ASIA 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 JC 35.B13 
 
 3 1924 022 903 003 
 
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 Jbrary 
 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022903003 
 
THE 
 
 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF 
 VILLAGE COMMUNITIES IN INDIA 
 
THE 
 
 ORIGIN AND GROWTH 
 
 OF 
 
 VILLAGE COMMUNITIES IN INDIA 
 
 BY 
 
 B. H. BADEN-POWELL, M.A., CLE. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., LiM. 
 
 NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1S99 
 
PREFACE 
 
 It cannot be necessary to write a fofmal preface to> 
 so small a book. But I may be allowed to make use 
 of the space for two purposes. First, I have to ex- 
 press my thanks to Prof. W, J. Ashley, M.A., of 
 Harvard University, and late Fellow of Lincoln Col- 
 lege, Oxford, not only for the suggestion that a short 
 account of the Indian village should be written, but 
 for valuable advice and criticism in the course of 
 writing it. 
 
 Secondly, I have to, say a few words about the 
 (not very frequent) Indian words (Hindi, Persian, etc.) 
 which occur. I have avoided them wherever I could ; 
 but sometimes they are needed for the sake of readers 
 in India, or because there is no satisfactory equivalent ; 
 partly also because they show that the thing in- 
 dicated is, or is not, indigenous ; that it has been 
 borrowed from the Moslems, or is an older Hindu 
 institution. Now, the only tolerable way in which 
 such words can be given -fn print, is by transliterating 
 into Roman character; and people then say "we do 
 not know how they should be pronounced." 
 
 But for practical purposes, it is quite easy to pro- 
 nounce Indian words at least intelligibly. Only re- 
 member that they are not EnglisM, and in particular, 
 that the letter "a" (without accent) which so com- 
 monly occurs must never be pronounced with the pe- 
 
Vi PREFACE 
 
 ■culiar sound of the English- "flat," "that," "many," etc. 
 It is uniformly like the u in " bun," so that the Hindi 
 syllables mani, e.g., are x^^A. like the English word 
 "money." Each vowel has a short or unaccented 
 Tjse, also a broad or acc^ited, thus : — 
 
 a—d (as in English) " bun "— " ba(r)n " 
 i—t „ „ "pit"— "peat" 
 
 U-n-ii ' „ „ " pull "—" pool " 
 
 {f) is regarded as a diphthorig, and is always with 
 " ay " {til= "tale"), 6 is always long as in " post." 
 
 These sounds are invariable. I have not marked 
 the variations' in the consonants, except to write q 
 when the Arabic (k) is indicated. But it will be well 
 to state the tk is never sibilant (as in "this" or "thin") 
 in Indian dialects, it is only t with an aspirate ; g is 
 always hard, never as in " gin " (which would he J). 
 
 \ Oxford, July, 1899. B. H. B-P. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chap. Page 
 
 I. GENERAL HISTORY OF THE QUESTION OF 
 
 INDIAN VILLAGE ORIGINS - 1 
 
 11. EXPLANATION OF TERMS — "VILLAGE" "THE 
 
 TRIBE OR CLAN IN INDIA" — "REVENUE- 
 SETTLEMENT" - - '7 
 
 III. THE EVIDENCE REGARDING VILLAGES BEFORE 
 
 AND AFTER 1870 - - " " 33 
 
 IV. GENERAL VIEW OF THE AGRICULTURAL RACES 
 
 OF INDIA - .... 42 
 
 V. THE INDIAN VILLAGE AS IT IS — THE "SEVER- 
 ALTY" VILLAGE — THE "JOINT" VILLAGE 59 
 
 VI. THE THEORY REGARDING INDIAN VILLAGES 
 
 EXAMINED - - 98 
 
 Vn. IDEAS OF "property" or "OWNERSHIP" 1 28 
 
 VIII. SOME PRACTICAL ASPECTS OF VILLAGE IN- 
 STITUTIONS - - - - 140 
 
 APPENDIX I. VESTIGES OF CO-SHARED (jOINT) VIL- 
 LAGES IN THE SOUTH AND WEST - 1 52 
 
INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 GENERAL HISTORY OF THE QUESTION OF INDIAN 
 VILLAGE ORIGINS 
 
 The object of this little book is to explain, in the 
 compass of a few pages, and as untechnically as 
 possible, the nature and origin of Indian village 
 communities, with special reference to the commonly 
 received theories about them. Many people have 
 heard vaguely that the villages represent an ancient 
 " communal " holding of land ; others have heard that 
 this theory has been much doubted. They would 
 perhaps like to know more about the subject without 
 having to make a prolonged or very detailed 
 study. 
 
 These Indian communities are living, and not, like 
 the " Teutonic mark," dead. The importance of 
 observing and understanding them for the purposes 
 of the comparative history of institutions, and for 
 
2 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 economic science in general, is admitted on all hands. 
 But often as " the village " is alluded to in histories 
 or other books on Indian subjects, it is dealt with 
 chiefly as the creature of theory — a thing in the air, 
 rather than an existing institution, which can be 
 studied with reference to historic facts, times, and 
 places, and to tribes and families of known race and 
 location. And the year 1870 (or some nearly ap- 
 proaching period) may be taken as the birth-time (in 
 England) of a general theory regarding the origin 
 and nature of Indian villages. This theory obtained 
 such wide currency that it soon seemed to be beyond 
 the reach of question. All Indian villages were 
 regarded as having been originally constituted in a 
 single (typical) form ; this form being, consequently, 
 spoken of as archaic date and of " Aryan " parentage, 
 >3o conceived, " the village community " was asserted 
 to represent a group of persons or households who 
 cultivated and owned their land " in common " ; it 
 was, in short, an important and widespread oriental 
 survival of that " ownership in common " which was 
 believed to have been universally antecedent to the 
 development of individual property in later times. , 
 The best known exposition of this theory is to be 
 found in the works of the late Sir H. S. Maine, especi- 
 ally in his " Village Communities of the East and 
 West,"i and in several lectures, afterwards collected 
 
 1 The first edition is dated 1871. My quotations are from the 
 third edition, and indicated by the letters " V. C." 
 
INDIAN VILLAGE ORIGINS 3 
 
 in. a book entitled "The. Early History of Institu- 
 tions."! Let us, however, not misunderstand the 
 author's position in these works. He treats the con- 
 ception of "the village'' as if it were based on a 
 certainty. The evidence he possessed established so 
 much, at least, that they were joint-bodies or close, 
 self-managing communities. That was enough. He 
 never proposed to go into detail, or give a complete 
 account of their origin or history. The village is 
 conceived in the abstract, and is introduced as a well- 
 known phenomenon. It is the extreme generality of 
 his view, expressed, as it is, in lucid phrases, that 
 caused it to be so easily and so widely read and 
 remembered. 
 
 About ten years after the publication of these 
 works, it fell to my lot (under circumstances which need 
 not be detailed) to prepare an account of the Land 
 Systems and Land-Revenue Administration of British 
 India. This was first published in Calcutta. And 
 ten years later a new and more complete work on the 
 same subject was prepared and published at Oxford.^ 
 At this time the village theory was in full possession 
 of the field, and was supported by all the authority of 
 Sir H. S. Maine's name, as well as recommended by 
 the charm of his style and the suggestiveness of his 
 method. It is true that, as far as concerns the general 
 
 1 Dated 1874-5 ! indicated as " E. H. I." 
 
 2 "The Land Systems of British India," 3 vols. : Clarendon 
 Press, 1892. In the sequel this is referred to as " L. S. B. I." 
 
4 mDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 prevalence of primitive communal ownership and the 
 " Teutonic mark," the works of M. Fustel de Coul- 
 anges and others had already raised serious doubts ; 
 but their argument hardly touched the Indian pheno- 
 mena—at least directly. However that may be, all 
 this time the materials for a detailed study of the 
 Indian villages in all parts of the great empire had 
 been rapidly accumulating. Evidence, far superior 
 in character to anything that had before been ob- 
 tained, was now in print ; and it covered a much 
 wider field of inquiry, including provinces about which 
 little or no information was available before 1870. 
 Administrative Systems in India, and the Land 
 Revenue System more especially, cannot be dealt 
 with without giving an account of the land tenures. 
 And to describe the village tenures according to the 
 facts as they appeared in the light of the fuller 
 evidence, was to make something of a new departure. 
 It was not, indeed, necessary, in describing the Land 
 Revenue System, to discuss j;he origin of villages, or 
 dispute theories ; but even the limited account that 
 was indispensable could not fail to suggest a widely 
 different view of the subject. In order, therefore, to 
 examine still further the facts in the light of later 
 information, it was desirable to collect the available 
 evidence in a separate book.^ Of this I will say no 
 more than that it cannot be easy reading, because so 
 
 1 "The Indian Village Community," i vol. : Longmans, 1896. 
 This is referred to shortly in the sequel as " Ind. Vill. Com." 
 
INDIAN VILLAGE ORIGINS 5 
 
 much detail is necessary, and because it is so very 
 difficult to marshal the matter in such an order that 
 it shall be intelligible to those who have not any long 
 Indian experience. I find, in fact, that my meaning 
 has often been niisapprehended. It seems, therefore, 
 desirable that an opportunity should be taken of 
 offering (in as brief a compass as the nature of the 
 subject will admit) a general re-statement of the case 
 and of the general conclusions which appear to be 
 justifiable. In doing this, it is necessary to indicate 
 why it is that many facts of which evidence is now 
 abundant were unknown to Sir H. S. Maine, and 
 how it is that the information available to that dis- 
 tinguished exponent of historical jurisprudence seemed 
 to him so conclusive, and was really so imperfect, and 
 in some respects misleading.^ And when this has 
 been explained, it will be proper to indicate the nature 
 of the later and improved evidence that has become 
 
 1 Sir H. S. Maine several times speaks of the completeness 
 with which the Indian village had been observed ; and though 
 he suggests the need of re-examining the evidence on some 
 points (" V. C," pp. 12, 13), he betrays no sense that the evidence 
 itself (in general) was deficient, and that the area covered by it 
 was but small compared to the extent of all India. " No Indian 
 phenomenon," he says ("V. C," p. 103), "has been more carefully 
 examined, and by men more thoroughly in earnest, than the 
 Village Community." But this " observation " was from the 
 administrative revenue point of view, and was very little directed 
 to the history or ethnography of the villages. To anyone who 
 has compared the documents available before (or about) 1870 
 with the materials since made accessible, Sir H. Maine's remark 
 will appear truly astonishing. 
 
6 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 available. Next, after some preliminary explanations 
 regarding the agricultural population of India, I shall 
 endeavour to account for the two separate forms of 
 village (and the several varieties of one of the forms), 
 and to show how they really came into existence. 
 And then it will be desirable shortly to criticise the 
 hitherto accepted theory, showing how it fails to satisfy 
 the conditions in the case of either kind of village. 
 Finally, I shall add a few general remarks on the 
 subject of village ownership, and note some con- 
 siderations suggested by the economic aspects of 
 village life. 
 
II 
 
 EXPLANATION OF TERMS 
 
 There are certain terms which must be made use of 
 in this discussion, of which I had better at once 
 interpolate an explanation ; and this of itself will, 
 perhaps, not be quite devoid of interest to anyone who 
 cares to know about Indian economic conditions 
 generally. One of them, the term Village, we have 
 already more than once employed ; and in speaking 
 of village institutions it is hardly possible to avoid 
 allusion to tribes or clans and their customs, for into 
 such groups the Indian people once always were — and 
 still are, in many cases — divided. Then, too, we shall 
 often have occasion to allude to the Revenue Settlement 
 and the Settlement Report. These three subjects may 
 be shortly explained, by way of introduction to what 
 follows, and this plan will avoid subsequently 
 interrupting the course of argument by explanations. 
 
 What is a Village ? 
 
 (i) First as to a village ; the term does not refer 
 merely to a street or group of buildings — as in England 
 
 7 
 
8 'INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 of to-day ; it includes both the cluster of houses and 
 the surroundin g lands cultiva ted. Such'a group has 
 always a local name and known limits. It is a fact 
 that the level plains of India ^ were originally brought 
 under cultivation in groups of holdings, each group 
 ultimately, but not always at first, having defined 
 boundaries, and covering from a few hundred to two 
 or three thousand acres. It depends on the density 
 of the agricultural population whether these groups 
 are actually contiguous and cover the whole district 
 like the squares of a chess-board, or whether they are 
 more dispersed — stretches of barren waste, or jungle 
 land dividing one from the other. 
 
 So much for the village area. But in all cases alike, 
 the bod y of persons re siding on, owning, or cultivating 
 the land thus separately circumscribed, must 
 necessarily tend tQ form7 ifj . some Setise. a "m m- 
 mu^ty " more o r less self-cont ajned. In the first 
 place the inhabitant s reside togethe r, very often in 
 one central group of houses or cottages, built on an 
 elevation at some convenient point within the village 
 area.^ Such a village dwelling-site is often surrounded 
 
 1 There are certain places not only in the hill districts but 
 also in the plains, where (from physical and climatic causes 
 chiefly) village groups are not found. See " Ind. Vill. Comm.," 
 p. 57 ff- 
 
 2 In some cases the tendency, especially of later times is for 
 several small hamlets to be formed, or for small groups of farms 
 to be scattered about. It will be understood that my descrip- 
 tion is very general, and that the form of building, of mud, brick, 
 bamboo, thatch, tiles, etc., etc., varies extremely. I have 
 
EXPLANATION OF TERMS 9 
 
 by mud walls, having gateways which lead into narrow 
 and tortuous lanes. Outside is an open space, on 
 which all the village cattle assemble in the evening, 
 and where the village weavers stretch the webs for the 
 cloth they are going to weave for local use. There is 
 often a common " tank," or a pond, or a public well, 
 for the general use ; also the village temple, shrine, or 
 mosque, as the case may be. Usually there is a small 
 grove, or at least a spreading tree with a raised plat- 
 form round it, which forms the common meeting 
 place. Beside the dwellings of the principal land- 
 holders are also the cottages of dependents and sub- 
 ordinate tenants, as well as of the farm labourers, 
 village servants, and artificers.^ 
 
 The term " village servants " needs a word of 
 elucidation. Every village is obliged to provide for 
 itself the means of supplying the simple wants of 
 life. The people could not go to a perhaps far 
 
 collected a number of notices of the subject in my " Ind. Vill. 
 Comm.," pp. 67 ff. 
 
 ^ In South India, owing to caste arrangements, the village 
 menials of low caste (or no caste at all) are kept together, just 
 outside the villagers' dwellings. This fact has been noticed by 
 Maine ("V. C," p. 127) — one of the few places in which he 
 mentions the villages of the south. But it is not, as he says, a 
 matter of " certain villages," it is the universal feature in the 
 Madras districts. It should be remembered, moreover, that the 
 low caste menials, etc., of a northern village are not a bit more 
 iiart of the " village community " than these southern out-castes; 
 the "community" really consists of the "colonists and invaders" 
 —the landowners of the village. This subject will be mentioned 
 further in the sequel. 
 
lo INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 distant town to buy shoes or find a carpenter ; and 
 hence they. attract to themselves, and provide for, a 
 little group (varying in different parts) of resident 
 artificers and servants — a potter, a blacksmith, a 
 cobbler, carpenter, washerman, sweeper, cattle-keeper, 
 men to keep watch and ward, a barber to shave them 
 (who also practises a rude kind of surgery and carries 
 messages connected with betrothals), and so on. 
 These servants live permanently in the village, and 
 become hereditary ; they are not paid by the job^ but 
 work for every village resident for a fixed annual (or 
 harvest) allowance of grain, cash, and perquisites. In 
 some parts they have small holdings of rent-free land, 
 which (like the duty itself) are hereditary.^ So 
 are the village officers, of whom I must next 
 speak. 
 
 Provision has to be made for managing village 
 affairs and local governance. And here it is that one 
 of the fixed marks of distinction between two great 
 classes of village, which will henceforth need to be 
 distinguished, comes into view. In one class an im- 
 portant hereditary Headman (called pdtil and by 
 
 ^ The persons requiring work done supply their own 
 materials, or else pay for them ; there may be special customs 
 in this respect. 
 
 2 The institution of hereditary land attached to village service 
 is chiefly observed (where it has survived at all) in that class of 
 village which is prevalent in the Dakhan and the south of India. 
 The remark (" V.C," p. 126) that this form of payment is most 
 common in the (joint) villages of the north (there referred to) is 
 certainly not correct. 
 
EXPLANATION OF TERMS ii 
 
 other names) ^ is an essential part of the constitution. 
 He occupies a central building (in some places called 
 the g-arkt, i.e., fort) ; he has privileges of dignity and 
 precedence on ceremonial occasions, and frequently a 
 valuable holding of land (watan) which is his in virtue 
 of hereditary office.^ Such an officer is often 
 assisted by executive deputies. In former days, the 
 villages relied greatly on the protection given by 
 this official : his moral influence, and even his 
 material power (for he often had a considerable 
 following), helped to keep oppression at bay. Certain 
 it is that some vestige of old clannish loyalty* must 
 
 ^ It is stated in some books that the pdtel, or headman, was 
 first appointed by the ruler of the state. It is quite possible that 
 in more recent times of Mughal and MahrS,tha domination, the 
 governor may have assumed to make and unmake such appoint- 
 ments, for his own purposes ; but that does not_alterIke fact 
 that the headman is really an integral part of the village cpn- 
 stitotrofi ; he was, in fact,_the leader, the head of the eldest or 
 cS^famih^'^oFtEiToriginal settlers. It was the accountant, not 
 ■tKe^eaSman, whose office was added on by the state — to look 
 after the revenue. 
 
 ^ See my "Ind. Vill. Com.," pp. 14, 15. Such holdings are 
 now only locally intact ; but the institution itself can be very 
 widely traced. As a privileged holding it was naturally one 
 very likely to become surcharged, and lost, in days of harsh 
 revenue administration, and disregard of rights. Sir H. Maine 
 (" V. C," p. 123) speaks of the villages under headmen as cases 
 that " frequently occur." This is hardly an adequate expression 
 of the fact that this form is one that uniformly prevails over 
 provinces aggregating more than half a million square miles in 
 
 extent. 
 
 * I shall explain further on what is meant by these references 
 to "tribe "or "clan." 
 
12 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 be invoked to explain the attachment of the people 
 to the old pdtilgt family. If a ruler wished to 
 restore cultivation in an abandoned village, he 
 would hardly succeed without taking pains to trace 
 out a genuine representative of the old pdtiVs family 
 to head the returning party. If another headman 
 had to be appointed, it was always understood that 
 he would vacate the post directly a real descendant 
 made his appearance. 
 
 But in another for m of village, where the land - 
 owning body is composed of a dominant class, 
 hold ing the "whole jointly or in shares, no such 
 headma n is found .^ Village affairs are, or formerly ' 
 were, controlled by a council of elders or heads of the 
 co-sharing householders — all being equal in rank— ^ 
 not official chiefs.^ The co-sharing families are in 
 
 ^ For official purposes connected with the Revenue, Pohce, 
 etc., a headman (or one for each section of village) has been 
 appointed, and the office has been allowed to become partly 
 elective. This lambar Mr (as his half-English designation of 
 " number-holder " indicates) is no part of the original constitu- 
 tion, but merely the agent or representative of the village in its 
 dealings with the district authorities. 
 
 2 Sir H. S. Maine has implied rather than stated that the 
 council is the original universal form, and that where the 
 headman is found it is a later change; see, for examptej "V. C," 
 p. 123 and p. 154 (where he uses the phrase, " Even where the 
 government has passed to one hereditary officer," etc.) There 
 is no warrant for such a suggestion. If anything, it is the 
 reverse ; a village with a headman may become dominated by 
 a joint-body, and the headman may disappear, or at least his 
 distinctive position and authority may. Where the headman is 
 found (all over peninsular India) he certainly has not super- 
 
EXPLANA TION OF TER M8 1 3 
 
 fac t too jealous of their equal position to allow any 
 oiie jnan to take the lead as the ^a/// of j ^Central 
 Indian or Dakhan village did. But in both forms 
 of village an ''accountant and registrar" (patwdri, 
 kulkarni, or karnam, etc., in the south) early 
 became a necessity; because very probably "Eardly 
 any other person could write~~or cast accounts. 
 Such an official has, in the north, only ajlimited 
 claim that his son should succeed him ; and he may 
 now (in some places) be transferred from one charge 
 to another like an ordinary public officer.^ But, in 
 t he south the karn n/m. \i. always hereditary, and is (or 
 ought to be) reckoned as strictly belong ing to h is 
 own_vjll^gft. There are also rural police or guardians 
 
 seded any other , authority. It will be understood that the 
 council qjr committee spoken of is the standing body — much 
 more in evidence formerly than it is now — which manages the 
 common affairs. A panchdyat or committee of elders for 
 settling disputes is assembled in every form and condition of 
 village, whether in the north or south, and quite independently 
 of what the village constitution isT It was, and still is, to some 
 extent, the universal Indian mode of settling caste, social and 
 land cases, and especially boundary disputes. But the body 
 (consisting only of members of the proprietary families) which 
 once governed the joint-village is a standing committee for 
 reference in all affairs of common interest. It is not a mere 
 occasional assembly of elders, called together when there is a 
 dispute, but the continuing and ordinary governing body as 
 opposed to a single " headman," or the oligarchy of a few chiefs 
 and officers. 
 
 1 As a matter of fact, in the N.W.P. and Panjdb, in modern 
 times, 'CD.t patwAri, besides being trained and taught to survey, 
 is in charge not of a single village, but of a " circle," which may 
 include two or three villages. 
 
14 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 of the village and its lands and boundaries, some- 
 times "trackers" to follow stolen cattle, and mes- 
 sengers who act under orders of the headman or 
 other governing authority, as the case may be.* 
 
 I have hitherto only incidentally said anything 
 about the nature of the connection which the per- 
 sonnel of the " village "—at least, the cultivating or 
 landowning class — has with the soil. To do that 
 more expressly, I again am obliged to distinguish 
 between the two classes of village already intimated. 
 Before I do so, let me emphasise the fact that every 
 village (whatever its difference as regards the interest 
 in the soil) is a more or less isolated group with its'*' 
 own officers, menials, etc., so that there must arise 
 certain common interests ; and the group is sure to 
 develop a certain sense of solidarity, quite apart from'^ 
 any question of communal or collective ownership. 
 The grouping of holdings in a more or less compact 
 village form was a necessity of (permanent) agricultural 
 establishment, under the early conditions of Indian 
 life, both physical and social. Their comparative 
 isolation resulted from similar causes. Where the 
 population is sparse, it may be that the residents of a 
 village rarely leave its neighbourhood ; their own 
 " community " is almost the only society known to 
 them ; the world beyond is strange. Often the land- 
 
 ^ For details as to village servants, and a certain classifi- 
 cation of them according to rank, see "Ind. Vill. Comm.,'' 
 pp. 17, 1 8. 
 
EXPLANATION OF TERMS 15 
 
 )wning class of one village is (at the present day) of 
 I different tribe or caste to that of the next; and 
 :here may be no friendly feeling, if not a positive 
 eud, between them. Everything tended to make 
 ;ach village self-contained, and to originate institu- 
 ions that kept its caste, or family, or tribal con- 
 lection (where such already existed) in remembrance. 
 30 far, and so far only, is there any unity of type 
 vhich extends to all provinces alike. 
 
 But to return to the rights in the soil. Here we 
 lave t wo conditio ns marking two distinct classes or 
 cinds of village. rtTonfr^^^wKiciralso^s'SisHngui^le^ 
 )yTKe"'^efedTfary headman — there is no ownership 
 )f the whole village by a single proprietor, nor joint- 
 )wnership of it by a body of co-sharers, but the 
 vhole area is divided Jnto_a^jiumberjof.,g^pa£aJe.,and 
 adependent holding's. Each separate holding may 
 low have several sharers in it, because the families 
 lave long become " Hindus," and follow the joint- 
 amily custom ; but the holdings themselves are 
 eparate and always were so, as far as any evidence 
 pes. Indeed, by comparison with certain ancient 
 lut still surviving local customs, we are able (at least 
 nth probability) to account for this form of village, 
 n its own basis of separately allotted holdings, as 
 lerhaps the earliest organised (though not the earliest 
 udimentary) form of permanent agricultural village 
 1 India. 
 In the other class of viHagewe find the whole area 
 
i6 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 elai med (in shares) by a d ondnant^clg^s ^ho, in some 
 cases, cultivate their own holdings {e.g., the Jat 
 vaiaiS^fthe' Panjib)rbutjiregu^t]^^ of 
 
 teiaanta-Jindeii^-^theaa, Such tenants may be either 
 the remnants and representatives of an original culti- 
 vatirig body dominated (under a variety of circum- 
 stances) by ^ the _ present co-sharers, or may be 
 dependents and settlers^ located by them. This 
 c]aS''''ofvillage exhibits severa l vari e ti es ; and 
 the principle of sharing is different in each 
 variety. 
 
