WHAT THE FH^ST FISHING ?— INDIA, EGYPT 5 



Uncertainty as to the order of precedence was not really 

 remarkable. We lacked even as late as the beginning of the 

 last century both the data as to Egyptian and Assyrian fishing, 

 which the discovery of the key to the hieroglyphs by Champollion 

 and to the cuneiform by Rawhnson has laid bare, and the data 

 as to the fishing of the Troglodytes which scientific examination 

 of the caves of France and Spain has revealed. 



The outlook of our forefathers was necessarily Umitcd, 

 indeed monotopical. No big maps of the archaeological world 

 widened their vision. Some sectional sketches, and these 

 badly charted, obscured their perspective. 



The priority of the Net at one time probably enrolled the 

 majority of adherents. Nor can we wonder, when we reaUse 

 that in the case of a country so ancient as India we light on no 

 method of fishing other than Netting — and even that till the 

 post-Vedic Uterature after 200 B.C. most rarely — in Sanskrit 

 or PaU literature before 400 a.d.^ Hence came the deduction, 

 not unnatural but illogical, since it stresses too strongly the 

 argument of silence or omission — i.e. because no specimen or 

 representation of a thing exists the thing itself never existed — 

 that the Net must have been the first implement. 



And even now after many years of exploration in Meso- 

 potamia a champion of the Net or of the Line, if he similarly 

 disregarded logic and all save Assyrian remains, might not 

 unreasonably proclaim their antecedence to the Spear, of which 

 no mention or representation as a method of fishing has yet 

 been unearthed. 



In the case of Egypt the advocate either of the Spear or 

 Net has not as strong, certainly not so clear, a case. Although 

 examples of the first have been discovered in pre-historic 

 graves, the Net finds representation earlier than the Spear. 

 Be this how it may, the Spear, Net, Line, Rod flourish syn- 

 chronously in the Xllth Dynasty c. 2000, or according to 

 Petrie's chronology about 3500 B.C. 



In China, unless the sentence of the quite modern I shih 

 chi shih, that in the reign of the legendary Emperor who first 

 taught the use of fire, " fishermen used the silk of the cocoons 



^ See postca, 48 tf. 



