DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

8.5J PRIMITIVE BARTER SYSTEM 265
seen at Navalakh Umbare, eight miles beyond Talegao. The original pastoral
hamlet was at the top of a plateau, where the patron gpd of the village
still has his orignal seat, and where the cattle graze during half the
year. At the foot of the hill is a Hanuman shrine marking the second
village site. By the reverside is found the now decayed village, which
was a magnificient town in fyedal times. The picture is of a peaceful
mesolithic nomads engaged in herding animals along the hillsides, away
from the then heavily-wooded valley bottoms. The microliths imply careful
leather-work, including skinning, curing hides without chemicals by
breaking up the fibres under the hide ; spliting of sinews (and withes for
baskets) — all necessary in pre-pottery food storage. In fact, some modern
Dhangar sheep-herders (following the great annual round with flocks
of 300 sheep tended by three or four families) still use flints for gelding,
because metal knives leave infected wounds under field conditions. The
mesolithic people hunted a bit, as shown by the few points that could be
used for arrowheads, and apparently tried a little slash-and-burn cultivation
marked by ‘terraces’ on hillsides much too steep for any plough. Small
natural stones were used to make a foothigh wall along a contour. These
demarcated strips, obviously pre-metal, can be seen in the Mulshi and
Khadakwasla valleys, on the way to Junnar (and beyond, by the Tulaja
caves) &c. Slash-and-burn has left a curious heritage in rice-plaining,
where paddy seed-plots are carefully prepared with beds of leaf,
chaff, manure and red-earth mixtures (according to the quality of the
land), which is then charred by controlled burning on the site which it
fertilises.. The mesolithic crop could have been of little importance in
comparison with the food gathered, and that supplied by the flocks.
Before the advent of northern traders with their new ideas of value
and exchange, the only intercourse was primitive barter of the type so
well described by Malinowski. Salt and cowrie shells must have come
from the coast, but little else. The Magadhan caravaneer found one
great problem before them, namely the sheer 2000-foot scarp of the
Deccan plateau, interrupted by a few very difficult passes. The Lamans
still cany salt and little grain, up and down these passes on packcattle,
though they are mostly hired for transporting charcoal