 Most commonly the proprietors hold their shares 
 of the cultivated land separately; either a partition 
 has taken place, or else the village may be in such 
 a form that the shares or lots were always separate, 
 and were so arranged from the first foundation. In 
 the latter case, " the co-proprietorship " refers to the 
 village site, or to any waste area which is still joint 
 property. Indeed, in many cases the "joint owner- 
 ship" chieflysu rviye s ,in the j oint respon sibility for 
 the revenue, which the whole body accepts/anH in 
 so me ot her custo'rns maintaining union. But in one 
 class of these villages it may^'BeTIiat the entire area 
 is held undivided. More commonly the cultivated 
 land is divided, and the waste~left iti cominori; 
 
 wl^liTTKrvnTigrTrsffrTer^'aiv^ 
 
 not only formally unpartitioned, but actually man- 
 aged as a joint estate. These cases, however, are 
 exceptional, The causes of such a state of things 
 
EXPLANATION OF TERMS ly 
 
 will be noticed hereafter, and I shall also explain in 
 due course the different basis on which the shares of 
 the members of the co-proprietary "brotherhood" 
 are arranged in the different varieties of joint village. 
 But I may take this opportunity of remarking that 
 a not inconsiderable number of villages have become 
 included in the class of joint or co-shared villages 
 purely by reason of the application to them of the 
 N.W. Provinces Revenue system (and its official 
 forms and records). 
 
 One other point requires mention — regarding the 
 waste land or grazing and woodland attached to (or 
 adjacent to) a village. In villages in which the re is 
 no co-sharing_body, the landholder's right is to his 
 occupied holding only ; there is no area of waste (for 
 grazing or for future division and cultivation) made 
 over as the joint property of the landholders. When 
 an area o f gra zing land ,J£_available in the vicinity, 
 the settlement ofl^erw^n^ it off for the use of 
 the villagerSj_^ut (like other unoccupied land) it 
 remains the property of the State ; and where part 
 of sucKTanH isalso available gradually to lie brought 
 under the plough, any resident in the village can 
 apply to the local officer for a plot or " number," and 
 get it on terms of engaging to pay the revenue 
 assessed thereon. When we come (in the sequel) 
 to inquire into the origin of this form of village, we 
 shall consider the question whether, at an earlier 
 time, a definite area of adjacent waste was ever con- 
 
i8 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 sidered to Mong- to the grpup which constituted the 
 village. 
 
 But in the second great class of villages, the body) 
 family, or group constituting the "community" of 
 proprietors has always been acknowledged_toJh^ave a 
 u niform right over the whoU area included in the 
 village, whether cultivated or not. If the " waste " 
 is permanently left as grazing ground, the joint right 
 to it as such is undoubted; if it is such as will 
 eventually be partitioned and brought under the 
 plough, the owners of the village will usually share^ 
 it in the same proportion, and on the same rule of 
 sharmg'as'a.pplies to tKe cultivated area. In a joint 
 village, in fact, the revenue survey always includes 
 an area of waste (where there is any a,vailable) as 
 part of the property of the joint body, and it is theirs 
 to do what they like with ; they may retain it as 
 grazing ground, or divide it, clear the wood, and 
 bring it under cultivation as they think fit. 
 
 In order briefly to distinguish the class of village 
 in which there is no joint ownership from that in 
 which there is something of the kind, I must use 
 the rather uncouth. terms SE yERALTY- Jwillage ^ and 
 
 ^ In my " Ind. Vill. Comm. " I called it " raiyatwdri" village, 
 that being the official term for the separate tenure. Here I 
 want to avoid the use of technical terms as far as possible. I 
 take the opportunity of noting that when a vernacular name is 
 added in brackets, it is either because it will be useful to readers 
 familiar with India or because the word itself {e.g.,p^ttl,pat- 
 wdri, etc.) occurs in English books. 
 
EXPLANATION 01* TERMS 
 
 19 
 
 JOINT^ village. I should like to call the latter 
 '"^manorial villages " — the village become subject to 
 some kind of " overlordship," ^ as it so often is ; 
 but the term would only accurately fit one class of 
 cases, and, moreover, would sound too strange, at 
 any rate in the present stage of the discussion. 
 
 It may be convenient to summarise the salient 
 features of difference between the two kinds of 
 village in a short table : — 
 
 I. Severalty (or Raiyatw&rt) 
 Village 
 
 1. Influential headman (often 
 
 still possessing certain 
 privileges) is part of the 
 natural constitution. 
 
 2. Holdings entirely separa.te, 
 
 and not shares of a unit 
 estate. 
 
 3. No joint liability for revenue : 
 
 each holding separately 
 assessed on its merits. 
 
 4. No jointly owned area of 
 
 waste or "common "land 
 belongs to the village, or 
 is available for partition. 
 
 II. Joint Village 
 
 1. No headman originally, but 
 a panchdyat. In modern 
 times an ofiScial headman, 
 appointed to represent the 
 community. 
 
 2. The holdings (sometimes 
 joint) are shares of a unit 
 estate. 
 
 3. Liability (joint and several) 
 always, for the revenue 
 assessed in a lump sum. 
 
 4. The village site, and usually 
 an area of waste, owned in 
 common, and is available 
 for partition. 
 
 The severalty village, with its hereditary headman, 
 is the prevalent form over the whole of Bengal (ex- 
 
 i By " overlordship " (here and elsewhere) I do not mean a 
 defined political or "feudal" superiority ; I use the word solely 
 as a conveniently wide term for any kind of virtual superiority 
 by which one man (or one class) is able to exact submission, or 
 to take rent, from another. 
 
20 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 eluding BiMr), over Central India, and the West and 
 •South ; 1 while there is reason to believe it was once 
 prevalent in such parts of Northern India as were 
 earliest cultivated, until the conquering tribes and 
 landlord families changed the constitution, and the 
 joint form grew up. However that may be, it is a 
 plain matter of fact that the joint village is confined, 
 i.e., as the prevalent type, to the north of India — from 
 the Indus as far east as Bihar, though it is (or was 
 once) found locally, and under special circumstances, 
 elsewhere. In this preliminary account of what is 
 meant by "village," and dealing only with matters 
 of fact and observation, I will not include anything 
 as to the causes of the difference between the tenure 
 of Northern India and that of the peninsula. 
 
 '^ As I noted that the severalty village is prevalent over an 
 area of more than half a million square miles, I may add here 
 that the "joint" form is characteristic in about 200,000 square 
 miles. It is worth while adding that all over the country of the 
 severalty villages there are a variety of local indigenous names 
 for the headman {mundd, wiandal, pdtU, gauda, reddt, etc.). 
 Throughout the N.W. Provinces, Panjab, etc., on the contrary, 
 where the joint form (without a headman) has long prevailed, 
 the local dialects have no current word for "headman," the 
 only term in use being either an Arabic word introduced by the 
 Mughal Revenue Administration or the half-English word 
 " lambar-dAr" (= "holder of a number") belonging to the 
 British system. 
 
EXPLANATION OF TERMS 21 
 
 Tribes and Clans in India 
 
 (2) There is one other matter connected with Indian 
 villages, and the Indian population generally, which 
 gives rise sometimes to no little misapprehension. 
 In Europe, at the present day, we live out of all 
 contact with " tribes " or " clans " ; we know of them 
 only in history, or in distant countries, and they have 
 become the subject of theories as to their origin and 
 principle of association ; and so we regard the men- 
 tion of them with some suspicion.^ But in Upper 
 India (especially) we live every day in close proxi- 
 mity with people actually forming " tribes " or 
 "clans," which are either small and independent 
 groups or (frequently) sections of a larger "tribe." 
 And even where _the whole .social constitution on 
 tribal lines is not kept up, still we feel sure the people 
 must have formed tribes and clans at no very remote 
 period, for they still use a common designation, and 
 recorJ TEKemseTves at a census, or other occasion, as 
 of such-and-such a " tribe,"'aitlKifttgh they may have 
 forgotten much of the customary life which would 
 have made the "tribe" a reality. But whether in 
 
 1 For example, use is made of the term "tribe," although the 
 original may be only such a word as populus. There is no 
 such mistake in India ; there are distinct words for the tribe, 
 the clan (or other subdivision), and the family. In the north 
 the common term for a whole tribe is qaum (borrowed from 
 the Arabic), while a division or clan is got; and there are 
 other terms (given in " Ind. Vill. Comm.," p. 194). 
 
22 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 perfection or decay, the tribe or clan is quite a real 
 thing in India ; in some parts more so than others. 
 We have also " codes " of custom, of which a notable 
 feature is that they apply to tribes, not to places, and 
 are often different in detail. 
 
 In modern life we soon forget any family connec- 
 tion beyond one or two generations. A "family" 
 we recognise as consisting of the head of the house- 
 hold and his children, and possibly grandchildren ; 
 perhaps (collaterally) a certain number of brother's 
 or sister's children, and even second cousins, are 
 pretty closely connected. But in those parts of India 
 in which there are recognised " clans," and especially 
 where the clan is known to be a section of a larger 
 " tribe," we find that the people invariably recognise 
 consanguinity, and even though in some cases this 
 may be partly fictitious, i.e., various elements have 
 been associated only, still the people believe in their 
 descent from a common ancestor. In other, words, 
 the feeling of kindred is diffused over a much wider 
 circle than the unit " family." 
 
 It is evident, from a variety of literary and 
 traditional evidence, that the early Aryan and other 
 races invading India formed " tribes " with a certain 
 organisation ; and we infer also from the existing 
 forms of village and land customs and from the names 
 used, and traditions preserved, that such (later) races 
 as the Jats, Rajputs, and Gujars, were also settled 
 under the rules of tribal life, some of which they still 
 
EXPLANATION OF TERMS 23 
 
 observe. And lastly to those " tribes " of which we 
 have the evidence before our eyes, we find two con- 
 ditions which are established, (i) We find a single 
 group — possessing lands in one place or in more than 
 one — but not known to be a subdivision of any larger 
 body. (2) We find a whole tribe, with its major and 
 minor, and ultimate, subdivisions all complete. 
 
 In the first case, the existing group remembers only 
 its descent from some one ancestor, and is not 
 numerous enough to be called a " tribe." In all pro- 
 bability one man (or two or three brothers) obtained 
 a settlement in some region that was vacant, and the 
 families multiplied into a " clan," keeping up the 
 memory of their common descent and acknowledging 
 a certain solidarity. Among the Rajputs or other 
 tribes which had adopted a monarchical constitution, 
 it is common to find that the ancestor became the 
 Rdj'A and that the heads of the branch families held 
 subordinate (territorial) titles (as Rdwal, Thdkiir, etc.), 
 and there was a regularly understood method of 
 territorial rule in the Riji's central dominion and 
 those of the other chiefs lying round. The subjects of 
 each were bound to allegiance to the chief, and the 
 chief to the Rfi,jl On sending round the message for 
 assembly (gohar) every member of the clan able to 
 bear arms would at once join the chiefs standard. 
 
 On the north-western frontier of the Panjab we 
 can observe not only " clans " like those of the Rajputs 
 or Tats, but a wider or|[anisation, We find a whole 
 
24 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 tribe, and its "clans" which are the larger sections ; 
 and there are again smaller sections. Here the con- 
 stitution is not monarchical— the chiefs are not princes 
 or Raj&s. We observe this organisation both with 
 reference to the /and occupied, and also to the group- 
 ing of the people who have settled on the land and 
 divided it among themselves. It is not always certain 
 that such bodies are descended from one ancestor; 
 but it is traditionally asserted and believed, and often 
 the genealogical tree is preserved. It is indeed often 
 the case that other tribes have been taken into 
 association [hamsdya) as protected ; and lands have 
 been given them by the principal tribe ; but they are 
 not regarded as amalgamated, nor is the separate 
 descent forgotten. Among the north-western frontier 
 tribes, I may refer to one instance in the Yusafzai 
 country, where there is the domain (ildqd) of a single 
 tribe ; every member of it knows that he is descended 
 from one ancestor, who, if he were alive, would be the 
 revered patriarch of their whole body. Beyond that, 
 and the fact that their land is all in one great territory, 
 the tribe happens to be not so marked as the several 
 primary divisions or dans. Of these there are three ; 
 and their territory is in three great contiguous blocks. 
 Each such territory is made into large secondary 
 sections called tappa. (The first contains two, the 
 second two, and the third five.) Ordinarily these 
 tappa territories correspond to a group of descendants 
 whose designation ends with the syllable-.?^? (which 
 
EXPLANATION OF TERMS 25 
 
 in the local language [Pashtu] means " son of "). The 
 iappa is finally divided into a number of " com- 
 panies " (or Khel). The Khel is a group usually much 
 larger than a " village."^ In the course of time what 
 with the convenience of the administration requiring 
 it, and the growth of separate hamlets with their 
 cultivation lying adjacent, "villages" are gradually 
 formed, and separately demarcated. 
 
 On the other hand it may sometimes happen, 
 though the appearance of a clan is less perfect, that 
 we find a large extent of country containing several 
 hundred square miles, now divided up into " village " 
 groups, all composed of landowners whose families 
 have a common designation and are reputed descend- 
 ants of one ancestor ; or of two or three families, not 
 more.^ In such cases it is often difficult to say 
 whether the existing group originally came (in smaller 
 number, but still as a group) and divided the land 
 according to their requirements at the time, or 
 whether two or three adventurers formed little settle- 
 ments in the abundant waste, and in the course of a 
 couple of centuries or more, multiplied into the exist- 
 ing large group. 
 
 As regards the personal connection, in a tribe or 
 clan, it is kept up and acknowledged far beyond the 
 
 ' There is an account of this very perfect example of clan 
 territories, and a diagram which makes the arrangement visible 
 at one glance, in "Ind. Vill. Comm.," pp. 247-9. 
 
 ^ For example see the same work, p. 27 1 . 
 
26 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 limits within which we are accustomed ourselves to 
 remember it. It takes effect in rules of marriage, by 
 which a man or a woman of one group cannot marry 
 one of the same group, but must go to another. It 
 also produces a willingness of the whole body to act, 
 for defence or offence, in unison, and for convenient 
 groups to undertake a joint-responsibility (for ex- 
 ample) for a total sum of land tax on the entire area, 
 so as to preserve the villages from an inquisition by a 
 tax gatherer. It produces a willing obedience to the 
 " custom " of the tribe regarding adoption, the non- 
 alienation of land and other matters. Lastly, it 
 produces a strong sense that every member of the 
 "clan" (or whatever group circumstances have kept 
 together) has his right to share in the land acquired 
 by the adventure and settlement — perhaps by the 
 conquest of the whole body. And if the tribal 
 system is fully maintained, it is a feature that as the 
 clan expands, the heads of the eldest branches or 
 principal families, and (in turn) the heads of sub- 
 ordinate families, should be known by their appropriate 
 titles, as chiefs of the clan, of the sub-clan, of the 
 still smaller section, and so forth.^ The authority of 
 these chiefs may be greater or less, and may extend 
 to certain concerns of life only ; but where it survives 
 there is a very distinct sentiment of loyalty, and 
 
 ' Usually the chief is the eldest (competent) member of the 
 eldest branch ; but the chiefship may be transferred to some 
 Other member for any special reason. 
 
^EXPLANATION OF TERMS 27 
 
 obedience is unquestioned. When, therefore, it is 
 mentioned (for example) that in the "severalty" 
 village of the Dakhan, the loyalty with which the 
 headman's family is still regarded is a relic of the clan 
 spirit, I mean nothing more than that originally the 
 village was formed by a small section of a then exist- 
 ing organised clan, that the " village head '' was the 
 hereditary leader of that particular section ; that he 
 was loyally obeyed owing to that spirit of allegiance 
 which is well known to everyone who (for instance) 
 has read about the Highland clans of Scotland. 
 
 It is possible (in itself) that a " clan," etc., may be 
 constituted on a matriarchal basis or a patriarchal. 
 It may be that all descendants of a common mother 
 form the essential group ; but all the more advanced 
 tribes that we know of in India in connection with 
 organised village settlements (and often under mon- 
 archical rule) — such as the later Dravidian people of 
 the centre and south, or the Jats, Rijputs, and frontier 
 tribes in the north — are all clearly patriarchal : de- 
 scent, chiefship, and inheritance all go with the fathers 
 of the expanding family. Some further remarks on 
 this subject will be made hereafter. 
 
 There is therefore no hidden assumption or doubt- 
 ful theory involved in our allusion to the " tribe " or 
 " clan" with reference to Indian peasant landholding; 
 it means nothing more than we know, or at least 
 have the strongest reason to infer, from all the facts 
 of the case; 
 
28 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 I will repeat that the degree of preservation in 
 which " clans," or aggregates of clans forming, tribes, 
 exist is various ; and in parts of India such an organi- 
 sation has been quite forgotten ; perhaps what was 
 once the name of a tribe has now become a caste name. 
 But the existence of such tribal organisation has had 
 J a great deal to do both with village formation and 
 with the constitution of the Hindu state. 
 
 I have indicated the fact (and without entering 
 into details) that some tribes developed a system of 
 King or Rkjk and subordinate chiefs in a sort of 
 " feudal " service, out of the patriarch of the tribe and 
 the chiefs of its sections. This often happened with 
 the Reljputs ; but some Rajputs (like the Bis6n Clan 
 of Oudh) did not adopt the system. In fact, what- 
 ever may be the reason, some Indian clans or tribes 
 acknowledged the King and " barons " (who were the 
 chiefs of elder and younger branches of the stock), 
 others did not. 
 
 It will more conveniently appear at a later stage 
 how tribal life and the allotment of lands to the 
 members has produced certain forms of village com- 
 munity. 
 
 Tke Land-Revenue Settlement 
 
 We have mentioned incidentally the assessment 
 of the amount of land-revenue which is payable 
 to the State by these villages. That assessment is 
 
EXPLANATION OP TEBMS 29 
 
 (in modern times) imposed by means of an opera- 
 tion ^called a " Land-Revenue Settlement." What 
 has such a Settlement to do with the constitution 
 and form of villages, and what is the " Settlement 
 Report " ? 
 
 It is probably known to most readers that in India 
 the State has, from very ancient times, relied for its 
 chief source of revenue on the right or claim to 
 receive a portion of the produce of all cultivated land. 
 At first this share was levied (and still is so in some 
 of the remoter native states) in kind; but in all the 
 greater provinces, it had, for many generations before 
 British rule, frequently been converted into a cash 
 assessment calculated at a certain rate per " plough " 
 {i.e., the area worked by one plough), or per local 
 standard measure {btghd, etc.) according to value and 
 advantage of the different kinds of soil. In some 
 cases it was very oppressively levied, and swallowed 
 up nearly the whole " rent " or profits of the holding, 
 so that land-holding was an employment which was 
 often a burden, and left the holder no more than a 
 bare living. Under British rule, it early became a 
 principal object to assess this demand equally, and 
 at such moderate rates as would leave a substantial 
 profit or surplus ; at the same time determining who 
 were the persons to be responsible for payment and 
 entitled to take, or at least to participate in, the pro- 
 fits of the holding. The classification and valuation 
 of land for the purposes of assessment, as well as the 
 
30 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 inquiry into rights, which are the chief objects of a 
 Revenue Settlement or Survey Settlement, have 
 always been duties requiring skill and experience, 
 and have always been entrusted to a class of selected 
 officers known as " Settlement officers." Their work 
 in the field began with a detailed survey and a record, 
 village by village, of every field and holding. Such 
 a survey was not only necessary for valuation pur- 
 poses, but equally so for ma,king a record of fights 
 and interests of all kinds in the soil.^ Each pro- 
 vincial system varies in detail, inasmuch as the mode 
 of assessment and the fixing of the revenue demand, 
 whether on a whole estate on a whole village, or on 
 an individual field, is different. And the system is 
 adapted in each province to suit the prevalent land 
 tenure. It follows that, directly or indirectly, the 
 survey and the inquiry tend to make known the 
 whole features of village constitution and history, 
 especially if the officer in charge interests himself in 
 the subject. I will only remark here that the varia- 
 tion between the Joint-village, as I have described it 
 in the northern provinces, and the severalty (or 
 
 ^ The Bombay and Madras systems do not profess to inquire 
 into rights ; but under the raiyatw&ri tenure, there prevalent, 
 the record of every holding and part holding of the ryot and 
 his relatives forms as good a record of right and title as could 
 be desired. There \vas also one Settlement made (1789-93) in 
 Bengal in which there was no survey; but that was under 
 peculiar circumstances ; and the plan of dispensing with a survey 
 was never adopted elsewhere as a general system. 
 
EXPLANATION OF TERMS 31 
 
 raiyatwdri) in others, has been the cause of the 
 difference between two prominent forms of Revenue 
 Administration. 
 
 When the whole process of a " Settlement " is over, 
 and the term ^ for which the assessment is to hold 
 good (without increase) is fixed, the officer in charge 
 draws up (in English) a report on his proceedings. 
 Speaking now of the " reports " of the N.W. 
 Provinces and some of the adjoining (and then 
 included) south-eastern districts of the Panjib, it 
 raay be explained that at the first settlements, time 
 pressed, administration was less elaborate, and it was 
 of more importance to give only the salient features 
 of the actual revenue arrangements made. But 
 when, in these provinces, the first — rather tentative — 
 settlements expired and a new series of district 
 settlements began, the second (in some cases later 
 than the second) series of reports (dated after 1870) 
 were much fuller and more complete. Nor will any 
 future revision of the assessment require the repeti- 
 tion of such detailed survey and other information. 
 The past history of the district is given ; its climate, 
 soil, local features, and even its antiquities are de- 
 scribed ; the origin, history, and customs . of the 
 principal castes and tribes are recorded ; and (what 
 more especially concerns us) the details of village 
 
 1 Usually for thirty years ; but the Government settles 
 that on a variety of considerations ; no term is fixed by 
 law. 
 
32 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 history and the peculiarities of tenure-customs, and 
 the nature and growth of the village proprietary 
 bodies — when and how they were established — are 
 examined in detail. All these matters have an 
 obvious if more or less direct bearing on the con- 
 dition of the people, on the question of their rights 
 and interests, and on the proper classification and 
 assessment of their holdings. Hence the " Settlement 
 Reports," when they belong to the later period of 
 complete record are, though of course in varying 
 degrees of excellence, veritable mines of information. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE EVIDENCE REGARDING VILLAGES BEFORE 
 AND AFTER 1870 
 
 Now let US briefly glance at the evidence which was 
 available before 1870 regarding village institutions ; 
 why it gave so much prominence to the idea of 
 " common holding," and why it was calculated to 
 suggest that uniformity existed (far more than it 
 really exists) throughout India. ^ 
 
 Sir H. S. Maine came to India at the end of 1862, 
 as member of the Viceregal Council in charge of the 
 Legislative Department ; he remained till the end of 
 1869. His high duties confined his residence chiefly 
 to Calcutta (in Bengal), which is the winter-capital 
 of the Government of India, and to Simla in the 
 Panjab Hills. On the way between one and the 
 
 ' In speaking of the defective evidence and of the great im- 
 provement that has since taken place, I should like to call to 
 mind how much we owe to Sir H. S. Maine for the example of 
 his aim and method, and for the stimulus that his works gave 
 to inquiries which resulted in the later reports and monographs. 
 It is only fair to remember that it is to this pioneer work that 
 we are largely indebted for the superior character and fulness of 
 the later records. 
 
