Socio Political Thought Of Shah WaliAllah Rahmatullahi Alaihi

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establishing various forms of co-operation for the common good of society.
He considers these "sciences of human transactions" among the basic components
of the second stage of social development (irtfiiq). These three
sciences, taken together, have been defined as: "the wisdom to discover
ways and means of establishing exchanges, mutual co-operation and modes
of earning pertaining to the second stage of irtijiiiq". He deals with these
three sciences of economic import under the heading of fann al-mu 'dmaliit
in Hujjat Allah 01-Ralighah. In his other work, al-BudEr al-Biizighah, however,
he discusses each of these three sciences separately.208
We have seen above that the institution of family has been identified
in the sociology of Shah Wali Aliiih as a multi-dimensiona! phenomenon.
It is conceived as an important instrument for satisfying some needs of an
economic character on the primary level. When the individual is unable to
meet certain needs, this leads to the emergence of the family. When it is not
possible for the family to fulfil all its economic requirements by itself, there
arises the need to have barter or to have recourse to commodity economy
because human needs are ever-increasing. Further, man's aesthetic urge
constantly inspires him to attain higher standards of excellence so as to
"provide comfort to the eye and pleasure to the
While still at the primary levels of livelihood by horticultural and pas-
1 toral means, man is able to develop some commodities which satisfy his
needs and those of his family, without much external aid. As his needs in-
i crease, he is compelled to occupy himself with malung other commodities,
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I or providing some services, in order to barter them for his needs.210
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Further diversification in needs opens avenues of specialisation and di-
vision of labour, so that efforts of all individual members of the society,
taken together, fulfil the needs of the entire society. This is a higher level
of exchange than barter, which necessitates an unwritten agreement among
the members of the society. Under this agreement, each member undertakes
to provide a certain need, to specialise in it, and to work for providing all
instruments necessary for it. This agreement is a natural compulsion of the
society because a lot of people are interested in certain commodities and
not interested in others. For enabling everyone to acquire what he needs,
the society adopts a modus operandi. "It agrees to employ some durable
metallic objects as instlwnents of exchange between people, and it be-
comes an established usage among them. Since the best of metallic objects
to be used for this purpose were gold and silver owing to their small size,
identical forms, tremendous benefits for human body, and their common
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use for beautification, they were adopted as real money and other things
i were treated as money by agreement".211