings, only a kind of elected panchayat to govern the state. Some of them, however, were little kingdoms. But although the city states had separate governments, they sometimes cooperated with each other, that is, helped each other. Sometimes one big state became a kind of leader of several smaller states.

In China, these small states soon gave place to a great big state, an empire. It was in the days of this empire that the Great Wall of China was built. You have read about this Great Wall and what an enormous thing it is. It was built from the sea to the high mountains in the north to keep off other Mongolian tribes from breaking into China. This wall is 1,400 miles long and is twenty to thirty feet high and twenty-five feet broad. At intervals there are forts and towers in it. If such a wall was built in India it would extend from Lahore in the north to Madras in the south. The Great Wall stands even now, and if you go to China you can see it.

• Book: Letters from a Father to His Daughter, Jawaharlal Nehru foreword by Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, 
• Published by the Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd. Text Copyright © Priyanka Gandhi Vadra 2004

China and India

Another interesting people of ancient times were the Phoenicians. They belonged to the same race as the Jews and Arabs. They lived on the western coast of Asia Minor-the Turkey of today. Their chief towns were Acre, Tyre and Sidon on the Mediterranean Sea coast. They were famous for their long journeys by sea for trading purposes. They went all over the Mediterranean Sea and right up to England by sea. They may have come to India also.

We see now two interesting beginnings of great things-sea travel and trade. Each helped the other. There were not, of course, in those days fine steamers and ships like you see today. The first boats must have been simple tree trunks hollowed out. Oars were used with them and sometimes sails to catch the wind. Sea voyages must have been interesting in those days and very exciting. Imagine crossing the Arabian Sea on a' little boat with oars and sails! There must have been very little room to move about in it, and the least bit of wind must have made it roll and pitch, and very often it sank. Only brave people would venture out in a boat in the open sea. It was full of risks and for months sometimes they could not see land. If food ran short, they could not get it in the middle of the sea unless they fished or caught a bird. The sea was full of adventure and romance. There are so many stories of sailors and strange happenings in the sea in olden times. But, in spite of the danger, people went for voyages across the sea. Some may have done it because they loved adventures, but most of them went because of their love of gold and money. For they went for trade-to buy things and sell them. So they made money.

What is trade and how did it begin? Today you see large shops and it is so easy to go inside them and buy what you want. But do you ever think where the things you buy come from? You may buy a woollen shawl in a shop in Allahabad. It may have come all the way from Kashmir and the wool may have grown on the backs of sheep in the mountains of Kashmir or Ladakh. A toothpaste that you buy may have come in ships and railway trains all the way from America. So also you may buy things made in China or Japan or Paris or London. Consider a piece of foreign cloth that is sold in the bazaar here. The cotton grew in India and it was sent to England. A great factory took it and cleaned it and made it into yarn or cotton thread and then into cloth. This cloth then came back again to India and was sold in the bazaar. How many thousands of mile it travelled backwards and forwards before it was offered for sale! It seems rather silly that the cotton that is grown in India had to go all the way to England to be made into cloth and then come back again. This seems such a waste of time and money and energy. It ought to be far cheaper and better to make the cotton into cloth in India. You know that we do not buy or wear foreign cloth. We wear khaddar because it is more sensible to buy things, as far as we can, made in our own country. We also buy and wear khaddar because in this way we help the poor who spin and weave.

So you see that trade is a very complicated thing now. Great ships are always carrying the goods of one country to another. But it was not always so.

Right in the early days, when man settled down there was very little trade. Everything that a man wanted he had to get himself or make himself. He did not want much then, of course. Then, as I have already told you, there came a division of labour in the tribe. People did different kinds of work and made different things. Sometimes it must have happened that one tribe had a great deal of one thing and another tribe a great deal of something, else. It was natural for them to exchange goods. For instance, one tribe may give a cow for a bag of grain. There was no money in those days. Things could only be exchanged. So exchange began. It must have been rather inconvenient. To get a bag of grain, or something like it, one had to carry a cow or maybe a couple of sheep! But still trade developed.

When gold and silver were found, people started using them for trade. It was easier to carry them. And gradually the custom arose of paying for things in gold and silver. The first person who thought of this must have been a very clever person. This use of gold and silver made trade very much easier. Even then, there were no coins as we have them. Gold used to be weighed in a balance and then given to another person. Much later came coins, and these made trade and exchange still simpler. No weighing was required then as everybody knew the value of a coin. Now money is used everywhere. But we must remember that money is no good by itself. It only helps us to get other things that we want. It helps us to exchange goods. You will remember the story of King Midas who had plenty of gold but nothing to eat! So money is worthless unless it is used to get something that we need.

Even now, however, you will find sometimes in villages that people actually exchange goods, and do not pay money. But generally money is used as it is much more convenient. Some foolish people imagine that money itself is good and they collect and hoard it, instead of using it. This shows that they do not know how money came to be used and what it really is.