 33 C 
 
34 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 other lies Allahabad, the capital of the North- Western 
 Provinces. Now in Bengal the village system- 
 whatever its original form — had become almost 
 completely overborne by the growth of the great 
 middlemen or " Zamindars," whom Lord Cornwallis 
 had acknowledged as the "actual proprietors" of estates. 
 At any rate, Bengal did not afford many opportunities 
 for gathering information regarding village institu- 
 tions. But in the North- West Provinces, Oudh, and 
 the Panjab, the village system was not only flourish- 
 ing as, in fact, the prevailing tenure feature of the 
 country, but the villages were held by co-sharing 
 bodies, sometimes of one family, and often of the 
 same tribe or clan ; they were of that type which has 
 already been indicated in general terms as the "joint 
 village." Sir H. S. Maine's attention was necessarily, 
 almost exclusively, directed to this region. It was to 
 it that a great part of the more specific evidence at 
 his disposal related ; and it happened, during his 
 years of office, that special questions regarding the 
 law of tenants and subordinate landholders in these 
 parts of India were awaiting treatment by the 
 Legislature. And when I say that a great deal of 
 the evidence available before 1 870 directly related to 
 the Northern Provinces, it should be added that the 
 more famous official minutes and published accounts 
 of " the village," though couched in general terms, and 
 without indicating any particular locality, were chiefly 
 based on the same northern form of village. In- 
 
EVIDENCE REGARDING VILLAGES 35 
 
 deed, before 1870 but little specific information 
 regarding India south of the Narbada was available. 
 The Revenue Settlement surveys of the Dakhan or 
 Bombay Presidency^ were still in progress, and very 
 little was known, outside the Presidency, about the 
 matter. There is indeed an excellent sketch of the 
 Dakhan village, in Elphinstone's History, which Sir 
 H. S. Maine must have read ; but it is unfortunately 
 mixed up with some details about the other forms of 
 village, and altogether is not such as to induce a 
 reader already disposed to believe in a unity of type, 
 to discover the real diiference. Indeed it is a 
 common fault in Indian books which give an account 
 of " the village," that they take various particulars 
 from different places and combine them all in one 
 general picture. Of the " Central Provinces " some of 
 the (then recent) Settlement Reports must have been 
 available ; but a large part of the country was settled 
 on a very artificial principle, and the documentary 
 evidence turned chiefly on questions connected with 
 that, so that the real form and history of the local 
 village hardly received any notice. Of Madras — the 
 great Southern province, where the population is of 
 non-Aryan origin, and where the original customs are 
 different from those of the north — hardly anything 
 was on record, or at least known to residents in 
 
 ^ In Bombay there was a long period of tentative revenue 
 administration, and a complete system of survey-settlement was 
 only brought into practice from about 1847. 
 
36 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 Upper India. "^ The evidence available to Sir H. 
 Maine really applied to Hindustan or Upper India, 
 and even then it did not, I think, give him more than 
 a very limited idea of the Panjab villages. ^ The 
 connection of the village and the tribe, so prominently 
 illustrated in that province, never seems to have come 
 to his notice. 
 
 The evidence, in short, consisted of (i) the Settle- 
 ment Reports of the N.W. Provinces, and, perhaps, the 
 Panjdb ; and (2) of official minutes and orders, among 
 
 1 Once Sir H. Maine refers ("E. H. I.," p. 71) to a volume 
 entitled " Mirisi Papers,'' which relates to Madras ; but the 
 question there treated is of a special kind, and would not 
 enlighten anyone about Madras villages in general. 
 
 ^ I could easily show from Sir H. S. Maine's works that he 
 had not been informed about the tribal villages in the Panjib 
 frontier districts, or the features of the Jat villages in the plains. 
 One passage ("E. H. I.,'' p. 83) shows clearly that the village area 
 known to the author was the comparatively densely populated 
 region of the N.W. Provinces and Oudh ; for in remarking 
 on an interesting phenomenon of village growth, namely, the 
 expansion of a single village into a number, by throwing off 
 small derivative groups who form hamlets in the adjacent waste, 
 in time producing a whole circle of villages, he says that this is - 
 noi exhibited by " the Indian communities placed in a region of 
 which the population has been from time immemorial far 
 denser," etc. Had the author been acquainted with the central 
 and S.E. Panjib — not to mention other places — he could not 
 have penned such a remark, for the population is not at all 
 dense, and the multiplication of villages in this very way is quite 
 a characteristic feature, and, indeed, is one of the most im- 
 portant causes of what are, or appear to be, clan-settlements or 
 groups of villages all of one descent. 
 
EVIDENCE BEOARDINO VILLAGES 37 
 
 which I may mention Thomason's celebrated " Direc- 
 tions to Settlement Officers." ^ 
 
 It is not necessary to speak at any length of these 
 documents, familiar to Indian readers, but strange to 
 any others. It is only necessary to point out their 
 insufficiency, and to note that they had a special 
 character which would foster the idea that " common 
 ownership " was a characteristic of villages in general. 
 As regards (i) the Settlement Reports mentioned, 
 they are only those of the first (or at all events 
 earlier) Settlements in the N.W. Provinces. Having 
 recently looked over some of them, I was almost 
 surprised to see how imperfect they are — imperfect, 
 that is, for the purpose of enlightenment about the 
 true history of the villages. They take for granted 
 the rough and highly unsatisfactory official classifica- 
 tion of villages which the " Circular Orders " of the 
 Revenue authorities had adopted — and to do them 
 justice, had adopted merely for official purposes, as 
 briefly embodying the distinctions that were useful 
 from an administrative point of view. They are 
 
 ^ The author also speaks of verbal information ; this, of 
 course, cannot be criticised except to the extent of saying that 
 it was not likely to be much in advance of the standard of pub- 
 lished information available at the time. 
 
 I have not included any mention of books like Tod's " Rajas- 
 than," or the writings of Colonel Wilks, Sir J. Malcolm, Grant- 
 Duff, or Dr. Buchanan. No use seems to have been made of 
 these works. And, indeed, though valuable materials for village 
 history may here and there be found in them, it is not always 
 apparent, and has to be disinterred from other subject-matter. 
 
38 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 more concerned with describing the practical finan- 
 cial features of the assessments than with giving 
 any kind of detailed information as to village custom. 
 As to published Reports of the Panjib districts, I 
 can find no indication of Sir H. Maine's having made 
 use of the more valuable of the first series, such as 
 those on the Jihlam, MultSn, or Gujrat districts. 
 
 As to (2) the official minutes, some of these (e.g: 
 Sir C. Metcalfe's)! ^re picturesque rather than de- 
 finitely instructive; others are conceived in general 
 terms, and do not refer to any local details. It must 
 be borne in mind that none of them were written for 
 any purpose other than that of recommending certain 
 practical measures ; that they relate only to such 
 localities as the authors were familiar with. They 
 were not intended to be generally or universally 
 applied. Moreover, many great names in India, 
 like those of LAWRENCE, Thomason, or MUNRO,^ 
 justly carry weight as regards their opinions; but 
 it does not follow that those eminent administrators 
 
 ' This well-known minute is given at p. 68 of the sixth edition 
 of Elphinstone's " History of India." 
 
 ^ Sir John (afterwards Lord) Lawrence had been Collector 
 of Delhi in the forties, and had done some Settlement work 
 there, and was afterwards Chief Commissioner of the Panjib, 
 and ultimately Governor-General of India. Mr. Jas. Thomason 
 was the founder of the improved Revenue Administration of the 
 N.VV. Provinces (1830-42), and afterwards was Lieutenant- ' 
 Governor (1843). Sir T. Munro was the great advocate of 
 the Madras Revenue System, and was made Governor of 
 the Province (1820) 
 
EVIDENCE REGARDING VILLAGES 39 
 
 had either the time or the inclination to acquire or 
 perfect the sort of information about village history, 
 the origin of customs, and the course of clan move- 
 ments, which is what is wanted for the special pur- 
 pose of economic and historic inquiry. Hence their 
 minutes must not be taken for more than their actual 
 scope warrants. I can hardly, perhaps, include the 
 late Sir G. Campbell's clever essay called "The 
 Tenure of Land in India" (in the "Cobden Club 
 Papers ") as an official document, but it is alluded to 
 by Sir H. S. Maine,^ who recognises that it does not 
 profess to give any detailed information. Indeed, 
 village institutions are only very lightly and discur- 
 sively touched on. The object is rather to describe 
 the land -revenue management in general, than 
 to explain the facts about the villages. The same 
 may be said for the " Directions," which, invaluable 
 as they were as the first systematic guide to revenue 
 practice that had appeared, contain only a few brief 
 (and very obscure) paragraphs explaining how the 
 joint villages should be classified for purposes of 
 record and revenue management. 
 
 But most of these sources of information had one 
 feature which I must notice : they laid stress on one 
 point — the "joint-ownership," or else on the sense qf 
 unity manifested by the villages, peculiarities which 
 were specially important from an official point of 
 view, as making it possible for them to be held 
 1 "V. C.,"p. 106. 
 
40 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 jointly liable for one sum of revenue assessed on the 
 whole village.^ This recognition of the village as a 
 sort of proprietary unit is -the distinctive feature of 
 _ the special N.W.P. Land-Revenue System. It will 
 be remembered that when Bengal was permanently 
 settled in 1793, the great desire of the Administration 
 was to put an end to the theory that Government (or 
 the State) was the sole and absolute owner of the 
 land ; and to find for each estate some private land- 
 lord, who would at once be liable for the revenue 
 dema.nd, and also assure the well-being of the culti- 
 vators on the estate. Now when the work of settling 
 the revenue extended to what were then known as 
 the " Ceded and Conquered districts " (the N.W. Pro- 
 vinces) in the beginning of the nineteenth century, 
 there were (in most cases) no landlords suitable to be 
 recognised, but there were the independent co-sharing 
 village bodies. At first the idea was that some one 
 proprietor or landlord must be recognised for each ; 
 and it took all the ability of Mr. Holt-Mackenzie 
 (Secretary to the Revenue Commission) to convince 
 the authorities that the whole village ought to be 
 regarded as a " corporate " body or unit, which, being 
 jointly responsible, could be treated with through a 
 representative. The landlord principle was saved : 
 
 1 This sum the co-proprietors distribute among themselves "^ 
 (so that the amount payable by each is known), according to 
 the custom and constitution of the village. The process is 
 known as the 1 ' " ' 
 
EVIDENCE REGARDING VILLAGES 41 
 
 the joint body is the (ideal) landlord between the 
 individual co-sharer and the State. Hence the joint 
 constitution of these bodies is the theme of minutes 
 and orders. An inquirer, pressed with such evidence, 
 would easily conceive that "collective ownership" 
 was tke feature of villages, and that this must surely 
 be the ancient common ownership that was believed 
 to be universal. ■ Add to this that in those days 
 almost everyone believed that " Aryans " constituted 
 the bulk of the population throughout India, so that 
 what was true of one part would be true of another, 
 and the idea of uniformity appears quite natural. 
 
 Since 1870 the new Settlement Reports gradually 
 came in. We have them now for the whole of the 
 Panjdb, North- West Provinces and Oudh, ^jmer and 
 the Central Provinces. We have excellent informa- 
 tion on the tenures of Bengal, including the most 
 interesting part of it — the " Chota Nagpore " districts. 
 We have a series of valuable " District Manuals " for 
 all the Madras districts; and in Bombay the published 
 volumes of the Gazetteer enter fully into the tenures, 
 and have, in fact, reproduced most of the material 
 that is of importance in the local Settlement Reports 
 and the special reports, such as those of Pottinger, 
 Chaplin, Gooddine, Pedder, and others.^ 
 
 ^ I have purposely said nothing about the great advance in 
 ethnographical knowledge, and in the editing of coins and in- 
 scriptions which throw light on early history and the dynastic 
 changes and tribal movements that India has witnessed. 
 
IV 
 
 A GENERAL VIEW OF THE AGRICULTURAL RACES 
 OF INDIA 
 
 Before we can form an opinion about the history of 
 Indian villages, and the value of theories propounded 
 about them, it is desirable to glance generally at the 
 agricultural population of India; as far as its origin is 
 known or can be inferred with reasonable probability, 
 from the literary, traditional, and linguistic evidence 
 in our possession. Too much importance has pro- 
 bably been attributed to the Aryan immigration — in 
 this sense at least, that it is, or used to be, regarded 
 as furnishing the principal element in the entire 
 population. But if one thing is more certain than 
 another, it is that with the original " village " settle- 
 ments of a large part of India, Aryans had nothing 
 whatever to do. 
 
 The geographical features which are necessarily 
 alluded to in speaking of the population and its 
 movements are not difficult to keep in mind. The 
 great Himalayan range (merging at the western end 
 into the Hindu Kush mountains) forms a northern 
 
 barrier ; and the principal passes from Central Asia 
 
 42 
 
AGRICULTURAL RACES OF INDIA 43 
 
 leading to India are in the north-west corner, beyond 
 Pesh§,war and Kdbul. Other passes into India cross 
 the western frontier mountains (known as the Sulai- 
 m^n) from Bilfichistan. Quite at the other end of 
 Upper India, at the north-east, there is another route 
 of access to races, who certainly found their way in 
 that direction — races of a more Tibetan character. 
 It is generally allowed that the Aryan tribes came 
 from the north-west passes; and by those on the 
 west, in all probability, the TURANIAN (or Dravidian) 
 races entered India. The TiBETO-BURMAN people 
 of the outer Himalyan hills, and the ancient people 
 called " KOLARIAN," both came from the north- 
 east. 
 
 Let us note also, for convenience of reference, that 
 India, as a whole, may be divided into two great 
 portions — one called Hindustan, or " Upper " or 
 " Northern " India, which (going from west to east), 
 includes the Indus Valley, the Panjab Plains, then the 
 Ganges Valley (and Oudh), and then Bengal and 
 Bihar, and Assam beyond. This great expanse of 
 plain country at the foot of the Himalaya is, roughly 
 speaking, bounded on the south by a double range of 
 hills of great breadth and intricacy, though of nothing 
 like the height of the Himalaya. This group of 
 hill ranges (of many local names) we generalise (for 
 convenience) under the name of the ''Vindhyan 
 Hills." Through the middle of the ranges, and 
 traversing a large part of the whole breadth of the 
 
44 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES ' 
 
 continent from east to west, flows the great Narbada 
 river in its broad and fertile valley, This "Vind- 
 hyan " and Narbada " line " separates completely (and 
 did so in ancient times more effectually than at pre- 
 sent), the people of the Dakhan, and Hyderabad, and 
 the South, from any extensive immigration from 
 " Upper" India. This great barrier, however, termi- 
 nates before touching the west coast, and so leaves 
 an open way for any tribes who came down the 
 Indus Valley, to reach the Upper Dakhan or 
 Bombay territory — Gujarat and the Mahritha 
 country. 
 
 These features can easily be followed on a good 
 general map, especially one of the mountain maps in 
 the " Statistical Atlas of India," or in those attached 
 to the periodical Parliamentary Blue-book on the 
 " Moral and Material Progress of India." They had 
 undoubtedly a great effect in directing and controlling 
 the movements of the tribes who came to India in 
 ancient times — the Aryan and Dravidian, and (so- 
 called) Kolarian races ; and also, later, Turanian 
 races, and still later Indo-Scythian (Su or Ab^r, the 
 Yuechi or Kushan and Huna) tribes,^ who came in 
 historic times, but at various dates, roughly speaking, 
 
 ^ Their history is well traced in the Archaeol. Reports for North 
 India, Vol. II., for instance, They gave rise (however indirectly 
 and by mixture of race) to the local tribes in Upper India, 
 known as BHIa, Ahir, Ghakar, Jat (or ]it), Mer, and Gujar 
 (Gurjar). Many of their leading families, too, became known 
 as " Rsljput." 
 
AGRICULTURAL RAGES OF INDIA 45 
 
 between the sixth century B.C. and the sixth cen- 
 tury A.D. 
 
 For a long time it was generally supposed that the 
 Aryan (Sanskrit speaking) people coming from the 
 north-west through the passes just mentioned (much 
 as Alexander the Great did several centuries later), 
 settled in India ; and that, in the course of their 
 advance, they met with some insignificant black and 
 snub-nosed " aboriginal " tribes, whom they defeated 
 and drove out, either to a refuge in the outer Himalaya, 
 or to the hills in the centre and upper South of India. 
 From that time the Aryan (or at least a mixed 
 Aryan) race formed the chief or predominating 
 element in the population throughout India. 
 
 But such an idea can no longer be entertained. 
 The literary allusions, traditions, and a number of 
 ethnological and local circumstances, when better 
 understood, compel us to the conclusion that the 
 Aryans were a limited but very superior class : that 
 they established themselves in "Hindustan" or 
 Upper India, only locally extending beyond it on 
 the west, and (after some time) on the eastern side 
 also. Their establishment was, however, so important 
 an event that we will return to trace its history a 
 little more in detail presently. 
 
 Southern and Western India were peopled chieily 
 by Turanian or Dravidian tribes (the name is from 
 Dravira, the Sanskrit form of the local name of South 
 India). 
 
46 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 Even the great Northern Indian plain was not 
 occupied, or brought under cultivation for the first 
 time, by the Aryans. There were besides the 
 " barbarian " enemies mentioned in early literature ^ 
 other (more advanced) tribes who most probably 
 preceded the Aryans, and perhaps were nearly con- 
 temporaneous with them in the time of their settle- 
 ment. These were also almost certainly of TURANIAN 
 or Dra VIDIAN origin, the same as those of the west and 
 south. Their language was different from that of the 
 Aryans, and so remains all over the south country 
 where its dialects (Tamil, Telugu, etc.) have only been 
 moderately affected by the Sanskrit terms or 
 grammatical forms afterwards introduced by the 
 Brahraans. In Northern India, however, the Dravidian 
 was gradually overborne — as a distinct element — by 
 the Aryan and other later coming races (of whom we 
 shall say a word presently). Such early Turanians as 
 were in Upper India, therefore, became fused with 
 these other races so that no trace of a separate 
 language has survived. There are good reasons for 
 believing that the earliest Turanian or Dravidian 
 races originally came from the west frontier — perhaps 
 by the Bol§,n and other western passes — while the 
 Aryans came from the further north-west. One part 
 (perhaps the chief bulk) of the Dravidian tribes then 
 
 1 And who (considering the countries known to the writers of. 
 the Vedic hymns) must have been rude people in the north- 
 western hills and the Northern Panjib. 
 
AGRICULTURAL RAGES OF INDIA 47 
 
 went down the Indus valley and across Gujarelt to 
 the west coast districts, and thence spread over the 
 Dakhan and Madras. Perhaps some of them went by 
 sea from the Indus mouth to the west coast. Whether 
 the Dravidians who went into Upper India, and so 
 became cut off from intercourse with those below the 
 Vindhyan line of hills, came at the same time, only 
 that they kept to Northern India and struck due east 
 instead of going south, can only be a matter of specula- 
 tion. But while the latter in time merged into the 
 general Hindu population as above stated, the 
 Southern Dravidians never were disturbed by any 
 extensive immigration in after times, and so 
 multiplied, and retained a distinctive character, though 
 they accepted Hindu caste and religious teaching 
 from Brahmans, who with their love of ascetic, hermit 
 life, soon began to make their way south. Only the 
 tribes in the west of India (upper part of Bombay) 
 became much " Aryanised " ; at least we conclude so, 
 because the language of the west country was 
 influenced by the speech of the Aryan tribes who 
 penetrated by the Indus route ; and the western 
 languages (Mardthi and Gujarati) became distinct 
 both from those of the south and those of Upper India. 
 But these early Dravidians of prehistoric times were 
 not the only representatives of the stock in India. 
 Besides the first races, who were serpent worshippers ' 
 (at least many tribes were), other races of the same 
 
 1 Indicated by the names in literature— ^/^/, Ndga, etc. 
 
48 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 stock, but of other branches perhaps, continued to 
 come to Upper, and even Eastern Central India (in 
 later times) ; and showed themselves possessed of a 
 strongly organised system of government, which has 
 been likened to the " feudal " system of Europe.^ 
 
 Besides the Dravidian races, another less numerous 
 series, with a different language called (not very 
 happily) KOLARIAN, had in very early times come to 
 India, as I have said, from the north-eastern corner ; 
 and some who are called TiBETO-BURMAN — con- 
 fined, however, to Assam and to the districts along 
 the outer slopes of the Himalaya. 
 
 Naturally, there are a number of small local tribes, 
 now in a very backward condition, who are generally 
 spoken of as " aboriginal," and whose classification 
 is uncertain. And the earlier Dravidians and 
 Kolarians became mixed up together in some 
 localities in a perplexing manner. The Dravidians, 
 regarded as forming the general population of 
 
 1^ We know that there was an ancient serpent (and sun) 
 worshipping race in Kashmir; that the people of Taxila, in 
 Alexander's time, were snake worshippers, and certainly not 
 Aryans. It is possible that the known invasions about the time 
 of Darius Hystaspes (sixth century B.C.) brought new Turanian 
 tribes to North India. A Turanian royal family appears about 
 that time to have succeeded to the earlier Aryan dynasty of the 
 Magadha kingdom (E. Bengal). From them are derived the 
 Andhra, who at one time dominated the upper part of the 
 peninsula, and also the Nslga or Snake Kings of Eastern Central 
 India. These later invasions were of clans probably identical 
 in race with the earliest Dravidians (" snakes " or Ah") of epic 
 timesi 
 
AGRICULTURAL RAGES OF INDIA 49 
 
 Southern India, have been slowly changed in the 
 course of ages by climate and locality, and by accept- 
 ing caste and the Hindu religion and customs. So 
 that we do not expect to find their village and other 
 customs actually primitive, but only showing some 
 marks of their origin. But there are places in Chota 
 Nagpore, Orissa, and elsewhere, where some Dravidian 
 tribes have retained their original customs. From 
 these we can find out what was in all probability the 
 earliest form of village. And we have traces both of 
 an earlier village and of a later and much more 
 organised form, which latter we naturally attribute to 
 the latest rather than to the earliest Turanian 
 immigrants. 
 
 It is only reasonable to believe that the Dravidians 
 in Northern India had very much the same kind 
 of villages. So that the ruling and superior Aryans 
 when they came to Northern India found, at least in 
 parts of the Panjab and in the more fertile regions of 
 the Ganges valley, cultivation already established. 
 There is every reason to believe that even the earliest 
 Dravidians were agriculturists by nature; and certainly 
 the later, but still ancient, tribes knew how to form 
 well ordered villages and to allot lands, and how to 
 make forts and buildings and to prepare reservoirs or 
 tanks for irrigation.^ 
 
 "■ It is worth while noting that "tank" is not the English 
 word, giving the idea of a great vessel of iron plates bolted 
 together, but means a partly natural, partly artificial, reservoir, 
 
 D 
 
so INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 Now let us very briefly notice what happened when 
 the Aryans began to spread over the plains of India, 
 leaving behind them some of their families and allies 
 in the north-west hills — e.g., in Kashmir, and the 
 country north of Peshawar — only to mention fairly 
 familiar names. 
 
 When the ARYAN tribes appeared in the plains of 
 Upper India, the earliest Vedic hymns give us some 
 idea of their movement. And later literature carries 
 on, so to speak, the story of their establishment. 
 One part of the tribes is represented as occupying the 
 Indus valley. Another and larger part made its way 
 across the Panj^b towards the south-east to' the Jamna 
 river and the Ganges plain ; they extended thence 
 eastward, coming at last as far as the mouths of the 
 Hughli river and to Assam. These indications are 
 confirmed in various ways.' The two sections so 
 separated had a different history and development. 
 The former — largely composed of a tribe " Y^dava " 
 (sons of Yadu) can be traced spreading southwards 
 beyond the Indus valley (and adjacent parts of the 
 West Panjab) till they reached Gujarit (North 
 Bombay) and the Mahritha country. The latter 
 group — probably much the larger — dominated the 
 whole of the Doib and the Ganges plain ; they were 
 
 and is derived from a native (Dravidian) word of something the 
 same sound. 
 
 ^ For example by traditions, local remains, existence of 
 linguistic traces, and a number of other coincident circum- 
 stances. 
 
AOltlCULTUBAL RAGEB OF INDIA 51 
 
 separated by the dry Panjdb plains from the Indus 
 valley tribes (and from such as extended thence into 
 the West Panj^b), and were cut off from peninsular 
 India, to the south and west, by the ranges of the 
 Vindhyan hill series and the Narbada valley already 
 mentioned. It was the northern or Ganges valley 
 Aryans who, in time, developed the law, custom, 
 caste, as well as the modified religious system and the 
 schools of philosophy, which we call " Hindu," ' 
 These ideas gradually spread (in after times) to the 
 west and south of India — i.e., to the Bombay 
 " Dakhan " and to Madras, by the agency of Brahman 
 missionaries. An Aryan (Yidava) tribe, in a very 
 early stage of development, came to the upper west, 
 as has been stated ; but into the upper part of Madras 
 (Telingana) and the region farther south, Aryans 
 never came, except in small numbers — Brahmans as 
 teachers, and advisers to kings and princes, and 
 soldiers of fortune seeking the command of armies, or 
 posts of state. 
 
 Even in Northern India and the Indus valley the 
 Aryan tribes (who were always engaged in wars 
 which must have been a constant drain on their 
 numerical strength) could not have formed a very 
 large immigrant population. All the circumstances 
 of their history indicate that they constituted a 
 
 '^ I may take it for granted that the reader is aware how the 
 Hindu deities of the books called "Purina " are entirely different 
 from those that are found in the ancient Aryan Vedic Hymns. 
 
