DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

2.2] RITUAL AND SACRIFICE 23
But slavery implies warfare, turning against other humans the arrows
and harpoons used in hunting or fishing. The process was accelerated by
the use of metals, particularly copper or bronze, which are scarce enough
to remain a monopoly of a warrior class : the nobility or aristocrats. With
iron, we have cheap metals, extensive agriculture, but also hard work
for the majority of the population at whose expense a few live freed
from the necessity to work, hence the bitter connotation of the ‘ Iron
Age’ . With regular agriculture, cattle manure fertilised land quickly
exhausted by older tribal slash-and-burn cultivation ; so permanent
occupation of a field became the norm, tending towards private
property in land. Nevertheless, a society may retain mixed customs
if a new form of food-production does not become overwhelmingly
preponderant. For example, in some Bantu groups, the cattle are inherited
in the male line, being herded by men, while the land (till recently
cultivated only by women by use of weighted digging-sticks) is inherited
in the female line.
The ideas of ritual and sacrifice also develop before classes, as first
efforts on the part of mankind to control a mysterious environment
beyond its logical and technical powers. Imitating the animals hunted
led to better technique of the chase, but was visualized as sympathetic
magic giving control over the animals; hunting scenes in our caves
(Central India, Mirzapur) are not records but magic to increase the
yield of actual hunts. Thus began religion, the dance, graphic art,
ooetry and music. Fire, which seems to have “been used even by
palaeolithic savages, was so difficult to generate, control, maintain that
sacrifices were made to it, virgins dedicated to its use. The original idea
of aT sacrifice is not clear, but primitive man would have noted in his
own way that it was the hind not eaten last season that produced another
edible animal this year; the fat seeds cast away unconsumed sprouted
the next grain crop. Thus, it is possible to interpret the origins of
sacrifice as the primitive magic forerunner of systematic agriculture and
animal-breeding. Why this should lead to mutilation of a finger, trephining
pieces of tpne from the skull, or ritual sacrifice of human beings is not
known, though the magical powers of blood were generally admitted.