• Book: Letters from a Father to His Daughter, Jawaharlal Nehru foreword by Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, 
• Published by the Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd. Text Copyright © Priyanka Gandhi Vadra 2004

Sea Vayages and trade

We have already considered the vanous languages and how they are related to each other. Let us think for a while how language must have begun. We find among some animals that there are some words used. The monkeys, it is said, have a few cries or words for simple things. You can also notice the peculiar cries that some animals make when they are frightened and want to warn others of their kind of danger.

Perhaps language started in the same way in man. There must have been very simple cries to begin with-cries of fear and warning. Then, it may be, came what are called labour cries. When a number of people work together they usually make a noise together. Have you not noticed people pulling together at something? Or lifting a great weight together? It seems that all crying together helps them a little. Their labour cries might have been the first words that man used.

Gradually other words must have come in- simple words like water, fire, horse and bear. Probably there were only nouns and no verbs. If a man wanted to say that he had seen a bear he would only say one word 'bear' and point, just like a child. There could hardly be much conversation then! Language developed. Short sentences came and then longer ones. Probably there was not one language for all the different people at any time. But at some time there could not have been very many different languages. As I have already told you, there were a few languages then, each of which developed a large family of languages.

During the time of the early civilizations, which we have been considering, language had already greatly developed. There were many songs, and bards and singers used to sing them. There was not much writing or books in those days and so people had to remember much more. It is easier to remember rhymes and poetry. Therefore we find that rhymes and ballads were very popular in all these countries where the early civilizations existed.

The singers or bards were especially fond of singing of the glories of dead heroes. People in those days were most interested in fighting and so the songs are about bravery in battle. We find this in India as well as in other countries.

Writing also has had an interesting beginning. I have referred to Chinese writing. All writing must have begun with pictures. A man who wanted to say something about a peacock would try to make a picture or drawing of a peacock: Of course, no one could write much this way. Gradually the pictures would have become simpler and simpler. Much later, an alphabet was thought of and evolved. This immediately made writing far easier and progress became more rapid.

Numerals and counting must have been a great discovery. Without numerals it is difficult to imagine how any kind of business could be done. The person who invented numerals must have been a genius or a very clever person. At first in Europe, numerals were rather clumsy. You know what are called the Roman numerals-I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X and so on. These are clumsy and difficult to manage. The numerals we use now, in all languages, are very much better. I refer to 1,2,3,4, 5, 6, 7, 8,9, 10. These are called Arabic numerals because people in Europe got to know them through the Arabs. But the Arabs themselves learnt them from the Indians, so it would be more correct to call them Indian numerals.

But I am going too fast. We have not come to the Arabs yet.

• Book: Letters from a Father to His Daughter, Jawaharlal Nehru foreword by Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, 
• Published by the Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd. Text Copyright © Priyanka Gandhi Vadra 2004

Languages, Writing and Numerals

Boys and girls, and even grown-ups, are often taught history in a peculiar way. They learn the names of kings and others, and dates of battle and the like. But surely history does not consist of battle and a few persons who became kings and generals. History should tell us of the people of a country; how they lived, what they did, and what they thought. It should tell us of their joys and sorrows; of their difficulties and how they overcame them. And if we study history in this way we can learn a lot from it. If we have to face the same kind of difficulty or trouble, our reading of history may help us to get over it. Especially, our study of past times will help us in finding out if people have been getting better and better or worse; if there has been progress or not.

Of course, one must try to learn something from the lives of great men and women of past times. But we must also try to learn what the condition of various kinds of people in olden days was.

I have written to you many letters. This is the twenty-fourth of the series. But so far we have only discussed very old times about which we do not know much. We can hardly call this history. We may if we like call it the beginning of history, or the dawn of history. Soon we shall consider the later periods about which we know more and which may be called the historical times. But before we leave the early civilizations, let us have another peep into them and see what different kinds of people lived in those days.

We have already seen how in the early tribes people started doing different kinds of work. There was division of work or labour. We have also seen how the leader of the tribe, the patriarch, separated his family from the others, and only did the managing part of the work. He became a higher kind of person, or we may say that his family belonged to a different class from the other people. Thus we find two classes of people--one doing the managing and ordering, and the other doing the actual work. And of course the class doing the managing part had much more power and they used this to take as many things as possible. They became richer as they took more and more from the others who worked.

And so, as division of work went on, several classes arose. There was the king and his family and people of his court. They did the work of managing the country and fighting for it. They usually did no other work.

Then there were the priests in temples and all other people attached to the temples. They were very important persons in those days and we will consider their work again.

Thirdly, there were the merchants. These were the traders who carried the goods of one country to another, who bought and sold, and opened shops.

Fourthly, there were the artisans, that is the people who made all kinds of things, who spun yarn and wove cloth, who made pottery and brass goods and articles of gold and ivory, and many other things. Most of these people lived in or near towns, but there were many in the villages also. Lastly, there were the peasants and labourers who worked in the fields and in the cities. This was, of course, the largest class. All the other classes tried to get something out of them.

• Book: Letters from a Father to His Daughter, Jawaharlal Nehru foreword by Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, 
• Published by the Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd. Text Copyright © Priyanka Gandhi Vadra 2004

Different classes of people