52 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 limited and superior element, a ruling or dominant 
 class, establishing kingdoms and providing territorial 
 chiefs with their armies. They advanced, fully as 
 much by alliances and the voluntary submission of 
 the inhabitants, as by conquest. When the Aryans 
 established their kingdoms in the Ganges valley, 
 their armies and people generally (with the increase 
 that certainly took place by the rapid growth of 
 mixed and dependent races) could not have been 
 maintained without a steady supply of grain, and 
 without aid in building and other arts. This aid was, 
 we must conclude, largely given by non-Aryan tribes. 
 To be sure the Aryan races, or others originally asso- 
 ciated with them, were not themselves ignorant of 
 agriculture. Even in the hymns of the Rigveda, 
 allusion is made to the measurement of fields, to 
 corn and other agricultural produce; and the im- 
 portance of the plough is sometimes recognised. And 
 so it is in later literature. But agriculture was never 
 esteemed by any, and was positively abhorred (as it 
 is to this day) by the chief Aryan tribes — Rrahmans 
 and Warriors (Kshatriya). The "Vai^ya" — originally 
 the bulk of Aryan "common people," and which 
 Manu represents as the third caste, became to some 
 extent an agricultural class,^ and seem to have 
 
 1 I need only say that the four castes— Brahman, Warrior 
 (Kshatriya), commonalty or Vaisya, and the added fourth caste 
 or Sudra, meaning mixed races, or strangers admitted mto the 
 Hindu pale— are rather terms of classification than actual caste 
 names. Even Brahmans have to be described by a great 
 
AGBIGULTVRAL RAGES OF INDIA 53 
 
 separated into two parts — one taking to trade, the 
 other to cultivation. The poorer and non-combatant 
 families would almost inevitably take to village culti- 
 vation in the course of time. It is impossible, how- 
 ever, on an examination of the existing agricultural 
 castes (whether of tenants or owners) to trace the 
 Aryan Vai^ya as having at any time formed any 
 large element in the agricultural population. 
 
 It remains, then, briefly to note what became of 
 the Aryan rulers, whose wars the great epic (the 
 " MahSibhirata ") tells us of; and what other races 
 come to Upper India. All we can gather is that the 
 old Kshatriya kingdoms, one by one, disappeared, 
 
 number of local names ; and instead of the " Vaisya," we have a 
 multitude of castes claiming respectable rank, though not of 
 the warrior or priestly grade. The 6udra represent all the 
 converted races. The whole of the Hindu castes in South 
 India (other than Brahmans) rank therefore as Sudra. In a 
 valuable paper (Dec, 1898) in the (Columbia) Fo/i/ual Science 
 Quarterly, Mr. E. Washburn Hopkins, of Yale University, has 
 recently given a number of references to Sanskrit literature 
 bearing on villages and agriculture. He thinks I have allowed 
 (in my " Ind. Vill. Comm.") too little of an agricultural char- 
 acter to the original Vaisya. But my remarks were directed 
 against the popular notion that the Vaisya were an extensive 
 and special caste who tn/roduced agricuhure into India. Some 
 part of the common people of the Aryan group, it may be 
 accepted, took to agriculture ; but it can only have been a 
 limited number. There is nothing whatever to shake my con- 
 viction that when the Aryans came it was as a superior, ruling 
 element ; that they found Dravidian (and Kolarian) tribes estab- 
 lished; and that these tribes (or some of them) possessed irri- 
 gation " tanks," and had settled, organised villages. There is 
 no kind of evidence that Aryans introduced agriculture, or that 
 
54 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 and that for a long period great parts of the Ganges 
 valley were desolate ; while in other parts, humbler 
 mixed, or earlier non-Aryan races, resumed posses- 
 sion of the soil, and even produced chiefs and princes. 
 Here and there, no doubt, Brahmanical and Buddhist 
 kings continued to reign. 
 
 Meanwhile we have information that for a con- 
 siderable period — say from i6o B.C. to lOO A.D., and 
 again later on — there was a great disturbance of the 
 Saka or " Indo-Scythian " and Yuchi or " Kush^n " 
 races beyond the west and north-west frontiers, and 
 a consequent move forward (first of one, then of 
 the other), which brought new elements into Indian 
 
 they invented any new village organisation. The whole mass 
 of villages (as far as they are ancient) in the peninsula are of 
 non- Aryan origin, since no considerable bodies of Aryans ever 
 settled at all in those countries. And in Upper India, there is 
 no indication that the mass of local agriculturists were con- 
 nected with the Vaisya, or more than partly Aryan at all. For 
 when the superior Aryans ceased to rule throughout the great 
 part of the Ganges valley, the country was re-occupied by Bhar, 
 Pisi, Cheru, and other agricultural tribes, who were certainly 
 non-Aryan ; whether any of them had been recognised by the 
 Brahman classifiers as Sudra is another matter. I will only 
 add that I have never suggested that " India owes agriculture 
 and every settled principle of land tenure " to the Dravidian 
 races (Art. quoted, p. 677) ; but I am glad to take the oppor- 
 tunity of acknowledging that a sentence on p. 190 (" Ind. Vill. 
 Comm.") is misleading. I meant only that non-Aryan races had 
 established villages for agricultural life before the Aryans, and 
 that the latter furnished the element of " overlordship " and 
 manorial growth. This is not inconsistent with allowing that 
 the lower ranks of Aryans, and especially the families of mixed 
 blood, practised agriculture. 
 
AGRICULTURAL RACES OF INDIA 55 
 
 life in the north-west. We have to take account of 
 the invasion of races who furnished the original 
 materials of what are now the Jats, Gujars, and other 
 similar tribes.^ In process of time these tribes ob- 
 tained settlements — especially in the plains of the 
 Panjab and adjacent parts of the N.W. Provinces — 
 we can easily trace the area over which Jats, the 
 prominent "community"-formers of the Panjab, ^ and 
 the Gujars, extended. At the same time, in place of 
 the ruling " Hindu " race of the Kshatriya, we see the 
 uprising of several notable tribes known as " Rajput," 
 probably largely of Scythian or other foreign origin, 
 and some of them descended from the old Aryan 
 stock, but at most only semi-Aryan.^ Some " Rajput'' 
 
 ■^ I state this generally ; it is not meant that there were no 
 other invasions which brought other tribes ; or that we can be 
 positive which tribe came in at which period. We know his- 
 torically of one period of invasions in the time of Darius 
 Hystaspes (sixth century B.C.) ; and the period spoken of in the 
 text, which involved the loss of Greek rule in Upper India, the 
 arrival of the kings known as the " Satraps," and then their dis- 
 placement by the Kushin kings Kadphises, and (later) Kanishka, 
 had the greatest importance of any. 
 
 ^ I may mention that in i88i — I have not the later figures at 
 hand — Jats formed 195 per mille of the entire population of the 
 Panjib. Gujars are also very numerous. Both extended as 
 far as Rijputina. 
 
 2 We feel sure of this on many grounds ; but especially be- 
 cause a large number were grouped by the Brahmans (who 
 directed religious and social life) into four great tribes or families 
 called "Agnikula." These were said to have descended each 
 from an ancestor who was miraculously born out of the sacrificial 
 fire on Mt. Abu near AjmSr. This means that their origin was 
 
S6 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 clans are traceable to an origin in Gujarit and Upper 
 Western India, and others perhaps further north. It 
 is certain that although the rule of Hindu or Buddhist 
 kings never entirely ceased over Northern India, the 
 local wars and foreign incursions gradually drove the 
 Brahmanic or " Hindu " tribes towards the less fertile, 
 but also more defensible, country of Rajput^na, 
 MfiilwV and Bunddlkhand — the tract roughly indi- 
 cated as the country between the Jamna river and 
 the Narbada. The first raids of the Moslem armies 
 in mediaeval times accentuated this tendency of the 
 " Hindus " to congregate in this country. Doubtless 
 during the whole of this period, the Jat and Gujar 
 settlements in the Panjab (and adjacent districts in 
 the N.W. Provinces) were able to expand and to 
 change considerably under the influence of the climate 
 and of intermarriage. But when the Pathin emperors 
 had established their rule, they began to employ and 
 to encourage the " Rajput " chiefs, who were now 
 thoroughly " Hindu." These often formed clans with 
 a quasi-feudal order of organisation (wherever they 
 were in sufficient numbers) and soon began to issue 
 from Ijm^r, Mewar, and the rest of R^jputdna, and 
 
 unknown (or not wished to be stated), but that they became 
 Hindus by adoption, or at least espoused the cause of the 
 Brahnians and their religion. We have no trace of the Rajput 
 clans before the fifth century A.D. ; indeed I might almost say 
 before the eighth century. 
 
 1 Milwi is the country in Central India of which Ujjian was 
 the well-known Hindu capital. 
 
AGRICULTURAL RAGES OF INDIA 57 
 
 to . re-possess the domains once ruled by Aryan 
 princes in Oudh and the Ganges valley. This they 
 did, sometimes under direct encouragement from the 
 Moslem emperors,andoften bymere adventure.in parts 
 which had been left uninhabited, or were in the hands 
 of tribes like the Bhar.^ The important feature about'' 
 the village communities in the N.W. PROVINCES and 
 Oudh is this — that a very large number of them are 
 Rajput villages, and they are almost, if not quite, in- 
 variably the result of this reflex movement, and rarely, 
 if ever, are older than medimval times, i.e., from the 
 date of the Path^n sovereigns of Delhi onwards. 
 There are no traces of any certainly ancient Aryan 
 village communities ; and very few of clans or families 
 having an ancient traditional connection with their 
 present location, or said (with any probability) to be 
 descended from the old Aryan races. 
 
 In the Panjab (and in the parts of the N.W. 
 Provinces more closely adjacent thereto) we have 
 also some Rajput communities of a somewhat differ- 
 ent origin;^ but the great feature is the prevalence 
 
 ^ The traditional evidence, borne out by the facts of the case, 
 appears in " Ind. Vill. Comm.," pp. 121-9 a>id 3°9 ff- Sometimes 
 the Rijputs appear in clans, but without a monarchical consti- 
 tution ; in other cases single chiefs with a small following estab- 
 lished " baronies " and small separate kingdoms in which there 
 was no opportunity for a "feudal " distribution of territory. 
 
 2 The Panjib Rajputs are largely clans (Bhatti, etc.) descended 
 (though probably in a much mixed race) from the original 
 YMava tribes of the Indus valley and neighbourhood. In the 
 parts of the Panjib close to the N.W.P., some Rijputs are 
 found of the same claiis as those in the N.W.P. 
 
58 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 of Jat, and (to a lesser d^ree) Gujar, villages. And, 
 
 generally speaking, at the present day the tribal 
 
 constitution of agrarian society is more prominent in 
 
 tlie PanjUb than it is elsewhere. There are a number 
 
 of other clans or castes of various names who have 
 
 also joint-villages ; but they are either partly Jat or 
 
 partly Rijput in origin, and may safely be classified 
 
 with one or the other.^ On the north-west frontier 
 
 -^gain there are settlements of tribes of quite special 
 
 character. They are now (since some centuries) 
 
 Moslem. These latter are very interesting, because 
 
 we often possess almost complete information, not 
 
 only about the whole tribe, but about the clans and 
 
 sub-clans and ultimate divisions into which they are 
 
 formed, and how they divided the land on which 
 
 they settled (p. 24). And they retain various grades 
 
 of chiefs who still exercise authority. But these 
 
 settled at dates which (at the earliest) do not go back 
 
 beyond five or six hundred years. They seem to 
 
 have been, in their not very covetable territory 
 
 (Peshiwar, Haz^ra, Bannu, Kohat, Dera-Ismail Khkn), 
 
 left undisturbed by the greater sovereigns of the 
 
 north, and probably professed a more or less nominal 
 
 subjection to them. Whatever may be the reason, 
 
 these tribes had not adopted a monarchical rule of 
 
 their own ; and their " Kk^ns" " Maliks," and other 
 
 chiefs but rarely attempted to claim any extensive 
 
 power or to attain large estates as local landlords. 
 
 1 i.e., referred to one or other of the northern invasions : such 
 ar§ the Ghjikar, Aw4n, Arlin, etc, 
 
THE INDIAN VILLAGE AS IT IS 
 
 (a) The Severalty {or " Raiyatwdri ") Village 
 
 The preceding pages will have made it clear that all 
 villages necessarily have certain features in common, 
 but that as regards the ownership of the land within 
 the group there is a broad distinction ; and where this 
 distinction exists, there is a concurrent difference in the 
 village government (pp. ii, 12). In the "severalty" 
 village the ownership is in the form of independent 
 holdings, and there is no acceptance of a joint re- 
 sponsibility for the revenue and expenses ; there is 
 no joint ownership of the village site or of any 
 adjacent waste area, and the village is found to be 
 managed by a hereditary headman. Where the 
 ownership is that of a joint body (in whatever shape), 
 the co-sharers would never submit to the rule of one 
 man, nor to an oligarchy of the chief and his deputies 
 or other officers ; they have (or once had) what I 
 have called a standing council or committee of the 
 (equal) heads of the co-sharing families to manage 
 
 59 
 
6o INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 village affairs.' I have to give some account first of 
 the "severalty" and then of the "joint" village, 
 noting the races by which each kind was established, 
 and describing the principle on which each appears 
 to be constituted. 
 
 Of the severalty village there is, in the nature 
 of things, only one form, and that form has been 
 maintained in. essential features, although in the 
 oldest villages it is extremely probable that there 
 has, in the course of time, been a loss of a certain 
 tribal connection which once existed. The original 
 villages were, as I have said, constituted at a time 
 when the people lived in tribes and clans, so that 
 the first organised villages were constituted by little 
 sections of clans, each under its own leader or chief, 
 who became the headman of the village. The land 
 was distributed, according to custom, in lots to the 
 several leading families and to the associate settlers. 
 But as time went on, fresh villages would be started, 
 not by considerable bodies of clansmen, but by 
 numerous smaller offshoots from the villages first 
 established. Small parties would go out (under a 
 leader) and clear new plots in the jungle, and allot 
 holdings among the .settlers, so that the form of 
 village was very like that of the original organisation 
 
 1 These heads constitute the barddart, or brotherhood proper. 
 All\\\^ co-sharers and landowners are often described as wdrisdn 
 yak-jadi = " heirs of the common descent." (This refers to the 
 Panjelb.) 
 
THE INDIAN VILLAGE AS IT IS 61 
 
 though there was no longer any question of tribal, 
 custom in the establishment of new locations.' 
 
 Now, who were the people that first started organ- 
 ised villages in those countries where they are chiefly 
 noticeable in the form we are considering ? 
 
 We have seen that while Northern India is, as a 
 matter of existing fact, covered with villages in the 
 "joint" form, all India south of the Vindhyan hills — 
 t.e., all the central part of India, the Upper and Lower 
 Dakhan, Madras, and Bombay (not to mention a 
 great part of Bengal) — are entirely filled with sever- 
 alty villages. 
 
 I think it is very likely that, at first, in Northern 
 India also, villages were planted in this form, and 
 that the Aryan domination, and afterwards that of 
 later tribes of Rajputs, Jats, and Gujars produced 
 the more compact or cohesive form instead. As far 
 as Sanskrit authors (in Northern India) allude to 
 villages, they either mention them without any 
 specific mark indicating their internal constitution 
 or else they indicate the severalty village under a 
 headman.'' And having regard to the fact that the 
 
 1 The same process has been going on ever since. In my 
 ' L. S. B. I.," vol. ii., p. 451, I have given an extract explaining 
 
 how villages were actually founded in the central regions of 
 India ; and it is extremely probable that exactly the same sort 
 of thing has been always going on. 
 
 2 Mention of a village as a whole, or of the general bound- 
 aries of a village, does not imply that the whole was collectively 
 owned, or that it constituted a " corporation." The boundaries 
 of one village as against another are matters of the greatest im- 
 
62 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 Aryans and other conquerors became monarchica 
 
 it is very likely that, apart from the chief prince 
 
 and "barons" taking the rule over states an( 
 
 provinces," cadets of the ruling families, courtier; 
 
 and others would soon obtain the lordship over indi 
 
 vidual villages, and become virtual owners of their 
 
 and so in time change the constitution in the manne 
 
 which will presently be explained. 
 
 The villages as established by the humbler anc 
 
 purely agricultural tribes, whether Dravidian o 
 
 Aryan, would be in the severalty form. Al 
 
 analogy of later times leads us to this inference. Ii 
 
 the history of the mediaeval RajS,s of Oudh, for ex 
 
 ample, it is clear that the subject villages were in thi 
 
 severalty form, paying the R^j^'s grain-share fron 
 
 each holding. And we have evidence how by gran 
 
 {birt) of the king, or by the association of some loca 
 
 family, the village became owned by the joint heir; 
 
 of such a. grantee, and so acquired a different form. 
 
 portance in village life, apart from any consideration of th( 
 village being jointly owned or otherwise. One of the mos 
 definite allusions to the village is in the " Laws of Manu,'' anc 
 there it is certainly the severalty village under a headman tha 
 is mentioned. 
 
 1 I need hardly allude to the fact that in the Purinas anc 
 Epics the advance of Aryan tribes in the Ganges Valley ii 
 always represented under the guise of the great chief and hii 
 clan building a city and setting up a state of which it was thf 
 capital. 
 
 2 This is very clearly brought out in Mr. W. C Benett'i 
 admirable Settlement Report of the Gonda District in Oudt 
 <i8^). See §§ 64-77. The passage will well repay perusaL 
 
THE INDIAN VILLAGE AS IT IS 63 
 
 It is really, however, unnecessary to pursue this 
 question, as it is one on which there is, from the 
 nature of the case, only " probable " evidence. Where 
 we see the severalty village now, and also for 
 centuries past, entirely occupying the country, is in 
 the region of the Peninsula — beyond the Vindhyans. 
 And it will at once strike us that to this part of India 
 the Aryan invasion, and that of the later Indo- 
 Scythian tribes, hardly extended at all. Circum- 
 stances evidently did not favour the development of 
 lordships over villages, nor the constitution of bodies 
 in a joint form. Joint villages did arise here and 
 there, as we shall afterwards notice, but they were 
 due to special causes. So, then, the severalty vil- 
 lage is prevalent and characteristic in those very 
 countries where the Dravidian element was strongest, 
 and where it was least mixed with Aryan and later 
 dominant races. This fact is entitled to weight as 
 making it a priori likely that the prevalent village 
 form is derived from institutions of Dravidian origin. 
 At any rate, it seems manifestly impossible that the 
 villages, as they exist, should be due to any Aryan 
 invention or introduction. Now in the S.W. Bengal 
 (Chota Nagpore) and in Orissa, we have some actual 
 survivals which enable us to trace certain ancient 
 undisturbed customs, which there is every reason to 
 believe are those of the non-Aryan tribes, both 
 Kolarian and Dravidian. In some of the more 
 secluded districts we have distinct Kolarian races 
 
64 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 like the Santal, H6, Munda, etc.,' and also Dravidian, 
 the Bhuiya, Kandh, etc.; and an apparently later 
 tribe, the Uraon, who gave the name to Orissa, and 
 furnished rulers over Chota Nagpore. And I do not 
 think that anyone with local knowledge will be dis- 
 posed to doubt that those peoples were organised 
 in tribes, and that they established the territorial 
 divisions still known as ndd (and by other names 
 locally) ; and that the villages in these countries 
 were, in the first instance, established by distributing 
 or allotting the territory among the smaller groups, 
 each led by its petty chief or chiefs, who in turn 
 allotted the land within the village for the holdings 
 of the various families or persons entitled to be pro- 
 vided for. I say in the first instance, because, as I 
 have already remarked, as time went on new villages 
 were constantly established one by one, by small 
 groups starting out on their own account into the 
 abundant waste, and clearing a new settlement, 
 independently of the movement of a whole clan or 
 sept, or other such body. 
 
 The Chota-Nagpore country, I should note, is 
 admirably adapted to secure the preservation of old 
 tribal forms of settlement, since it is fertile within 
 and inaccessible to enemies from without, and does 
 not lie in the track of any of the greater military 
 movements known in history. Here we have distinct 
 evidence that the Kolarian population was in part let 
 1 "Ind. Vill. Comm.,"p. 154 fiC 
 
THE INDIAN VILLAGE AS IT IS 6$ 
 
 alone and in part combined with (or supplemented by) 
 Dravidians, and all came under (later) Dravidian 
 rulers. It is evident that the Kolarian settlements 
 were, and still are, very rudimentary, and do not 
 seem to have been likely to furnish a pattern to any 
 more advanced tribes. The Kolarian tribes made 
 small territories for tribal sections, locally known as 
 parhA. The boundaries were known, and each had a 
 totem, or distinctive emblem, which was (and still is) 
 exhibited on a flag carried on festival occasions. 
 Inside ^^tparhd, a few — I believe usually from ten to 
 twelve — small and separate (family) groups of huts 
 or cottages were built together. The people lived 
 chiefly by herding goats and cattle, and by the chase; 
 and what little cultivation was done was in a block 
 adjacent to each hamlet. We are assured also by 
 local observers that originally in the Kolarian hamlet 
 the group was composed (like a " house communion ") 
 of a body of persons all descended from a common 
 mother, and that the land such bodies cultivated was 
 really held " in common," each block being in fact a 
 plot sufficient to supply the needs of the group.^ 
 Apart from the fact that we have no evidence of any 
 wide distribution of Kolarian races beyond the limits 
 
 1 This question has been discussed by Mr. J. F. Hewitt in a 
 paper in the Journal Roy. Asiatic Soc. for 1887 (pp. 628-641), 
 and April, 1899 (pp. 329-356). It is not clear that the "com- 
 mon " cultivation went beyond the family hamlet, nor that all 
 the land in the parhA was held by the several sections in com- 
 mon ; if, indeed, any definite ideas of property existed at all. 
 
66 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 of the eastern districts of the upper peninsula and 
 parts of the Vindhyan hills, it does not seem that 
 this rudimentary form of village suggested to the 
 later Dravidians ikezr larger and better organised 
 village, which we can also observe in the central 
 Chota Nagpore districts. At any rate, it was such a 
 Dravidian village that can be argued to be the direct 
 progenitor of the surviving severalty form, what- 
 ever rudimentary form or forms may have a claim to 
 be earlier still in point of time. Very good accounts 
 of the organised villages are on record ; and also a 
 somewhat similar form is described among the Kftndh 
 tribe in Orissa.' 
 
 The important feature of these typical village 
 settlements is that certain leading families of the 
 group were the principal members (known as 
 bMinMr families), and that other cultivators were 
 associated with theni, not necessarily, I believe, 
 of the same clan. Out of these leading families 
 were selected the headman (who also had one 
 or more assistants or deputies), the pahan or priest, 
 the mahto or " accountant." And allotments of 
 land were made — one for the headman, one for the 
 
 i The village is described by Mr. Hewitt (who had been 
 Commissioner and Settlement Officer both in Ch. Nagpore and 
 in the Central Provinces), in Journal of the Soc. of Arts (May, 
 1887, p. 622). See also my " Ind. Vill. Com.," 179 ff., and Mr. 
 Hewitt's paper on "Chota Nagpore" in the Asiatic Quarterly 
 Review, April, 1887- The K4ndh was a tribe which acknow- 
 ledged marriage and the patriarchal family. 
 
THE INDIAN VILLAGE AS IT 28 67 
 
 priest (and the maintenance of the deities), one for 
 the mahto, and one for the other cultivators. Also 
 a (fifth) lot was set apart to furnish grain for the 
 support of the Rija, as tribal or local chief, which 
 seems to have been the mode of raising a royal 
 revenue even before the custom of taking a share in 
 the grain from all the cultivators became general. As 
 new cultivators joined the settlement, or fresh land 
 was taken up, the whole of the holdings (perhaps 
 with the exception of some of the privileged lots), 
 were re-distributed or re- arranged. There was no 
 appearance of the headman or of the privileged 
 families owning the whole village (as superiors to 
 the rest), or sharing it among themselves in fractions 
 as joint-owners would do. The time came when the 
 local chief (now Raja) was not content with the pro- 
 duce of the allotment of land in each village, but took 
 a share in the grain of all the holdings except those 
 of the privileged families; and this exemption may 
 be suggested to have been the origin of the custom 
 that the /^^^/ and kulkarni's special holdings were in 
 former days allowed to be free of State charges. (See 
 pp. 10, II.) 
 
 I have said that there is no appearance of such a 
 constitution having any dependence on a " common 
 holding," or of the settlers forming a body of owners 
 in common. And though it is true that there were 
 customs of periodically exchanging or re-distributing 
 the holdings, I shall afterwards (in discussing the 
 
68 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 theory of primitive common holding) show that it 
 affords no indication of an idea of "common pro- 
 perty." The ruling idea was allotment of a subsistence 
 share in the tribal territory to every member, according 
 to his grade or position.' 
 
 It will be observed that in the severalty village, the 
 nature of the existing constitution prevents there 
 being any jointly-owned area of waste or grazing 
 ground, or area available for eventual partition and 
 extension of tillage. Each holding (in possession) is 
 registered as the right of the person or persons culti- 
 vating it, and there is no scope for any joint-area. 
 Nevertheless, where there is an adjacent area of waste, 
 the village is allowed the use of it, though the land 
 remains the property of the State. Whether, under 
 such an organised tribal allotment of land as has been 
 spoken of, each " village " was made definitely to 
 include a tract of waste, I have seen no sufficient evi- 
 
 ^ Between the primitive villages of the Kolarians and the more 
 perfect one organised with later Dravidian rule, there are naturally 
 some stages of growth as well as local varieties ; but the principle 
 is best exhibited in the Chota (or Chutiya) Nagpore villages. 
 Mr. J. F. Hewitt has himself spoken of this principle — i.e., 
 the allotment of a subsistence holding to every member of the 
 community — as comparable to that which Dr. Seebohm and his 
 son have shown to have marked the old tribal life in Wales and 
 in Greece. Mr. Hewitt, it is true, insists that the more perfect 
 Dravidian (patriarchal) village, no less than the earlier (matri- 
 archal) village, was "communal." But, in all his accounts, I 
 have not succeeded in finding any mark of a " common hold- 
 ing," except the allotment and redistribution, which I cannot 
 admit to be such. 
 
THE INDIAN VILLAGE AS IT IS 69 
 
 dence. I think that it is highly improbable that any 
 idea was entertained beyond the fact that a wide area 
 (over which the villages were scattered) was «//, in a 
 general sense, the territory or heritage of the clan 
 there located, and that each village might extend 
 itself as it required. I can find no indication of any 
 tribal custom of allotting a specific area of waste to 
 each village — so much to this, so much to that, in the 
 first instance. No doubt, in course of time, when vil- 
 lages became contiguous, the area of each would 
 become definite. Should one village extend its culti- 
 vation so as to come into contact with the area which 
 was habitually used by the next village, a definite 
 boundary line would necessarily be arranged by the 
 tribal authority. But we have no trace, that I can 
 discover, of the ancient village being regarded (in 
 each case) as owning a definite area of adjacent 
 waste, and (as the necessary mark of such ownership) 
 that this waste must (on partition being called for) 
 be shared in the same proportions as the cultivated 
 holdings. It seems more probable that, when the 
 general tribal control of the whole area passed to a 
 R&ji, each village retained the right to the actually 
 allotted lands in severalty, but that the waste was 
 regarded as at the disposal of the R^j^ : though of 
 course the king never thought of depriving a village 
 of the use and enjoyment of the area which was, by 
 custom, grazed over, nor would he object to their 
 breaking up new pieces of waste when the village 
 
70 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 needed to extend its cultivation. It cannot fail to be 
 observed that when the Riji made a grant of a 
 " village," the grantee was always understood to have 
 the right of improving the waste, though he would 
 not have the right to oust the cultivators from their 
 cultivated holdings. This seems to show that the 
 right of the original villagers, beyond their cultivated 
 holdings, was not a definite right of ownership, but a 
 vague sort of user, though one limited to their own 
 body.' 
 
 I shall not here pursue any argument that the 
 existing form of severalty village is a real and 
 independent form ; and that if its derivation from 
 the early form to which allusion has been made is 
 not acceptable, then we must be content to say that 
 its origin remains hidden, but that it certainly is not 
 the result of any decay of such a form as we find in 
 Northern India. That argument will come later. 
 It will be observed that in those countries where the 
 severalty village is prominent, it has been found 
 necessary to adapt the revenue system to the 
 tenure. Every holding is separately valued and 
 assessed, and pays separately ; no responsibility of 
 one member for another is possible.^ The revenue 
 
 J And a grantee, while cultivating the waste to his own profit, 
 would still not attempt to do so to the extent of depriving the 
 villagers of a sufificient area for grazing. 
 
 ^ The raiyatwdri method was essentially {mutatis mutandis) 
 the ancient revenue system of the country, when the one-sixth 
 (or other) share of the grain was taken from each holding in 
 
THE INDIAN VILLAGE AS IT IS 71 
 
 system which treats the village as a proprietary unit, 
 and lays one sum of revenue on it, is only applied to 
 the "joint villages " of the North. 
 
 ((5) The Joint Village 
 
 Just as the severalty village, with its headman 
 and group of independent holdings, is characteristic 
 of a great part of Bengal proper, of Madras and 
 Bombay and Central India, so the joint village is 
 found to be the prevalent form over the PanjS,b, the 
 N.W. Provinces and Oudh ; and it seems probable 
 that it extended over the adjoining districts of Bihar 
 (N.W. Bengal) at one time, only that the subsequent 
 growth and acknowledgment of territorial landlords 
 has almost obliterated the evidence. 
 
 each village. When, later on, the grain was converted into a 
 cash-demand, or when the lump demand from a whole village 
 was introduced, it was to save trouble in the collection, or to 
 conceal an arbitrary increase. And when the collections 
 began to be made in that way, it was everywhere necessary to 
 introduce the " revenue farmer," or to make the village head- 
 man responsible, and arm him with arbitrary powers which 
 first made it easy to depreciate and break down individual 
 rights. Where there were "aristocratic'' families or strong 
 groups of clansmen, who could agree to the lump sum de- 
 manded, and be jointly responsible for it, there was the best 
 chance of bearing up against official interference ; but such a 
 formation seems only to be possible under certain conditions. 
 In modern times the system has wisely stereotyped the village 
 unity only where it had naturally come to exist, as in North- 
 western India. 
 
72 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 I have already intimated that these villages being 
 "joint" are treated by the Revenue Administration 
 as units ; that the land within the boundary is either 
 (in a few cases) held undivided by the co-sharing 
 body, or it is divided into shares or lots separately 
 enjoyed ; but still the people do not object to be 
 held "jointly and severally" liable for the revenue 
 charge, local rates, and village expenses, the burden of 
 which they distribute among the co-sharers accord- 
 ing to the rule and principle of their constitution. 
 
 I have mentioned that the existing joint villages 
 are not due to " Aryans,'^ in ,t|ie,^a£nse...fl£..^ainy 
 demonstrable connection with the old Aryan races. 
 Some few communities may really be relics of old 
 Aryan stock which escaped the destruction of the 
 older wars; others may have a certain strain of 
 Aryan blood but no more. In the main, it is true 
 to say that while here and there Sfioie indefinitely 
 ancient local tribes Jiave joint villages, the formation 
 of such villagea.ia^.enRral.ls.jdue.to.the later tribes— 
 the. Rajputs of various clans, the Jats and Gujars 
 (p. 55 foil.), who_ are representatiyes of the various 
 " Indo-Scythian " and other invasions of post-Aryan 
 Jimes. 
 
 To put it a little niore explicitly, we may 
 classify the villages according to race, as (i) Rajput 
 settlers and adventurers (mostly mediaeval) coming 
 to Oudh, the N.W. Provinces and Panj^b, from an 
 earlier home in R§,jputS,na, and other places ; (2) Jat 
 
THE INDIAN VILLAGE AS IT IS 73 
 
 and Gujar communities largely found in the Panj4b, 
 but extending into the parts of the N.W. Provinces 
 more closely adjacent. The Jat class tends to run 
 into the Rajput class very much; and it may well be 
 that many in both ranks are of the same race, only 
 that the more aristocratic and military were recog- 
 nised by the popular custom as " Rajput," while the 
 humbler and more purely agricultural were "Jat";' 
 (3) a variety of other tribes, some earlier, some later, 
 probably of mixed race, but approximating to (i) and 
 (2) ; they are chiefly in the North Panj4b (Awan, 
 Ghakar, ArEiin, etc.) ; (4) we may separate a group 
 of fMoslem) tribes on the north-west frontier who 
 are still living in a very perfect state of tribal 
 organisation (p. 58) ; (S) in the S.E. Panjab and 
 elsewhere a number of villages have accepted the 
 conditions of life under the joint village system, and 
 yet are known to have started as associated colonists, 
 forming village groups for defence and society, or 
 otherwise to have been groups of independent holders, 
 who, for one reason or another, have not objected to 
 the joint constitution. 
 
 Next, as to the mode of fofmatio n,^affld.Jli&.imzin.. 
 whic h the joint ownership arises. If we regard the 
 whole mass of such villages, we shall observe that the 
 principle on which the village body shares the land 
 (waste and cultivated) within their boundary, is not 
 
 1 This is all discussed and exemplified in " Ind. Vill. 
 Comm.," pp. 99 and 277. 
 
74 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 always the same. With the severalty village there 
 is — perhaps can be — only one form. But here the 
 joint-owners may share the estate, some in this way, 
 some in that ; or, in other words, the aggregate, of 
 co-owners may be,fgrmed_on different principles or 
 in different ways, so that there is more to be said 
 about the joint village. And the first great distinc- 
 tion is that in one large class of villages the com- 
 munity (as a matter of facj) is a body descended 
 from one man (o r__frorn one or, two brothers j who 
 obtained at some former time — maybe hardly a 
 century ago, maybe six centuries or more — the lord- 
 ship or superiority of the village. The " lord," how- 
 ever, in all cases, lived under what is the common 
 rule not only of Hindus but of the landowning castes 
 generally — the joint-family ; this requires that when 
 the head of the family dies all the male agnates who 
 are heirs, according to their place in the table of 
 descent, succeed together ; so that in these cases it 
 is really a (much expanded) family that has domi- 
 nated the village and now constitutes the community. 
 In another class of cases the villages represent the 
 fissionoT^^holeQlan or .tribe ; a large area is found 
 entirely covered with cultivating, co-sharing groups 
 of one and the same tribe, and governed by the same 
 code of custom. Sometimes a number of villages 
 are formed by the gradually multiplying descendants 
 of a single original family or other small group 
 settled on a wide space, which fortune preserved to 
 
THE INDIAN VILLAGE AS IT IS 75 
 
 it, till a number of village bodies grew up and 
 separated off. Sometimes the village represents a 
 body of sharers traditionally descended from one 
 original founder, but not such a founder as pre- 
 tended to any aristocratic rank (whose position the 
 descendants continue to represent). They are merely 
 equal owners of shares in the village ; each head of a 
 branch household possesses, and has always possessed, 
 a divided share or lot. Sometimes the village 
 owners have come together by voluntary association, 
 and may or may not consist of families of the same 
 clan or tribe. In all this large and varied class the 
 shares or lots (however formed) are not according to 
 the " ancestral " rule, as in the first class, and they 
 have always been separately enjoyed from the first. 
 As this second group itself requires sub-dividing, it 
 will be better to explain the whole under tAree heads, 
 wliich we will call — I. Ancestral; II. Tribal; III. 
 Associate. 
 
 I. Ancestral. — The first class will be the form of 
 joint village community just mentioned, in which the 
 co-proprietary body is in fact a dominant family 
 descended from one founder (or one or two related 
 founders), who first obtained the superior position 
 and took the " overlord's ^ share " of the grain from 
 the village cultivators. As in the course of time 
 they gradually multiplied, they came to form a co- 
 
 1 To explain this word once more, I may refer to the note at 
 p. 19. 
 
76 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMVNITIES 
 
 sharing proprietary community of the village, num- 
 bering variously 30, 40, 60, or 100 members, or more, 
 as the case may be. It is this kind of village that 
 may sometimes exist in an undivided state ; that is, 
 the owners may never have divided the land at all, 
 or may have never formally and finally divided it, 
 but for the time each holds a certain portion, which 
 (in theory) may at any time be recalled and adjusted, 
 according to the " ancestral " share of each. In some 
 cases part of the land is held divided, and part not. 
 The undivided part is either the waste, grazing land, 
 etc., which is more useful undivided, or is not yet 
 required for the plough, and will be some day 
 divided ; or it is held by tenants, and the rents, not 
 the land itself, are shared.^ 
 
 In order to explain what is meant whenever the 
 " fractional " or " ancestral " scheme of shares is re- 
 ferred to, let me explain that as primogeniture is 
 never observed in peasant or village estates, the 
 shares are the fractions of the whole which naturally 
 follow from the principle of equal right in the same 
 grade of descent or agnate male relationship, and are 
 therefore fractions of the whole. Suppose, for ex- 
 
 "^ For the sake of Indian readers (others may pass it by), I 
 mention that these conditions answer to the zamind&ri-kMlis 
 (the village lord is still a single individual) ; zamind&ri-mush- 
 tarka (the joint family has succeeded, and the body have not 
 partitioned) ; pattiddri {^\is.x^ the land zj completely partitioned 
 on the ancestral shares) and imperfect /a/ZzV^i^rz (where the land 
 is partly divided, partly not). In all these varieties the principle 
 of sharing is one and the same : the tenure is not altered. 
 
THE INDIAN VILLAGE AS IT IS 77 
 
 ample, that the original overlord leaves three sons ; 
 whether divided or not, there are three (major) shares 
 (paitf). If one of those sons dies leaving two grand- 
 sons, the third share will be subdivided into two sub- 
 shares {thok) ; and if a grandson's share comes to be 
 divided between, say, four great-grandsons (counting 
 back to the founder), then we have four sub-sub- 
 shares [behri or t-Ald), each consisting of one-fourth 
 of one-half of one-third of the whole, and paying the 
 corresponding fraction of the charges. Later de- 
 scendant families will continue to succeed (within 
 the major and minor groups to which they belong).^ 
 
 "^ This diagram will at once explain how an ancestrally-shared 
 {pattiddri) village is simply a continuation of a joint inheritance. 
 I have supposed the whole village to consist of 2400 acres, and 
 to have been founded by some distinguished person, and that 
 the family are proud of this descent, and keep their share-scheme 
 correct. 
 
 Founder (2400 acres) 
 (3 sons) 
 
 Primary 
 Sections 
 
 I 
 fa^^z Division ... . 800 acres 800 
 
 (2 grandsons) etc. 
 
 I r 
 
 Thok 400 acres 400 
 
 (4 gt. grandsons) etc. 
 
 Tiilaiox till 
 behri) 100 100 100 100 
 
 V T i I 
 
 (2 son s) etc. etc. etc. 
 
 , TT 
 
 50 50 etc. 
 
 800 (Each section will probably 
 " I bearthenameof theson, and 
 gtc^ be referred to as PattiMan- 
 BAar Lai, etc.) 
 
 (Each pays accordingly one- 
 fourth of one-half of one- 
 third (or one-twenty-fotirth) 
 of the whole burdens.) 
 
 Later and 
 
 I 
 
 I (2 son : 
 
 sons) 
 ! 
 
 existing "\ 
 members. | °S as 
 
 > > 
 I etc. etc. 
 
 The shares at ast become so small that the descendants can 
 
78 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 It will readily be understood that in paying the 
 revenue and expenses, the fraction of the total sum 
 (so long as the scheme is intact) corresponds with 
 the fraction of the land owned.' But it often 
 happens that in the course of time, owing to one 
 accident or another, the shares cease to be exactly 
 correct ; and, especially if the case is one in which 
 there has been no formal proceeding of partition, the 
 holdings are likely to be irregular, and it is found 
 impossible to remedy the variation (as will presently 
 appear). 
 
 It sometimes happens that in a partly-divided 
 village one part is correctly shared and the other 
 not, e.g., the cultivated holdings may be held ac- 
 cording to existing "possession," but the waste (or 
 other undivided) land may still be enjoyed (or its 
 
 no longer get a subsistence ; but it will be remembered that 
 very often a holder dies childless, and his share falls in to in- 
 crease the holdings of the others, so that it may be long before 
 an actual starvation limit is reached. 
 
 ^ The expenses being totalled, they are frequently spoken of 
 in Indian fashion as one whole rupee, so that half the total is 
 " 8 anas," one-fourth is "4 anas," one-twelfth is = i ana 4 pai, 
 etc. And to say that a man pays " four anas '' revenue is the 
 same as saying that he owns a four-ana share (or one-fourth) of 
 the village. (I need hardly repeat the coinage scale, i rupee = 
 i5 anas, i ana=i2 pai.) In the later stages of subdivision 
 these divisions are not sufficient ; and custom has provided a 
 further scale, which is sometimes very curious, providing for a 
 share which would be less than half an acre. See " Ind. Vill. 
 Comm.,"pp. 314-315, and note. In other cases the whole village 
 is taken as one bighd (area measure), and a half-share would be 
 10 biswa, etc. 
 
THE INDIAN VILLAGE AS IT IS 79 
 
 income) in the correct ancestral shares, showing that 
 the whole village was once governed by that rule and 
 belonged to this class. ^ 
 
 As in tMs class of village it is possible that the 
 estate may be actually undivided, it will be desirable 
 to state the circumstances under which such a (rather 
 exceptional) condition is maintained. It is well to 
 take note of this with some care, because it is from 
 such phenomena that the idea of " communal " 
 ownership has emerged. I may mention also that in 
 a few cases (under any class) plots of land may be 
 found held undivided for some special convenience, 
 and not connected with the custom of an undivided 
 inheritance. In the case of a joint inheritance of the 
 whole village, partition may have been put off owing 
 to the jealousy of the heirs, who fear that one will get 
 the better of the others ; or it may be that the land 
 is held by tenants, and that there is no object in 
 dividing it, but a manager collects the rents and 
 distributes the profits.^ But what really happens in 
 
 1 The varieties resulting from the shares becoming incorrect 
 may be seen in detail in " Ind. Vill. Comm." p. 338. It is pro- 
 bably to distinguish such cases as those mentioned in the text 
 that the official classification separates the " imperfect " (i.e., 
 partly divided) class of village. 
 
 2 In every village, it will be understood, there may be the in- 
 come from rents, and from wild produce, grass, grazing-dues, 
 fruits, wood, etc., and perhaps small rents or dues from shop- 
 keepers and occupiers of cottages in the village site. Per contra, 
 there is the land-revenue, the local rates or cesses (for roads, 
 schools, etc. ), and the common expenses of the village, entertain- 
 
8o INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 most cases (though the village may still be formally 
 recorded as "undivided") is that every co-sharer has 
 taken possession of a certain farm, or some fields 
 which he holds for his own benefit, the rest of the 
 land (probably under tenants) and the uncultivated 
 waste land is managed " in common," i.e., the rents or 
 profits from grass and wild produce are carried to 
 meet the aggregate revenue charges and expenses of 
 the whole body. If they do not cover it, the owners 
 have to make up the balance according to their 
 actual holding. 
 
 In the course of time such a state of things 
 is very likely to become stereotyped. Each 
 sharer is practically content with what he has got ; 
 or the weaker ones who have less than they ought 
 see no chance of ousting the stronger ; at any rate 
 action is deferred till it is too late. In that case, the 
 " ancestral share " scheme will have fallen into 
 abeyance, and the de facto holdings (and proportion- 
 ate payments) be recognised. 
 
 In a few cases, either by consent or in consequence 
 of the form of association, special areas of land, 
 perhaps unstable land, or land peculiarly situated 
 with reference to moisture received by percolation 
 from a river, will be cultivated without (permanent) 
 division ; strips or lots are marked out which are held 
 
 ing strangers, repairs to public buildings, etc., etc. When all 
 are brought to account, the surplus is distributed in the proper 
 shares. 
 
THE INDIAN VILLAGE AS IT IS 8i 
 
 in rotation.^ This is the only exception. Ordinarily, 
 any really " undivided " village will represent the 
 estate of the joint descendants of one founder. 
 
 Such being the features of the tenure of this 
 class of villages, it will be observed that it is ikzs 
 kind which we might well call " manorial," because, 
 in fact, the village has been dominated by an " over- 
 lord " (and his succeeding family), and has become a 
 petty " manor." And although it is true that many 
 such villages were newly founded in the virgin waste, 
 by the aid of specially located tenants and dependents, 
 still the position of the owner and his sons, as the 
 superiors, is just the same, and they form the same 
 major and minor divisions as the diagram has 
 shown. 
 
 I need make no apology for repeating that this 
 form of village really depends on the continuance 
 (in an expanding circle) of the joint-family rule.^ 
 More need not here be said ; but I shall have some 
 
 1 See "Ind. Vill. Comm.," p. 281, and in my "L. S. B. I.," 
 Vol. II., pp. 142, 640, there is a diagram illustrating the method 
 of division and the reasons of it. 
 
 ^ Sir H. S. Maine has justly observed that the joint family is 
 not the same as the village community ; but in the class of cases 
 we are considering the latter arises out of the former simply by 
 continuing the division and re-division of the shares, as far as 
 the limits of the village and the possible smallness of a holding 
 will admit. It is a group of families, themselves all subdivisions 
 of one larger family. Of course in the large class of joint villages ' 
 constituted by clans or by associate groups, the "joint family " 
 idea has little or nothing to do with the union. 
 
 F 
 
82 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 further observations to make in a closing section 
 whicfi relates to ideas of property in land. 
 
 It may be observed that this form of village with 
 its major and minor divisions {patit, thdk, etc.) is the 
 automatic result of the growth of a family and of the 
 partition of the land (see diagram, p. 77). It is not 
 an organisation designed or pre-conceived ; and most 
 probably when the " founder " of the village began 
 his career, his first thought was not to dispossess the 
 older cultivators or overshadow the headman, or 
 consciously to introduce a new form of tenure, but 
 merely to take the " lord's share " of the produce, 
 and to cultivate, for his own benefit, what land he 
 chose, which was not already under the plough. 
 But such a position was sure to develop into a 
 virtual ownership, as it has in any case of " landlord " 
 tenure in India, whether the superior's title is over 
 one village, or two, or a hundred. And when the 
 " founder " was succeeded by his joint heirs, the 
 village " owners " became a community. I will 
 further add that in this class of cases the proprietary 
 family are very often of Rijput or some other 
 superior (or at least non-cultivating) class, and that 
 they almost always have tenants under them. Some- 
 times the poverty of the family may have compelled 
 them to work their own lands, with the aid of the 
 village menials at sowing time and harvest. It will 
 be well to give some idea of the circumstances under 
 which such a domination of villages has taken place 
 
THE INDIAN VILLAGE AS IT IS 83 
 
 — how such families came to have the pre-emin- 
 ence. 
 
 (i) A very common case (and one of the !aiesi origm in point 
 of date) is where a revenue-farmer has grown into proprietor. 
 He undertook to be responsible personally for the whole sum 
 assessed on the village, and what with taking over the lands of 
 persons who failed to pay, and by means of mortgages and 
 purchases of this field and that, the "farmer" became, in time, 
 " owner " of the whole village. And be it recollected that at 
 the beginning of the nineteenth century, before the idea of a 
 single landlord was abandoned, managers of villages, principal 
 sharers, and others, were constantly treated as sole proprietors, 
 and their families have actually expanded into dominant co- 
 sharing communities. This was not always attended with in- 
 justice ; such persons (having a little capital) often took charge 
 of abandoned villages and restored the cultivation by their own 
 means ; or they became responsible for cultivating groups too 
 dispirited and poverty-stricken (e.£^., after the Rohilla troubles) 
 to claim any independent rights.^ 
 
 (2) A large number of villages (often of Rijput or other 
 higher caste) derive their proprietary communities from an 
 ancestor who had received a grant of the village from the ruler, 
 the grantee being thus rewarded for military or other service, 
 or getting it as a means of support.* 
 
 (3) Similar "rights" were obtained by some energetic family 
 settled in the place ; their growth being due to their superior 
 wealth, energy, or influence.^ In all these cases, observe that 
 the original grant or usurpation was jiot formally of the owner- 
 ship, nor did an usurping resident think at first of ownership. 
 It was the " king's share," or perquisites of authority, that were 
 
 1 See " Ind. Vill. Comm,," p. 303, and the references there 
 given. In the Bareli district (N.W.P.) out of 3,326 villages, 
 2,61 1 had become the property of dominant families in this way. 
 
 * See Id., p. 301. Brahman or (Moslem) Saiyad families 
 constantly own villages formed in this way — the village having 
 been granted as a work of religious merit. 
 
 3 Id., p. 310 ff., and p. 321. 
 
84 INBIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 granted, or an " overlord " share of the produce that was de- 
 manded from the cultivators, as the case might be; this was 
 understood to include the right of improvement of the village 
 waste land; and so the dominant right grew into a virtual pro- 
 prietorship as I have said ; the older inhabitants (if there were 
 any) frankly accepting the position of tenants. 
 
 (4) But a more curious mode of growth of "manorial" joint- 
 bodies occurs, when it is not the single village as such that 
 has been the subject of a grant, but a larger area has become the 
 scene of the domination or territorial rule usually of some 
 R4jput Riji, or perhaps a Moslem chief, with his family and 
 followers. In such a territory there were sometimes separate 
 portions which had been made over as the " fiefs " of some of 
 the Riji's principal male relatives. At first this was all a ques- 
 tion of rulership, or the exercise of " baronial " jurisdiction, 
 taking a share of the produce from the cultivating bodies already 
 established, and founding new villages in the waste by inviting 
 tenants and dependants and oiTering them a settlement. Then 
 (in time^ in viljage after village the ruler's rights and perquistes, 
 were alienated or made over, one by one, as appanages or as 
 life-grants for the support of cadets and scions of the family. 
 In time the descendants of such grantees become the co-sharing 
 owners of the whole group of different villages. Very often, 
 too, a petty barony or territorial estate, such as we are speak- 
 ing of, never adopted any rule of primogeniture, and became 
 formally partitioned (on the occasion of a succession) village 
 by village ; thus each relation getting a village stood in the 
 place of founder or ancestor, and his descendants form the 
 ' ' community. " ' Sometimes misfortune overtook the rulership ; 
 the principal members followed the Rij4 to battle, and were 
 dispersed or slain ; then such of the descendants as survived 
 clung to a village here and a village there, while the conqueror 
 took possession of the territory.^ The whole former " barony " 
 
 1 Instances of this may be seen in " Ind. Vill. Comm.," 308 ff. 
 See especially the case of the (Rajput) Gautam Clan of Argal, 
 p. 312. 
 
 ^ As to the village proprietary body arising on dismemberment 
 
THE INDIAN VILLAGE AS IT IS 8$ 
 
 (or the rdj) then became a district of the Empire, but was 
 covered by villages, often held by bodies of descendants of the 
 former ruling house. 
 
 It is in connection with these modes of the growth of com- 
 munities of co-proprietors over the villages that I have to men- 
 tion a feature which is conclusive as to the character of the 
 process. There are cases in which the "proprietary communi- 
 ties " do not correspond to the several geographical villages as 
 they stand ; but the co-sharing bodies correspond each to a 
 certain " estate " or group of lands {mahdl) ^ arranged by their 
 family division ; some land lying in one village, some in another; 
 and the entire group of holdings which belongs confessedly to 
 one "house," to the descendants of one man (who have to be 
 assessed together in one sum), has to be represented on paper 
 by bringing together in a list, the several lots. 
 
 These features are more particularly noticeable in 
 the N.W. Provinces and Oudh among the higher 
 caste village communities ; but there are also cases in 
 the Panjab ; and it is highly probable that something 
 of the kind occurred in the Bombay or Dakhan 
 villages when they became held (in former days) by 
 mirdsddr families ; only that in this latter case the 
 overlord families died out {see Appendix). 
 
 II. Tribal. — The next class of village is also 
 marked by the cohesion of the landholding co- 
 sharers, who combine to accept a joint responsibility 
 (at least do not object to it), and readily accept the 
 joint-ownership of such area of waste as is included 
 
 of ruling families and their territory, see " Ind. Vill. Comm.," 
 pp. 308 ff., specially p. 314. •" 
 
 1 Which becomes the unit with which the Government deals. 
 A notable instance of this occurs in the Azamgarh district 
 (N.W. Prov.). 
 
86 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 in the boundary of their village at survey. And 
 when this land is partitioned— being wanted for 
 extension of cultivation for the increasing members- 
 it will be divided out on just the same proportions as 
 those in which the older cultivated land is held^ 
 But here we do not observe that the village is divided 
 into fractional (ancestral) shares, because the villagers, 
 though possibly of common descent, are not repre- 
 sentative descendants of an overlord ; and the class I 
 have here separately distinguished is, in fact, either 
 derived from a tribe (or smaller " clan ") settling on a 
 sufificient area, and dividing the whole out into shares 
 — so much land for each person or each head of a house, 
 or else the villages originated in one centre, where a 
 small group of settlers found a home on a wide space, 
 which fortune has preserved to it. In the course of 
 time the families have multiplied and filled the whole 
 area, and the separating groups have formed so 
 many " villages " which at first were acknowledged as 
 dependent on the parent centre, but in time became 
 completely independent groups, each with its own 
 establishment, its own assessment as a unit, and so 
 forth. 
 
 It is often that we observe quite a large area now 
 covered by villages all of the same caste or tribe, and 
 they believe rather mistily in a common descent; but 
 
 '^ If a man owns land which is one-twentieth of the area of the 
 arable, he will also receive one-twentieth of the waste area when 
 it is partitioned. 
 
THE INDIAN VILLAGE AS IT IS 87 
 
 they cannot always say whether their predecessors 
 came there as a body already existing, or whether 
 only a few men settled, and have, in the course of two 
 centuries or more, gradually grown into the existing 
 number.^ In these cases the tribe or group are 
 sometimes spoken of as constituted " democratically " 
 — i.e., there was no R^ji or baronial government, 
 and, as a rule, no dominant families to take posses- 
 sion of this or that village. In many of these cases 
 the village shares represent an allotment made by the 
 tribal chief of an (equal) share to every member of 
 the clan or group settling there, or they are merely the 
 holdings which the growing households have added 
 on, one by one, out of the abundant area, without any 
 formal process of division at all. This class of village 
 is more especially common in the Panj^b, but is by 
 no means unknown in the N.W. Provinces and 
 Oudh. 
 
 Under this class the most striking illustration is 
 afforded by the north-western frontier clans, who are 
 so comparatively recently settled (from two to six hun- 
 
 1 For examples, see " Ind. Vill. Comm.,'' p. 266 ff., especially 
 pp. 276, 282. In some cases, the (large) area will be found to 
 be divided on the ancestral principle, as far as the first or prin- 
 cipal sections — z.^.,the shares of the originalBons of the family, 
 and their sons and grandsons. That is because while the num- 
 ber is very small and the area large, it is easiest to make the 
 allotment so. But afterwards, all the new descendants take 
 equally ; their lots are compared and valued in a peculiar way, 
 so that the share of payment is in just correspondence with the 
 extent and value of the holding.- 
 
88 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 dred years ago) .that their constitution is well known, 
 and the distribution of their land in sections and sub- 
 sections is plainly visible on the ground (p. 24) ; while 
 the tradition of the chief, and how he made the distri- 
 bution of lots — first the major territories and then the 
 final groups^ — is still well preserved.^ This distinct 
 evidence is peculiar to the frontier districts; but it 
 will be observed that very much the same thing most 
 probably occurred when the Jat and Gujar tribes 
 settled down in the more central plains, and we have 
 many instances in which the exact rule or principle 
 of their sharing is not now remembered. 
 
 It is not at all necessary that the shares or lots 
 should all be made by nearly equal measures of land. 
 That would not suit if the territory were very various 
 in quality of soil or in advantages of irrigation. I 
 must not go into details of each mode of "distribution 
 which is followed both in this and in the next (III.) 
 class. One method, however, is curious : it consists 
 in making the holdings consist of certain measures, 
 which, though called btghd, are not the standard land 
 measure, but artificial lots made up of little bits — 
 usually long strips — of as many different kinds of 
 soil as there are in the settlement.^ Where so much 
 
 ^ For details, see my " Ind. Vill. Comm.," pp. 247 and 253. 
 
 •^ For a singularly perfect example among Jats in the Mathura 
 district (N.W.P.), see "Ind. Vill. Comm.," p. 283. This is 
 what is properly meant by the term bhaidchdrd. The artificial 
 measures are spoken of as bhai-wAdi-bigha, tauzlrdighd, etc. The 
 
THE INDIAN VILLAGE AS IT 18 89 
 
 elaboration is not needed, the object of making the 
 burden (of taxes, etc.) is equal attained by counting the 
 d^£-M of poor land as twice or thrice as large as the 
 b^£M of rich. 
 
 It is very common in this class of village to find the 
 holders of shares cultivating their own lands, though 
 tenants may also be employed. 
 
 One other special feature may be added. Cases 
 are observed in which (in this class) there were origin- 
 ally no " villages " at all to begin with. The whole 
 area was divided out once (or gradually as required) 
 into lots for all the tribesmen. For instance, on the 
 north-western frontier, the land for the ultimate sec- 
 tion or ■' company " (called Khel) often formed an area 
 far larger than the usual " village " (pp. 8, 25). In other 
 places also, the whole of a large area is known to 
 have been divided into shares for the households 
 without definite village groups.' But as time goes on, 
 and families of the same connection multiply, and 
 their cultivation is more or less aggregated in blocks, 
 the area becomes divided up into villages, for con- 
 venience of survey and for other administrative 
 reasons. Moreover, as the cultivation extends, the 
 connected families belonging to one stock set up their 
 cottages in one hamlet, which soon becomes large 
 
 bighd, as an ordinary area measure in use in India, varies in 
 different provinces. Commonly, it is five-eighths of an acre. 
 
 ^ For examples, see " Ind. Vill. Comm.," pp. 270-271, and 
 also at pp. 262, 28s, and as to the larger (frontier) Kkel areas 
 splitting up into villages, see id., pp. 245, 251, 261, etc. 
 
90 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 enough to require a separate staff of artisans, etc., and 
 a separate mosque or shrine. 
 
 It is curious to observe that among tribes which, 
 like the Jat, are, as a rule, agricultural and " demo- 
 cratic," some of the villages are found to have been 
 dominated by single families, and to be held on the 
 ancestral {pattiddri) scheme. This shows that here 
 and there a particular chief, or his son, or some lead- 
 ing person, has managed to get possession of a village, 
 and made it his " manor." ^ 
 
 It is a fact, of which I have seen no satisfactory 
 explanation, that some tribes have never developed 
 the monarchical (quasi-feudal) form, under which the 
 clan and sectional chiefs become " Rfiji " and 
 "barons," and establish a military and territorial 
 rule. Even among the Rijput tribes, where this 
 system was often so fully developed, and is described in 
 Colonel Tod's " Rajasthan " with so much animation, 
 we observe some clans who never had Rij&s,^ but 
 merely acknowledged the " patriarchal " authority of 
 their sectional chiefs, and formed villages, or groups 
 of tribal families holding land in allotted shares, on a 
 
 J- It would be very interesting, if our statistical information 
 were such as to show (for the Panjib), how many of the entire 
 mass of the Jat villages are held on the ancestral or pattiddri 
 plan. It is at present uncertain how far the early Jat races had 
 RSjis and a monarchical rule like the " Hindus." 
 
 2 Those who care to pursue the subject will find some excel- 
 lent remarks in the Oudh Gazetteer, Vol. II., p. 40 (Article 
 Hardoi). 
 
THE INDIAN VILLAGE AS IT IS 91 
 
 general principle of equality. In the interesting pro- 
 vince of Benares, where a " landlord settlement " was 
 made according to the ideas of those days (1795), 
 but where, properly speaking, the joint villages should 
 have been dealt with as such, it is noticeable that the 
 (RSjput) clans often adopted the (non-aristocratic) 
 tribal allotment plan, and had artificial lots or land- 
 measures, so as to make the advantages and the 
 burdens of land-sharing as equal as possible.^ 
 
 It will be asked : If this method of alloting equal 
 shares (in one form or another) to all the members 
 for their several enjoyment is t/ie feature of so large 
 a class of village, where does the j'oini property come 
 in? It is really rather a matter of natural union 
 caused by the sense of common descent or common 
 tribe, and, in consequence, the observance of tribal 
 custom of pre-emption, and of a rule against alien- 
 ating land outside the agnatic group, or to the 
 prejudice of natural heirs. To this we must add the 
 knowledge that by becoming mutually responsible 
 and acting together, the whole village could best be 
 preserved both from outside enemies and from the 
 disintegrating effects of a harsh and exacting govern- 
 ment ; — when a revenue-farmer is kept at a distance, 
 
 1 And this feature sorely puzzled the Resident (Mr. Duncan) 
 in 1796, when he reported on the villages, and noticed the 
 bhaiwddi bighd, or artificial measures, which he attributes to 
 quite a wrong cause. This curious report is, I believe, the first 
 in which "joint" villages came to notice, and it ought to be 
 reprinted- 
 
92 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 by the united body offering to pay a lump sum for 
 the whole village, and being jointly answerable for its 
 being forthcoming at due date. Moreover, such a 
 combination involves the joint ownership of the 
 village site and the wells, etc., within the boundary, 
 which, from the nature of the case, cannot be parti- 
 tioned, and also the joint ownership of the grazing 
 land or other waste not yet divided. 
 
 It will be asked also : How is it that a " tribal 
 allotment " in Central and Southern India is argued 
 to have been the origin of the separate shares in the 
 severalty village, while apparently a closely similar 
 arrangement in the north country resulted in the 
 united community villages ? 
 
 It seems to me that as the Dakhan (or peninsular) 
 village must have received its primary form centuries 
 before these northern groups came into existence, 
 there has been more time for the sense of tribal 
 union to wear out;' also that very likely there was 
 not the same necessity for combination against 
 enemies, or perhaps not the same character or 
 cohesiveness. But, as regards the north-west frontier 
 villages, they really are very much like severalty 
 villages, except that the tribal union is strong, and 
 the custom of not alienating land to the prejudice of 
 heirs survived, and that the democratic character of 
 the tribes does not allow the sectional chief or head- 
 man to have so much direct managing authority. 
 
 1 This rnatter will come up again in another connection. 
 
THE INDIAN VILLAGE AS IT IS 93 
 
 Indeed, it must always be remembered that the 
 frontier villages (and the same is true of the clan 
 areas in the Salt Range country or Jihlam district of 
 the Panjab) are not really at all like the kind of 
 joint village which the N.W. Province system first 
 adapted itself to ; they have little in common with 
 the pattiddri, etc., of the text-books; only that, having 
 certain features of union, they naturally suited the 
 system which was applied to them, and so the villages 
 have become classified in the statistical records as of 
 the same nature as the others. 
 
 III. Associate. — The third class of village — still 
 one that has features which enable it to be managed 
 on the "joint" principle — is rather a residuary one ; 
 nor is it easy to draw a sharp line between it and the 
 class II. There is the same absence of the "ancestral 
 share" system, i.e., there is no appearance of the 
 village having been dominated or founded by one 
 man, 'whose descendants the present superior com- 
 munity or brotherhood represent. The shares are 
 either equal lots — where the soil is fairly uniform^or 
 they are arranged on the method of making each 
 holding consist of strips of good, bad, and indifferent 
 land together ; or the holdings are adapted to the 
 " ploughs " — the number possessed by each cultivating 
 household. Or perhaps the village is an irrigated 
 one ; wells have been sunk at suitable distances, and 
 the land is shared with reference to the proportion of 
 
94 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 labour and money which each village co-proprietor 
 contributed to the (co-operative) well sinking. 
 
 (i) In these villages we sometimes see different 
 sections (Jarf) occupied by families of a different 
 origin, whose tradition is that they clubbed together 
 and got lands together in one circle for defence,' A 
 still more interesting example occurs among various 
 clans of Jats, who settled — on being compelled to 
 move from some earlier locations — in the eastern 
 part of the Panj^b.^ The villages not only belong 
 each to a separate clan or sub-division of Jats, but 
 inside each village will be found "sections," each 
 held by families of a different clan, who have clubbed 
 together for defence. Near the same locality may 
 also be found (in interesting contrast) large areas 
 entirely occupied by villages all of one clan. The 
 land is here (inside each village) divided out into so 
 many ^a/ or "plough lands," a number being assigned 
 to each family in proportion to its strength. And 
 very often (where the soils differ much in value) the 
 lots are made up of specimen strips of each kind. 
 
 (2) Another kind of village — notably in the S.E. 
 Panj^b — is known by uniform tradition to have been 
 formed, at no very distant date, by voluntarily 
 associated parties of colonists, each under a leader. 
 
 1 See the example (Gujrat district, Panjib) in " Ind. Vill. 
 Comm.," p. 339. 
 
 2 In the Ludiina district there is a very full account of these 
 curious settlements, which I have abstracted in " Ind. Vill. 
 Comm.," pp. 274-6. 
 
THE INDIAN VILLAGE AS IT IS 95 
 
 Here land-shares were at once made out, and were 
 distributed among the cultivating families by the 
 process of casting lots.' Here there was nothing to 
 distinguish the village from the severalty form, 
 except the willingness of the people to accept a joint 
 responsibility for the revenue. They did not settle 
 under any special grant of privileged tenure as in the 
 (quite exceptional) case of the Madras colonists noted 
 in Appendix I. But the villagers had no objection 
 to come under the " joint " system of the N.W. 
 Provinces, and gladly accepted the recognition of 
 their joint ownership of such areas of adjacent waste 
 as the survey proceedings adjudged to be included 
 in their boundary, and to form part of the joint 
 village estate. 
 
 It will be observed that in all these cases the 
 origin of the village is known — all the facts tend to 
 confirm the tradition of origin. There are, of course, 
 many other villages in which the proprietors — each 
 in possession of a certain lot of land which he culti- 
 vates separately — have no recollection of their origin, 
 nor of how they came by their " de facto possession." 
 All they can say is, that the land share is the " gift 
 of Providence," or that they have always cultivated 
 
 ' See " Ind. Vill. Comm.," p. 323 ff. As to the temptation 
 or opportunity for the leader of such a party to erect himself 
 into a petty landlord, and the instructiveness of this, as illus- 
 trating the way in which a dominant body may grow up in a 
 village of any kind, see my " L. S. B. I.," ii., p. 691, and the 
 quaint verse quoted in the footnote. 
 
96 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 "according to their ability." They may have once 
 had some definite system of sharing, as in class I. or 
 II., but they have forgotten all about it.' 
 
 And, lastly, it has to be noted that in some cases, 
 villages like those in Kdngra (Panjib Hills) in Ajmer, 
 and in Jh^nsi (N.W. Provinces bordering on Central 
 India) are only artificially introduced into the class of 
 joint villages; and that in some cases trouble has 
 resulted. In the S.W. Panjib, too, there are no 
 real villages : separate farms or holdings have been 
 clubbed together with the intervening waste, and made 
 into villages.^ 
 
 A more curious instance still is afforded by the 
 Central Provinces, which (under circumstances detailed 
 in my " L. S. B. I." Vol. II.) it was determined to settle 
 (for the most part) under the N.W. Provinces system. 
 As the villages were, really and naturally, severalty 
 villages, and the circumstances of the inhabitants such 
 that they could not accept the joint responsibility, and 
 did not care to have an area of waste made over (as a 
 
 ' Hence in the returns, all are, or were, lumped together as 
 bhaidchdrd villages — estates held " by custom," — quite forget- 
 ting that the real tenure so called was a definite and original 
 custom, and that, from the tenure-student's point of view, the 
 mixing up of all these villages in one undistinguishable mass is 
 most unfortunate. We shall see afterwards how one theory of 
 " evolution " has been grounded on this confusion. 
 
 2 In AjmSr at the latest Revenue Settlement, the joint 
 responsibility was virtually abolished. As to the troubles in the 
 case of the Jhinsi districts, see "L. S. B. I.," Vol. II., pp. 120-1. 
 As to the (Multin and other south-western) Panjib holdings, see 
 "Ind. Vill. Coram.," p. 65. 
 
THE INDIAN VILLAGE AS IT IS 97 
 
 joint property) to each body, the Government deter- 
 mined to confer the proprietary right on the headman 
 or on the person whom the Mahrithas had made 
 answerable for the revenue (our officers called him the 
 Mdlguzdr). And so the original villagers became 
 " sub-proprietors," or tenants with occupancy rights, 
 according to circumstances. In course of time the 
 sons and families of the grantee-proprietors will form 
 "joint communities" owning the villages.^ 
 
 ^ Those who are curious to follow the history of the experi- 
 ment will find it described in "L. S. B.I .," Vol. II., pp. 382- 
 385. 
 
VI 
 
 THE THEORY REGARDING INDIAN VILLAGES 
 EXAMINED 
 
 Having sketched the main facts about Indian 
 
 villages, it is now time to consider the theory to which 
 
 I have alluded, and to inquire how far it corresponds 
 
 to the reality of things. As we have been led to 
 
 establish the clear distinction that exists, ab origine, 
 
 between the "severalty" and the "joint" forms of 
 
 village, so an examination of the theory must be 
 
 divided into two portions. I proceed to show («) that 
 
 the theory fails altogether to apply to the severalty 
 
 village of peninsular India; and {b) that it fails to 
 
 account satisfactorily for even the limited class of 
 
 joint villages found in Northern India, on which (in 
 
 reality) it is based. In order that the theory itself 
 
 may not be misrepresented, let me set down its 
 
 distinctive features seriatim and give the appropriate 
 
 references. The theory is that : 
 
 (i) The Indian village communities may differ 
 
 locally and in detail; they may exhibit signs of decay 
 
 and change; but for purposes of comparative study 
 
 98 
 
THE THEORY EXAMINED 99 
 
 they may be represented by a single typical form to 
 which all approximate.^ 
 
 (2) The essential feature is that the village land is 
 owned " in common " (or "collectively") ; and that even 
 where allotment in severalty has taken place, the idea 
 of " cultivation in common " is kept up by minute 
 rules regulating the tillage of the several holdings.^ 
 The typical village has no headman, or single chief, 
 being governed by a committee or council of the 
 brotherhood.^ 
 
 (3) Sir H. S. Maine speaks of the typical village 
 
 ^ " V. C," p. 107 : " I am attempting to describe a typical 
 form to which the village communities appear to me on the 
 evidence I have seen to approximate, rather than a model to 
 which all existing groups called by the name can be exactly 
 fitted." 
 
 2 " V. C." p. 41 : " The system is one oi common enjoyment by 
 village communities, and inside those communities by families." 
 Again (p. 107) : "The common life of the group or community 
 has been so far broken up as to admit of private property in 
 cultivated land, not so far as to allow departure from a joint 
 system of cultivating ..." And " minute" or " multifarious " 
 rules are spoken of as enforced with the object "... to 
 reconcile a common plan and order of cultivation on the part of 
 the whole brotherhood with the holding of distinct lots ... by 
 separate families." And (p. 222) "joint ownership by bodies of 
 men was the rule . . . several ownership by individuals the 
 exception." See also (p. 227): "Ownership in common by 
 large groups of men originally kinsmen." (The italics are 
 mine.) 
 
 3 " V. C.,'' p. 123 : " . . .in those parts of India in which the 
 village community is most perfect ... the authority exercised 
 elsewhere by the headman is lodged with the village council " 
 {cp. id., p. iSS)- 
 
100 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 marked by collective ownership, as archajc and reprgr 
 senting the universal primitive idea of property. 
 Further, that it was the creation of the Aryan races 
 {i.e., in India, the Sanskrit speaking tribes of the 
 Vedic and Epic Poems). ^ 
 
 (4) Originally the bodies owning in '^ common " h^d 
 I no definite shares ; the acknowledgment of them (in 
 \ one form or another) was a later invention — a stage 
 i in the process of development fron) " common " to 
 \ "individual" property.^ 
 
 ^ This appears /awm. See for instance "V. C," p. 220 and 
 " E. H. I.," p. 77, where the admission that the village 
 community is now known outside the Aryan limit, implies the 
 Aryan origin as regards India. The question of any kind of 
 village in India being Aryan or not might be regarded as an 
 ethnological problem of no great practical importance, But in 
 fact it is made use of to confirm the idea of general primitive 
 common ownership, because the Indian village is thus linked 
 on to the (supposed) "Teutonic mark," which is itself Indo- 
 germanic or Aryan. Moreover, Sir H. S. Maine shared the 
 belief (see " V. C," p. 104) which has been repeated from book 
 to book without verification, that the " Law of Manu " contains 
 allusion to the collectively owned village ; this, however, is not 
 the case. The village of separate holdings under its headman 
 is certainly the only kind of village referred to by Manu — or (to 
 the best of my belief) by any other early Sanskrit writer (but 
 see p. 61.) 
 
 2 The passage "V. C," p. 81, no doubt refers directly to the 
 "Teutonic mark"; but the whole drift of the remarks is, I 
 think, that shares in the village do not belong to the real original 
 form. Cfr. " E. H. I." pp. 79-8i, where the Hindu joint family 
 is referred to. (In the judgment there referred to, Lord West- 
 bury did not mean that no member has a definite share 
 [dependent on his place in the table of descent] which he 
 certainly has, but that no particular plot of land, or piece of 
 
THE THEOnr EXAMINED lOi 
 
 (5) The groups consist of persons originally con- 
 nected by consanguinity, or at least assumed to be so ; 
 this was in time more or less completely forgotten, 
 and the body is now held together solely by the land 
 which the members cultivate in common. ^ The 
 (only) raison ditre of these communities is the tillage 
 o/the soil.^ 
 
 (6) And lastly, we are informed that these com- 
 munities are not simple bodies, with equal rights : 
 fthey are composite groups, containing social layers 
 amalgamated at different (remote) times ; so that the 
 whole composes a sort of hierarchy from the highest 
 caste down to the lower artisans, labourers, etc.^ 
 
 property represented the "share" of any member before 
 partition.) 
 
 ^ " V. C," p. 175 : " At the outset they seem to be associations 
 of kinsmen united by the assumption (doubtless very vaguely 
 conceived) of a common lineage." " E. H. I.,'' p. 78 : " cultivat- 
 ing groups ... in which . . . the assemblage of cultivators is 
 held together solely by the land which they till in common." 
 And compare id., p. 81. 
 
 2 "V. C," p. 175 : " The end for which it exists is the tilling 
 of the soil." Sir H. S. Maine seems to have forgotten that 
 in fact (especially in the North- West Provinces) a large number 
 of the communities were of non-agricultural, commercial, or 
 military castes, and that Rijputs, in particular (unless reduced 
 by poverty), never cultivated ; their raison d^&tre was not 
 tillage ; they looked to the land as a source of livelihood from 
 rents paid to them as "lords of the manor." 
 
 3 " V. C.,"p. 117 : " Various subordinate groups which it may 
 be shown to include.'' Id., p. 123 ; "Not simple, but composite 
 bodies, including a number of classes with very various rights 
 and claims." And especially p. 175 : " The brotherhood" (italics 
 are mine), "besides the cultivating families who form the fliajor 
 
102 tNDlAir VILLAGE GOMMVNtTlES 
 
 (a) The Theory with reference to the Severalty {or 
 Raiyatwdrt) Village — the more widespread form 
 
 It is obvious that the village in which there is a 
 hereditary headman, and a number of holdings which 
 never were joint or "in common" at any known 
 historic period, does not, as it stands, in any way 
 whatever correspond to the typical form with the - 
 six characteristic features just enumerated. That, 
 however, is not denied by anyone who supports the 
 theory of original unity. Their line of explanation 
 is, first, very much to underrate the importance and 
 the widespread and regular prevalence of this form 
 of village, and the distinctive character of the features 
 by which it is marked ; next, to rely on the existence 
 of features which all villages must, as I have insisted,' 
 alike possess, as suggesting that all were originally of 
 one type ; and thence to conclude that the severalty 
 villages were once held in common, and that they 
 " decayed " into the existing form ; that they '' passed 
 under" the government of a single headman, who 
 was believed to have replaced (perhaps by the action 
 of the Government of the time), an earlier " council 
 of elders." An examination of the question indicated 
 by the heading, then, resolves itself into a considera- 
 
 part of the group, comprises families hereditarily engaged in the 
 humble arts which furnish the little society. . . . It includes a 
 village watch and a village police. . , ." 
 
THE THEORY EXAMINED 103 
 
 tion of how these severalty villages really came to be 
 so widespread ; whether or no there was, or could 
 have been, the decay or change spoken of; and 
 lastly, to examine certain local facts which (being 
 misunderstood) have served to support the decay 
 theory by showing the existence at some former 
 time of joint villages in the south of India. 
 
 I have already (p. 63 foil.) given some details showing 
 the probability that the severalty village is a direct 
 derivation from a Dravidian form, of which the im- 
 portant feature is that the holdings were all allotted, 
 and separated according to fixed custom, for enjoy- 
 ment of the different persons and classes entitled, 
 from the first establishment of the village. There is 
 no appearance of a common ownership, or that the 
 several families, whether specially privileged or not, 
 ever regarded themselves as a joint or co-sharing 
 body. Nothing of the kind has been established. 
 Where we find traces of former shares (of a joint 
 holding) in villages in certain parts of the Dakhan, 
 these occur under circumstances that show them to 
 be special growths, and emphasise the contrast be- 
 tween them and the ordinary conditions of village 
 constitution. The severalty village, as it has already 
 been described, would very naturally arise out of 
 such a (Dravidian) form as we have considered. 
 In the course of centuries, the once existing tribal 
 connection, and the feeling of clanship, would gradu- 
 ally die out, and the allotted holdings would cease 
 
to4 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 to be exchanged or re-distributed — would becornfe 
 held by persons of different origin, and so become 
 wholly independent (as holdings), although the village 
 might retain its headman and such a distinctive 
 feature as his (free) ex officio holding of land in the 
 village, and the habit of reliance on the headman's 
 authority and help. That, by a process of decay or 
 transformation, it should have taken on these peculiar 
 features ; or, in other words, that these should have 
 become substituted for a once common or collective 
 ownership and a joint management carried on by a 
 council or committee, as the theory is, seems to me 
 in the last degree incredible. 
 
 It may, indeed, be objected : " You attribute the 
 separate and independent holdings in this kind of 
 village to an original distribution of appropriate lots 
 to each free member of the village group, which was 
 probably the section of a larger clan ; does not the 
 existence of this widespread, customary rule that 
 every tribesman is entitled to a lot or share in the 
 acquisition of the clan or tribe imply an antecedent 
 idea of ' community ' of property ? " It has been held 
 that it does, but chiefly, it would appear, because of 
 a custom of periodical re-distribution or exchange of 
 holdings which is observed among several tribes. 
 In the north-west frontier tribal villages,' re-distri- 
 
 ^ These are specially instanced, though of very much later 
 origin and somewhat different form, because the allotment of 
 holdings on the settlement of the tribe is an undoubted fact, of 
 
THE THEORY EXAMINED loS 
 
 bution (vhh) undoubtedly prevailed — in some cases 
 till quite recent times. But when permanent occu- 
 pation and labour bestowed begin to tell, it is 
 gradually given up; and when the holdings were 
 embanked or terraced by special effort or labour 
 and expense the custom did not apply at all. I 
 regard this customary re-distribution as a symbol, 
 not of " common " property, but of equal indi- 
 vidual tight ; it prevents one man from permanently 
 securing a more valuable share than his fellows. 
 Equality in the value of holdings is much thought 
 of in view of individual, separate right ; it would 
 have no meaning if the land was held " in com- 
 mon " and cultivated for the benefit of a common 
 
 which there is clear evidence, as there is also of the periodical 
 exchange and re-allotment of the holdings. But there are also 
 indications that in the Dravidian village the holdings were liable 
 to re-arrangement when fresh waste was taken up and the 
 number of ordinary holdings was to be increased. Traces of 
 re-distributive custom in the Chhatisgarh district (Central Pro- 
 vinces) and South Arcot, in Madras, are sometimes appealed 
 to ; but the latter are quite modern, and were arranged with a 
 view to facilitate the payment of the revenue charge. And in 
 Chhatisgarh the cases may have been connected with some 
 remembrance of an earlier customs but the reported instances 
 of actual exchange date from Mahritha times, and were con- 
 nected with the cultivating arrangements made (or rather, I 
 should say enforced) by the Revenue Manager. I do not, how- 
 ever, lay any stress on this, because, as explained in the text, 
 voluntary exchange or re-distribution certainly was, in some 
 cases, a regular feature of the " tribal allotment " system. See 
 "Ind. Vill. Comm." pp. 256-7-9, and " L. S. B. I.," vol. II., 
 pp. 377-8. 
 
to6 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 fund : then it could not matter whether one holding 
 was more or less productive than another,, or who. 
 cultivated the best land. At any rate there is no 
 necessary connection between such a custom and a. 
 common holding; and before accepting such a con- 
 nection, one would like to ask whether any vestige of 
 a case is known in India in which a clan (advanced 
 enough to acknowledge marriage and the patriarchal 
 family and to cultivate in organised groups) did 
 actually reclaim or cultivate land, in common, before 
 allotting it in severalty among the members ? I 
 know of nothing resembling it. In the absence of 
 any actual case of " common " holding on the part of 
 such a tribe, the theoretical view of the meaning of 
 the tribal custom of redistribution depends very much 
 on some just appreciation of what ideas "of pro- 
 perty " really are ; and this we must at present 
 defer. 
 
 It will be observed that even if this attempted re- 
 ference of the widespread " severalty " village form to 
 a Dravidian or Turanian origin is for any reason 
 regarded as doubtful, there still remains the fact that 
 no other suggestion has been made ; and the objec- 
 tion that Sir H. Maine's theory fails to suit the real 
 history of the large area of " severalty villages " 
 remains as valid as ever, because it cannot be justi- 
 fied except (i) by showing some reasonable indica- 
 tions of a " common ownership" — the same as that in 
 the north — and prevailing over the whole region of 
 
TUB TtiEORY EXAMlNEi) 107 
 
 the severalty villages ; and (2) further, by showing that 
 circumstances existed under the influence of which 
 the loss of some features, and the acquisition of others, 
 can be accounted for. The usual way in which the 
 supposed change is explained is by a general asser- 
 tion of " decay " of the joint form into the severalty. 
 Thus Mr. J. D. Mayne, in his valuable book on 
 " Hindu Law and Usage," ^ repeating the usual 
 suggestion that the severalty villages of the Dakhan 
 were once communal " like the villages of the PanjAb" 
 and that they have decayed into their present state, 
 proposes as the cause, that " the wars and devas- 
 tations of the Muhammedans, Maharattas, and Pin- 
 darries swept away the village institutions, as well as 
 almost every form of ancient proprietary right.'' But 
 as a matter of fact, such wars and devastations were 
 just as common throughout Hindustin and the Panjib 
 where the joint village has been fully preserved ; and 
 the view that "every form of ancient proprietary 
 right" was swept away in the Dakhan cannot be 
 sustained. I have already indicated the general 
 character of the population of the peninsula (p. 47), 
 and remarked on the absence of any considerable 
 immigrations introducing extensive changes. When 
 (from the fourteenth or fifteenth century) Muham- 
 madan rule began, the tendency was rather to preserve 
 
 1 4th Ed., § 201, p. 219. This seems also to be the idea 
 suggested in Sir G. Campbell's paper in the Cobden Club 
 series. 
 
108 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 village and other popular institutions.' The Mah- 
 rithas also did not destroy the village forms; no 
 indication of anything of the kind is presented either 
 by the districts longest under Mahritha rule, or by 
 those merely raided or subjected to an impost for a 
 brief period. The object of that greedy and oppres- 
 sive rule, no doubt, was to make heavy exactions 
 which were levied without any regard to who found 
 the money or how it was obtained. Instead of ad- 
 hering to the old customary " Hind u " method, of 
 Jaking the,sJhaj:e,„oOhs.^min_fr^^ 
 eachthr eshing flo or jp j: tak"^'^" esf^f^fqfed Arcu swmt 
 -fi^tfT'each as the later custom was) the Mahritha 
 g'oUect^f "TnsTgtgci dfr - i f l :o t a ' t~ e5sfr°yevenue from the 
 village ^ for which he held the headman (or a manager) 
 responsible. This very much upset individual rights ; 
 weak cultivators were driven out and better ones 
 called in ; the holdings were perhaps rearranged 
 arbitrarily, and everybody had to contribute what he 
 couM, not merely what he ought. A series of holdings 
 that had long been held in severalty would, under 
 
 ^ In Gujarit it was in the (Moslem) Nawib's territory that 
 the narwhdari and other joint villages are best preserved. In 
 Nimir — the part of the Central Provinces which had known a 
 continuous Moslem rule — the headman's watan land, and other 
 such privileges likely to be the first to disappear, were observed 
 to be most in evidence. 
 
 2 This was usually the amount of the old Muhammadan 
 valuation, made up, on one pretence or another, to a " full " or 
 "perfect" {kamdt) assessment. It was of course not often 
 realised in full ; but there it was as the standard to be aimed ah 
 
ms TEmni examined wg 
 
 such tre^tfijent, lose all traces of union ^.rising from a 
 renjjniscence gf earlier days of tribal allotment. But 
 such a system did not alter the whole village form, 
 nor turn a " joint " village into ^ " severalty." On the 
 contrary, it was very likely to produce (artificially) 
 the joint form by causing the combination of the richer 
 families (in some villages) as a joint body assuming 
 ownership of the whole, or by establishing a revenue 
 manager or tax farmer and his family as proprietor 
 in others,^ Privileges, like the free-landholding of 
 the headman, tended to disappear ; the hereditary 
 rights attached to village offices were actually seized 
 and held by Mahr^tha chiefs and jdgtrddrs for 
 their own profit j but the form of village underwent 
 no change. 
 
 The fact is that we should never have heard of this 
 " decay '' theory were it not for the circumstance that 
 we had certain vestiges^easily misunderstood — of 
 special rights in land in parts of the west and south. 
 The holders of certain village lands in those places 
 are (or once were) distinguished as mirdsddr. It was 
 imagined that these had been connected with a system 
 of collective ownership, already believed to be universal ; 
 so that they must represent the once general form, and 
 the ordinary severalty village was the result of 
 their decay. Why a survival should have occurred 
 
 1 This latter, however, the Mahrithas rarely allowed; the 
 moment a village manager, farmer, or official was known to be 
 securing a position, they came down upon him at once. 
 
no INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 only here and there, and completely failed or become 
 obliterated elsewhere, was never explained, nor indeed 
 could be. 
 
 As it would interrupt the exposition of the main 
 objections to the theory to give here the explanation 
 of the occasional appearances of villages held by joint 
 bodies in the south, among the severalty villages, 
 I have relegated a short summary of local facts to 
 Appendix I. 
 
 I will conclude by resuming the position in a few 
 words. The severalty village, uniformly found 
 over a very large part of India, is not the result of 
 any decay of a jointly owned village, or a village 
 held and governed as the northern villages are. It is 
 the natural — and comparatively little changed — result 
 of an ancient settlement of the country under tribes 
 of "which the village groups formed small sections 
 each under its leaders. When once the village site 
 was determined on (perhaps existing sites [more or 
 less cleared] were obtained by conquest) the chief, 
 aided by the principal families, made an allotment of 
 lands or holdings which were separately enjoyed, and 
 which were not held " in common " in any real sense, 
 though the villagers would obey their chief, unite for 
 defence, and submit to any custom of periodic 
 exchange of holdings in order to secure equal 
 advantages to all. Then, in the long course of ages, 
 the holdings became varied by the introduction of 
 other families : the older tribal feeling of union died 
 
THE THEORY EXAMINED in 
 
 away, the exchange ceased to be practised, and the 
 several holdings became not only separately held, but 
 without any connecting link of tribal organisation ; 
 but the village form remained, the influential head- 
 man, and his watan land, in particular. Even if it is 
 true that rudimentary groups of cultivation, under- 
 taken by 'still more primitive groups of people on a 
 matriarchal plan, did in some districts precede the 
 more organic village of the kind described, that does 
 not in any way justify the theory under discussion, 
 which supposes a type of village held in common, and 
 bearing the six features indicated — entirely unlike 
 the suggested matriarchal groups within "CciQ parhA of 
 the primitive Kolarian. 
 
 (^) The Theory with Reference to the Joint 
 Villages of Northern India 
 
 It is a curious feature of most writings on the 
 subject of Indian villages, that they treat these 
 interesting groups as if they were things in the air, 
 and not existing institutions which can be enumer- 
 ated and classified in one way or another. As 
 regards Upper India more especially, where the 
 "joint" type of village is prevalent, it can be 
 definitely ascertained, in a large proportion of cases, 
 who the village "communities" are, and how they 
 came there (pp. 72-3). Sir H. Maine appears to have 
 been satisfied with the general idea that the Indian 
 
113 TNDUM VILLAGE QOMMUNITIES 
 
 population was " Aryan," and that all villages might 
 be assuiped to be Aryan, and therefore archaic and of 
 one type. Buf we know that this is not the case ; 
 we know alsg that there are various forms of joint 
 village in Northern India, all traceable to known 
 races and (at least, approximately) to known periods 
 of history, A certain number of villages, indeed, 
 elude the attempt to determine their original plan of 
 shariijg^ but the greater part can be accounted for, 
 They are not anywhere distinctively Aryan (pp. 53, 72), 
 but they were formed by tribes and families who had 
 a sense of conquest and superiority, and a power of 
 cohesion — which time has not yet quite destroyed — 
 such as we may well suppose the Aryan tribes t9 
 have possessed. 
 
 We have noticed, as a fact, that the joint villages 
 of the north, however classified for convenience of 
 study, are essentially formed on one of two prin- 
 ciples. Their "jointness" is due (i) either to the 
 fact that the village was originally dominated or 
 founded by some one (or more than one) superior 
 or " overlord," and that the joint community is the 
 expanded family following the custom of joint 
 inheritance ; or (2) it is due to the cohesiveness of 
 groups who have been formed by clans or tribes 
 settling and allotting the village land, on their own 
 system, among themselves. Very often the apparent 
 tribe is simply the expansion of one or more families 
 which have gradually multiplied from a central or 
 
THE THEOB Y EXAMINED 1 1 3 
 
 parent village, and formed numerous villages all in 
 one contiguous group — often of great extent, and all 
 of common descent — each local subdivision being 
 naturally the closer kindred of the particular members 
 who started it. Nearly allied to this class of (tribal) 
 villages are those which are really voluntarily associ- 
 ated bodies who have allotted the land by consent, 
 according to the number of persons in each house- 
 hold, or according to the number of cattle possessed, 
 or the amount of money and labour contributed to 
 sinking irrigation wells. 
 
 The theory we are examining correctly appreciates 
 the union which these variously originating villages 
 present, their ability to accept a joint responsibility 
 for revenue and taxes, and their preservation of 
 equality, by insisting on government by a committee 
 of heads of families, not by an oligarchy of chiefs or 
 by a single "headman " ; but it has interpreted those 
 features as meaning that the land was owned " in 
 common " or " collectively " by the several families or 
 houses in the village, and curiously insists that when 
 the blood relationship of the village landholders is 
 quite forgotten, they still hold together by means of 
 cultivation in common. This " common " ownership is 
 assumed to be an Aryan feature. As regards the 
 latter point, it will probably be no longer defended 
 by anyone. There is no evidence that the early 
 Aryan tribes had any idea of the common ownership 
 of land except that they possessed (as seems probable) 
 
 H 
 
114 iH^DIAN TILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 the custom of the joint family and the joint 
 inheritance of the members in succession to the head. 
 The connection of the idea of family joint owner- 
 ship with common ownership in general will be con- 
 sidered later on. And whether or not the Aryans 
 had any general institution of " common " property, 
 the fact remains that the villages now in the joint 
 form have little if any connection with the early 
 Aryans at all (p. 57). 
 
 Still, whatever the nationality, the villages certainly 
 exhibit features of union; and with reference to point 
 2. (p. 99) it is proper at once to inquire how far th^ 
 phenomena of this union warrant any assertion of 
 " collective ownership " as its original form or source/ 
 
 It does not seem to me that the theory has ever 
 been supported by any explicit statement as to what 
 is meant by " holding in common " ; and that some- 
 times /(^zi^^-holding, which appears to be quite distinct, 
 is confused with it. 
 
 I can only think of a really " common " holding, 
 when each person concerned has no idea at all of any 
 ownership^divided or undivided — residing in him- 
 self, but only in the group ; when no one has any 
 share that he calls his own, but all co-operate 
 in tilling the fields, to supply the whole group, or to 
 furnish a common granary or a common fund, on 
 which each family draws, merely according to its 
 wants, which may be greater or less according to 
 numbers. It is perhaps hardly necessary to observe 
 
1*BE THEORY EXAMINED iij 
 
 that no vestige of such a mode of enjoyment of land 
 can be observed or traced in any North Indian 
 village ; further, that no organised village exists, or 
 ever has existed — as far as any evidence goes — in 
 which a definite lot or share in the village lands for 
 each member of the community has not always been 
 known.' In some cases where the co-owners are the 
 heirs of one owner or founder, the shares have not 
 been divided out on the ground, and the holding 
 continues joint (p. 79). I am convinced that it is 
 partly the mistaking of "joint" holding of co-sharers 
 for a "communal" idea of property, and partly the 
 mistranslation of one of the office-terms,^ that has led 
 to the idea of any of these villages being held " in 
 common." It is worth while to explain this mistake. 
 In the 5th Section (p. 62) we saw that a large class 
 of villages exists in which one man (or perhaps two 
 or three brothers) had obtained the proprietorship 
 over the village. Villages of this class were called 
 
 ^ I need hardly allude to the mention of "some parts" of 
 (Upper) India (but neither named nor localised), in one of the 
 Fragments of Nearchos, of which he reports that the people cul- 
 tivated by means of their families in common (/cara irvyyhaMv 
 Koiv^), and after distributing the grain necessary to satisfy the 
 wants of the several households, destroyed the rest ! Even this 
 does not describe common ownership, but joint family life. 
 See Lassen Indische Altertumskunde, ii., p. 727, (2nd Edit. ), and 
 F. de Coulanges " Origin of Property," Mrs. Ashley's Transla- 
 tion, p. 113 (Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1891). 
 
 ^ This is evident in Mr. J. D. Mayne's " Hindu Law and 
 Usage," p. 200, when he alludes to the " communal zamtnddri." 
 
ii6 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMVNITIES 
 
 zamtnddri, which means "landlord" (village). But 
 such owners invariably followed the law or custom of 
 joint inheritance, so that in the process of time it was 
 a matter of course that (not any single heir but) a 
 growing body of co-sharing heirs should take the 
 place of the founder. If then these (constituting the 
 "community") had not happened to divide the 
 inheritance, they formed a joint landlord body ; but 
 the tenure was exactly the same as in the first stage, 
 except for the number ; and the office term for it was 
 zamtnddri mushtarka, or the landlord village where 
 the superior interest is held by an undivided co- 
 parcenary body. The words have nothing whatever 
 to do with "communal" ownership. When such joint 
 heirs partitioned their estate, the shares were neces- 
 sarily according to the ancestral scale which follows 
 from the place in the table of descent (see Dia- 
 gram, p. jy'). Exactly the same development 
 occurred in all that class of villages — some earlier, 
 some later, in point of time — in which there is a single 
 dominant family from which the existing proprietary 
 body originated. The real truth seems to be that 
 the idea of " communal " holding — whatever may be 
 meant by it — has been practically derived from this 
 one class of "joint" village (which has been alluded to 
 as "manorial"), ignoring the tribal and associate forms 
 altogether, The mere consideration of these facts 
 seems enough to show that there is nothing reallyin the 
 nature of a holding "in common " or " collectively." 
 
THE THEORY EXAMINED 117 
 
 But if such common holding cannot be asserted 
 even in the case of a joint family however expanded, 
 what shall we say of that other large group of " joint" 
 villages (still referring only to the cases of known 
 origin) in which there is no appearance of the 
 manorial growth, but the joint group is of the one or 
 other of the various origins stated at pp. 85-95, and 
 where (it will be recollected) shares or lots have been 
 arranged, declared, and possessed, from the beginning 
 of the village, and where the methods of allotment 
 are different from those in the " manorial " family 
 village, and are sometimes curious and specific, some- 
 times mere holdings adapted to the wants of each 
 sharer. Reference of these diverse forms to a single 
 original type is simply out of the question ; it is in- 
 consistent with facts. In some of these forms, it is 
 clear, no trace of common ownership can be discovered, 
 and we must resort to the most unwarrantable 
 assumptions to make out that such a thing ever 
 existed. It is true that in this division we have 
 included the important class {e.g., the tribal villages on 
 the north-west frontier and elsewhere, p. 87) in which 
 there has been a tribal allotment of lands among the 
 members of a settling and immigrant clan. And 
 here the principle is just the same as that which I 
 have argued to be the basis of the original severalty 
 village among the Dravidian population of peninsular 
 India. Only that in these northern parts circum- 
 stances and the character of the people haye pre- 
 
ii8 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 served a greater unity of race and the ability to unite 
 in sustaining a common responsibility. Indeed this 
 class of village only needs to be examined in detail, 
 and it will at once be apparent that there is nothing 
 in the nature of cultivation in common, although a 
 part of the estate, being waste and kept for grazing, 
 may be held as the common property because (until 
 it is wanted for cultivation) its utility would be 
 diminished by partition. Nor can we assume, in the 
 absence of any evidence, that any holding "in 
 common" preceded such allotment for cultivation. 
 And if here also, a custom of re- distribution or 
 periodical exchange of holdings is observed, or is 
 believed to have existed at some former time, the 
 value of this as an indication of " common ownership" 
 has already been discussed (p. 104). The custom 
 (a) of joint inheritance and (Ji) of restricting the 
 ownership of land to the agnatic group, or at least 
 within the tribe, are not indications of " common 
 ownership." 
 
 These remarks incidentally dispose of the view 
 (point 4, p. 100) that the existence of " shares " or 
 " lots '' for cultivation is due to some kind of later 
 modification — some stage supervening on a primitive 
 holding in common. Shares were always known; 
 the very principle of the joint family (where that was 
 the basis) implies it. Shares (of another kind) were 
 also the original and necessary feature of that class 
 of village which was last alluded to. 
 
THE THEORY EXAMINED 119 
 
 But there is one later development of the theory 
 regarding shares (for which Sir H. S. Maine is in no 
 way responsible) which is altogether illusory. It is 
 that the (imagined) common holding has been 
 changed by a serial " evolution " — first, a " common " 
 holding, then "regular" {i.e., ancestral) shares, and 
 then "customary" shares, custom having modified 
 the original fractional (ancestral) shares scheme. 
 This, in most cases, is distinctly and historically 
 inconsistent with fact. The (real) bhaidchdrd or 
 "customary" sharing (p. 88) as well as the modes 
 of allotment other than the " ancestral " share-system, 
 are independent schemes evidently due to a special 
 feeling of equality and membership right among the 
 clan or other group. Nothing can be said in favour 
 of the view that they are decayed forms of the 
 "ancestral" share.'- 
 
 ^ Indeed, Mr. J. D. Mayne would never have broached the 
 idea but for the unfortunate misuse of the term bhaiacharA, in 
 the official returns, to include (among others) villages where the 
 holdings are now merely de facto, but are known or believed to 
 have become so by the loss (under adverse circumstances) of the 
 correct ancestral shares. Even here, though we have a case of 
 decay, it does not mark an " evolution " of any kind : it is merely 
 the effect of time and accident in altering the extent of some of 
 the shares in particular cases. Such cases are undoubtedly 
 common. Indeed, it is rather the exception to find the 
 " ancestral " shares preserved in absolute correctness. But this 
 very natural " wear and tear " does not alter the principle ; and 
 it is a great mistake to mix up these cases with another class 
 where the " customary " share is on a perfectly definite principle 
 of its own, and indicates a different mode of growth, 
 
I20 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 But I must hasten to notice the further contention' 
 (point 2, p. 99), which would compel us to infer that 
 "common holding" must once have existed, even 
 where allotment has long taken place, because the 
 separate holdings are, it is supposed, still cultivated 
 in common or in a certain way, under control of the 
 elders. It must be observed, shortly, that the exist- 
 ence of any such control is a pure imagination. In 
 the (rare) cases where there has been no permanent 
 allotment, and the cultivation is arranged for year 
 by year, there will, of course, be a preliminary agree- 
 ment as to what fields each is to work, and how the 
 payment of burdens is to be made : that can hardly 
 be what is meant. But in all cases where partition 
 has taken place, or where separate lots have always 
 been held, everyone cultivates exactly as he pleases, 
 subject only to a settlement of his proportionate pay- 
 ment of the revenue, etc., if that is not already fixed. 
 As to " minute " or " multifarious " rules, intended " to 
 reconcile the holding of separate fields with the idea 
 of common cultivation," I should be completely at a 
 loss to imagine how the idea of such a thing origin- 
 ated, except that Sir H. S. Maine gives us a clue by 
 showing that he derived it from the cases he had 
 heard of, of irrigated villages where the whole of the 
 holdings, sometimes comprising a number of scat- 
 tered plots, had to be watered from a single source. 
 Sometimes this is a canal cut, or locally a stream, 
 or a torrent only occasionally flowing for limited 
 
THE THEORY EXAMINED 121 
 
 periods. Sometimes a number of plots are watered 
 from one well. In such cases rules, or schemes of 
 days and hours, and turns at the well, or the order 
 of damming up the stream or watercourse, are 
 arranged (both for owners and tenants), and they 
 may appear complicated. These, no doubt, are not 
 matters of mere give-and-take — of independent con- 
 tract,' because they all proceed on a well-known 
 existing scheme of shares and separate rights ; and 
 such arrangements are obviously necessary when the 
 source is one and the claimants many.^ That the 
 scheme of distribution is often arranged without 
 difficulty^ indicates a good deal of tribal or of family 
 union, or village solidarity, as the case may be ; but 
 how it indicates an idea of '' common cultivation " 
 I fail to perceive. In other respects, cultivation of 
 separate holdings is entirely free ; old-established 
 agricultural rules and modes are usually followed, 
 
 ^ " V. C," p. 109. The author, it will be remembered, re- 
 garded shares as a sort of later invention, so that he could not 
 account for the ready settlement of all questions as to use of 
 i rrigation water. Certainly it was not arranged as a mere busi- 
 ness contract, because it all depends on the existing and well- 
 known shares ; but ignoring this fact, the author thought it 
 must depend on some idea of " common cultivation." 
 
 2 In some of the north-west frontier districts it sometimes 
 happens that the land is of no value without water ; in that case 
 the rights of the co-sharer are expressed in terms of water-shares, 
 the land is not regarded at all. Anyone can take a plot of land, 
 but it is of no use unless he has a water-share. 
 
 * But not always ; bitter enmities and fierce quarrels some- 
 times arise out of the matter. 
 
122 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 but no one ever heard of a separate landholder being 
 controlled or directed in his cultivation by the 
 panchayat or by anyone else. 
 
 Under this head I ought, perhaps, to mention that 
 in most villages where the sharers are of the same 
 clan or are kinsmen, a custom oi pre-emption prevails. 
 This has nothing to do with cultivating in common, 
 but is a device to prevent strangers getting into the 
 village as purchasers of land, wherever there is a 
 blood-relation or a co-sharing connection willing to 
 take the land offered for sale at a fair value. It is 
 merely the expression of that desire to preserve the 
 union of a family, or of clansmen, which is naturally 
 expected in any village which has a really joint 
 character. 
 
 It will perhaps be asked : If there is no common 
 cultivation, what is it that holds the village together ? 
 I reply that it is the fact of common tribe and often 
 of common family, with the customs that the 
 remembrance of the fact preserves ; reinforced, too, 
 by recollection of past days when union preserved 
 the villages, alike in their internecine feuds and 
 against the armies that traversed the northern plains, 
 and against the revenue-farmers. Indeed, I think 
 Sir H. S. Maine is inclined very much to underrate 
 the reality of the common descent of village bodies, 
 or at least a very practical belief in it, in a large class 
 of cases.^ No doubt artificial additions to the families 
 ^ See point 5, at p. loi, and quotations there g^iven. 
 
THE THEORY EXAMINED 123 
 
 may be made by adoption, or in some cases by giving 
 the family Brahman a share, or by calling in relations 
 on the female side to help, and giving them shares ; 
 and these occurrences may sometimes lead to a denial 
 of this or that particular relationship as shown in the 
 genealogical tree ; but that does not make the family 
 groups generally artificial, and in many cases the 
 "genealogical tree" is one of the most instructive 
 records in the volume of Settlement papers, and 
 explains the shares of the village body most com- 
 pletely. In these cases actual family feeling does 
 come in a good deal ; and in others there is a wider 
 sense of clan union, which is something of the same 
 kind. It is really only in a limited class of cases 
 that we can say " consanguinity " has nothing to do 
 with it.' 
 
 And this naturally leads to the last point in the 
 theory (No. 6, p. lOl) — the structure of the com- 
 munity itself. It is, of course, true that in one sense 
 we may speak of the "community" as including 
 everyone permanently resident in, or serving the 
 village ; and thus there are varieties of caste and 
 rank — artisans, village officers, tenants, and pro- 
 prietors. If wronged, the tenants and village helpers 
 
 '^ See " Ind. Vill. Comtn.," p. 274, for an example where 
 separate families are aggregated, but the wider /rz5<a;/ feeling still 
 unites them ; or again, in the North Panj4b, where wholly 
 separate groups combined, each having a separate tarf or 
 quarter in the village {id. p. 339). Here the bond is voluntary 
 union for defence, 
 
124 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 would find their cause locally espoused, and protec- 
 tion and countenance readily afforded. But when it 
 comes to including all classes in the " brotherhood,' 
 that IS quite contrary to the facts. Indeed, the idea 
 of a proud RS,jput kindred or group of, say 80 or 100 
 co-sharing members, with 15 or 20 elders or heads 
 of houses, regarding their cultivating tenants and the 
 village watchmen, not to mention the washerman and 
 the sweeper, as constituting part of the " brother- 
 hood," is something quite grotesque. This " brother- 
 hood " does not constitute any graded " hierarchy '' 
 in any case whatever, nor has it any social strata in 
 parallel layers, representing the successive " amalga- 
 mation " of groups at remote periods. The " brother- 
 hood " consists of just as many families as have 
 actual shares in the land — as are existing co-proprie- 
 tors, and no more (see pp. 60 noie^ 75). 
 
 The mistake, however, was a not unnatural one, 
 and may have arisen partly from a reminiscence of a 
 feature in these villages which is of real interest. I 
 have mentioned the possibility of persons outside the 
 agnatic group being admitted to a share. Sometimes, 
 too, at a not very remote period, under pressure of 
 some extravagant demand for revenue from a 
 local governor, a number of persons will have been 
 invited on to the land to help cultivation, with the 
 promise of never being asked to pay more than the 
 proprietors themselves paid ; but, even so, I doubt 
 whether these privileged helpers would be considered 
 
THE THEORY EXAMINED 125 
 
 as actually a part of the " brotherhood." It is possible 
 also that after a long course of harsh exaction — such 
 as the Sikh rule produced in the Panjib — difference 
 of origin may have been forgotten. In those times, 
 it is well-known, the officials made no distinction 
 between proprietor and tenant — they took from every 
 one on the land, the utmost farthing that could be 
 got. Separate grades of right might then become 
 confused; and ultimately, when the village was 
 settled under happier auspices, the " brotherhood," or 
 the group of co-sharers actually in possession of 
 holdings, might be allowed to include some families of 
 different descent. But that is not always, or even 
 frequently, the case. So generally is the distinction 
 between proprietary and non-proprietary holders ob- 
 served, that very often cases have occurred where a 
 real proprietor has left the village in debt — which 
 debt his fellows have had to make good — and he has 
 sought re-entry after many years. In that case, 
 unless he pays up the money, he will very likely be 
 re-admitted only to the holding of his own former 
 fields, but without a voice in the management or any 
 share in profits — he remains outside the "brother- 
 hood." 
 
 I must not omit to add a word about the tenants 
 in such villages, for it is the existence of degrees of 
 right and privilege of this class that has led, princi- 
 pally, to the idea of parallel layers or strata in the 
 social constitution of communities. But let it be said 
 
126 INDIAir VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 at once that tenants, even those paying no rent (only 
 the revenue share), are only tenants — not part of the 
 " brotherhood." It may be, and often is, the case — 
 for instance, in the Rajput communities of the N.W. 
 Provinces — that the tenants are descendants of older 
 cultivating settlers who once had independent rights, 
 over whom the landlord family established its superi- 
 ority. In other cases the "tenants" are a body of 
 lower caste (or poorer high caste) cultivators and 
 dependents, established by the founder or proprietary- 
 family in the virgin waste, where there was no already 
 existing body of cultivators. And then there may 
 not only be these two groups of interest, but a third 
 or more. For suppose a family settled in a village 
 as " overlords " over an earlier group, and soon fully 
 recognised as landlords. After a longer or shorter 
 term of prosperity, this body has become overborne 
 by some new conquest or usurpation ; then the new- 
 comers will crystallise into the actual "proprietary 
 brotherhood," and the others will sink down into the 
 tenant rank, only not so completely as those first- 
 mentioned, and will perhaps retain rights of occu- 
 pancy or other privilege. ^ But only the "actual 
 proprietors " of the time constitute the " brotherhood." 
 In all_ these matters the theory misrepresents the 
 actual joint village almost as seriously as it fails to 
 
 1 It was the recurrence of this sort of growth and overgrowth 
 of rights— the super-imposition of one interest over another — 
 that led to the complications of tenant-right and the variety of 
 claims that had to be settled by the Legislature. 
 
THE THEORY EXAMINED 127 
 
 correspond with the facts regarding the severalty 
 type. I fear there is no disguising the truth that the 
 theory is based on a radically defective view of the 
 real principles which underlie the formation of either 
 kind of village. 
 
VII 
 
 IDEAS OF "PROPERTY" OR "OWNERSHIP" 
 
 There are a few general observations to be made 
 regarding the development of ideas of property in 
 land ; and how far " common " or " collective " owner- 
 ship can be regarded as a natural thing ; and what is 
 the effect of the "joint family" custom among agri- 
 cultural tribes. There are also some reflections which 
 occur as to the practical uses of the " village " form of 
 landholding and its social and economic aspects. 
 
 From one point of view the idea of property " in 
 common '' is not a primitive or simple one. It may 
 be taken to imply a prior recognition of what 
 " property " or " ownership " is ; and that, again, in- 
 volves such an analysis as the Roman lawyers made 
 when they considered the intentions and powers 
 existing in relation to land or other objects, which 
 distinguished an " owner " from a person who might 
 have certain rights, and yet not be the owner. The 
 right to use, the right to destroy, the right to alienate, 
 the right to enjoy the produce, the right to defend 
 the property against aggression, these combined 
 
 and permanent rights may originate in various ways. 
 
 128 
 
"PROPERTY" OR "OWNERSHIP" 129 
 
 Until some such conception is realised (and that is 
 not likely in a very primitive stage), and there is a law 
 and a system of public justice to recognise and 
 enforce it, '' ownership," it may be urged, can hardly 
 be said to exist at all. It is when " ownership " is 
 regularly understood, that there arises the further 
 conception that the exercise of such a right may 
 reside in one person or in a body of co-sharers — 
 whether divided in fact or not — or it may reside in a 
 " common " holding, in a body with no shares, but all 
 receiving from the common fund such amount as is 
 needed for their support, without a thought that this 
 man (from his place in the family or otherwise) has a 
 right to one-third or one-twentieth, or any other cer- 
 tain proportion. 
 
 On the other hand, it may be urged that, as a 
 matter of fact, long before any such legal conception 
 is elaborated, the earliest of mankind easily acquire 
 an undefined but operative sense of ownership, which 
 they manifest by having a natural consciousness of a 
 sufficient justification, when they expel or put to 
 death enemies who should attempt to graze cattle, to 
 dig wells, to cut trees, or to cultivate the soil, within 
 the understood limits of their settlement. This un- 
 defined idea of ownership seems to arise, naturally, 
 from some sense of labour undergone, or skill or 
 valour exercised, in the acquisition. At a time when 
 almost boundless forest covers the land, no one is 
 likely to regard a tree as more the subject of owner- 
 
I30 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 ship than the air or the water of a great river. But 
 let one man fell a tree, and prepare from the trunk a 
 fanoe, a rudely ornamented cup or platter, or a club, 
 and he naturally conceives himself entitled to the 
 product of his workmanship in a way that no one 
 else is. And it is the same with a plot of land. A 
 man and his family laboriously clear it, dig up the 
 stumps, level it, and make it into a maize field ; they 
 are felt to have (in some sense) a special right to it, 
 though no one could yet define the elements of the 
 conception of such ownership. And it depends on 
 how the labour is expended, whether it is by an in- 
 dividual or a group, that the right is felt to reside in 
 the individual or the group. It is well-known that in 
 the only place where the " Laws of Manu " allude to 
 a right in land, the title is an individual one, and is 
 attributed to the natural source — still so universally 
 acknowledged throughout India — that a man was the 
 first to remove the stumps and prepare the land for 
 the plough. At the same time we see, from very 
 early times, how the grain produce of every allotment 
 is not all taken by the owner of the land, but part of 
 it is by custom assigned to this or that recipient. It 
 is not, observe, that the land allotment itself is not 
 completely separated ; but when the crop is reaped, 
 the owner (as we may call him) at once recognised 
 that out of his grain heap at the threshing floor, not 
 only the great chief or Rija, and his own immediate 
 headman, but a variety of other villagers, have cus- 
 
" PROPERTY " OR " WNERSHIP " 131 
 
 tomary rights to certain shares — if it is only sometimes 
 
 a few double handfuls or other small measure. All 
 
 this seems to spring from thfe sense of co-operation 
 
 (however indirect) in the work of settlement that 
 
 made the holding possible. ^ It seems to me quite 
 
 clear that a sense of individual " property " in land 
 
 may arise coincidently with a sense of a certain right 
 
 in others to have a share of the produce (on the 
 
 ground of co-operation), and that the two are not felt 
 
 to conflict. So far, the natural sentiment is one 
 
 rather of individual right, tempered by the obligation 
 
 to give part of the produce to helpers and rulers, or 
 
 for the needs of pious charity or worship. 
 
 But settlements of agriculturists, in early times 
 
 especially, do not usually begin with one man or one 
 
 family clearing a patch in an unoccupied country. A 
 
 clan group, or perhaps a still larger body, has marched 
 
 to the place and has taken possession, either because 
 
 the land was uncleared or unoccupied, or because an 
 
 enemy has been expelled or enslaved. Then the 
 
 feeling is that every tribesman who has taken part in 
 
 the adventure must have his equal share. And it is 
 
 an observed fact (which will demand separate notice) 
 
 that often when a " close kindred " or existing family 
 
 gets a lot, there is a further internal sense of owner- 
 
 1 This subject has been very well dealt with in Mr. W. C. 
 Benett's " Settlement Report of Gonda " (Oudh), p. 44, sec. 74. 
 See my " Ind. Vill. Comm.," p. 16. It will be observed that 
 Mr. Benett is speaking of the customary grain shares in a village 
 which is purely and completely in severalty. 
 
132 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 ship by the whole family, which is in abeyance as 
 long as the head lives, but which takes effect (again 
 in equal division) as soon as the head dies. " Shares " 
 in a village area, as I have already said, are no after- 
 thought ; they invariably arise coevally with the ap- 
 propriation of the site. In one class of cases they 
 arise out of the equal allotment of the territory among 
 the tribesmen, the clan, and the smaller group. No 
 such thing as common holding can be traced for a 
 time previous to such allotment ; it is made as soon 
 as possible, or goes on continuously as the numbers 
 grow. In another class of cases shares arise from 
 the fact that a particular person or family of dis- 
 tinction has dominated the village, and the " family " 
 together is regarded as a unit which is known to con- 
 sist of sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons,' each of 
 whose proportional right depends on his birth and 
 place in the table of descent. It is really this latter 
 class alone that furnished our theorists with their idea 
 of the Indian village in general. 
 
 It becomes necessary, then, to inquire a little into 
 this matter of the " joint family," and how the con- 
 ception arises that the undefined sort of "owner- 
 ship," of which I have spoken, attaches (at least 
 
 1 " Ind. Vill. Comm.," p. 233 ff. And this class of cases 
 appears always in connection with the rise and progress of 
 monarchical ideas, and of the baronies and feudal jurisdictions 
 which accompany it. Individual grantees, or mere usurpers, gain 
 in the village- a petty " overlordship," as greater chiefs gain it 
 over a wider territory. 
 
THE JOINT FAMILY 133 
 
 in some tribes and regions) to the family as a 
 whole. 
 
 The custom that a body of agnates are co-heirs, 
 that the father is head while he lives, but that his 
 sons have inchoate rights with him from the moment 
 of their birth, is one that is not distinctively Aryan. 
 It is prominent in all the later agricultural tribes of 
 the north — Jat, Gujar, Rajput, etc. It is especially 
 held to where the family has pretensions to rank and 
 dignity; but even should it be modified in some 
 respects in the more " democratic " clans or castes, 
 still it affects the inheritance in the separated lots 
 just as much as it may effect the constitution of a 
 property embracing the whole village. The same 
 custom is observed by the Muhammadan tribes — 
 many of whom it is true are converts ; but it is also 
 followed by Path^ns and others, who were always 
 Moslem. The fact is that the strict Muhammadan 
 law of inheritance, with its complicated exclusions 
 of one branch in the presence of another, and so forth, 
 must have arisen among a people whose property 
 was chiefly in camels and merchandise, and perhaps 
 houses ; it is entirely unsuited to dealing with ances- 
 tral land. So much is certain that the joint family 
 custom can exist in various forms, and need not 
 exist at all. 
 
 Possibly the Roman idea of the father as absolute 
 owner, and of his children as having no rights at all, 
 until they are emancipated or pass out of his hands 
 
134 INDIAir VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 by marriage, is a later and quite special development. 
 It never appeared, as far as we know, in India. 
 
 As known to our Hindu law books, and to the 
 decisions of the Privy Council, the joint family is a 
 much more elaborated and more religious institution 
 than as it exists among the agricultural communities. 
 In the same way the law of adoption, as known to 
 the Hindu commentators, is rather widely different 
 to the custom prevailing among agrarian tribes. 
 The whole custom is directed to preserving land in 
 the male agnate line ; or, at least (if that fails), in the 
 wider kindred. Hence alienation is restricted ; and 
 so is adoption, which practically might act as a kind 
 of alienation out of the line of customary heirs. 
 
 One of the interesting questions concerning the 
 joint family is whether the earlier Dravidian tribes in 
 India possessed it? It does not seem necessarily 
 to belong to a state of life in which the patrz'drcAal 
 regime is established, though the rule as found in 
 Hindu law, or in any of the Northern agricultural 
 tribes, is certainly on a patriarchal basis. There is 
 reason to believe that the Kolarian tribes were once 
 ■matriarchal, and yet the little groups of descendants 
 from a common mother might form a house com- 
 munion, which is a kind of enlarged joint family. 
 That any of the real Turanians or Dravidians of 
 Central and Southern India were at one time matri- 
 archal, does not seem to me at all ascertained. And 
 the later, organised, tribes to whom I have attributed 
 
THE JOINT FAMILY 135 
 
 the origin of the "severalty" village, were certainly not 
 so. If, as seems probable, they came from countries 
 not far removed from the original home of the Aryan 
 tribes, and some of them were more or less contem- 
 poraneous with the Yadava and other Aryans in 
 their invasion of India, it certainly seems likely that 
 they had a patriarchal organisation, as the Aryans 
 (of the Veda) certainly had. If the later dominant 
 Turanian tribes had exhibited a matriarchal plan of 
 relationship, it seems unlikely that it would escape 
 all mention in early literature. More, of course, can- 
 not be said.i^ Whatever definitely Dravidian custom 
 we have traces of is on a patriarchal basis. Among 
 the Kandhs, for example, the father holds the 
 family lot in complete control during his life ; and his 
 sons, even when adult, live and work with him, form- 
 ing a kind of house communion ; only after his death 
 they will share the property equally. It is expressly 
 stated that " the sons have no property during their 
 
 1 1 am aware that a caste in Milabir — the ruhng (or mihtary) 
 race called Niyar, of unknown origin, but possibly later Dravi- 
 dian — have the custom of inheritance in the female line ; the heirs 
 are the sister's sons, and the joint family may consist of any 
 number of descendants from a common mother. But this was 
 a very special and alien dominant caste ; its joint relationship 
 has always been connected with maintenance of dignity ; the 
 rules of the whole institution are essentially unlike those of the 
 Hindu law. It may well be doubted whether the custom is 
 really ancient and not taken on in connection with the peculiar 
 relations of the tribe to the Namburi Brahmans. Curiously 
 enough, we know it to have been (artificially) adopted by the 
 local " Moplah " of Arabian origin. 
 
136 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 father's lifetime."' Nor is any restriction mentioned 
 as to the father's alienating land. The Chota- 
 Nagpore village organisation too (p. 66) is certainly 
 patriarchal. 
 
 Among the Jat, Rajput, and other tribes settled in 
 the Panjib, the custom is also certainly patri- 
 archal ; but here the father cannot alienate ancestral 
 land (except under pressure of necessity) without the 
 consent of the family ; and in general his power of 
 defeating the expectation of collaterals (where he has 
 no son) by making an adoption, is variously restricted. 
 Evidently the custom of a joint family is closely 
 connected with the future joint inheritance. If a 
 man acquires a village by grant or purchase, and 
 proceeds, with the aid of his sons and servants, to im- 
 prove the waste, to acquire first this and then that 
 holding, and so become owner of the whole, it may 
 be thought that he is naturally entitled to dispose of 
 the whole as " acquired " by himself alone ; but the 
 sons, having helped in the establishment of the pro- 
 perty, will probably regard themselves as having a 
 title to share in it, by virtue of participation in the 
 work of " founding " ; and so, in the first degree, there 
 is not much risk of the estate being lost before it 
 comes to be inherited by anyone. And when once 
 the land has descended to heirs, the next and follow- 
 ing series will regard it as " ancestral." It is note- 
 
 1 " Ind. Vill. Comm.," pp. 172, 173 ; and see the Report 
 quoted in Hunter's "Orissa" 11., p. 72. 
 
THE JOINT FAMILY 137 
 
 worthy that the superior (dominating) families and 
 the conquering tribes always speak of their ownership 
 right (whether in the family or in the clan at large) 
 as " the inheritance " {wirdsat, mirasi, etc.). In these 
 cases the feeling that actuates a whole clan seems, in 
 part, at least, to be the same as that which appears in 
 the microcosm of a single close-kindred. They are 
 (ideally) joint-heirs of the common ancestor, and as 
 all represent him, all take their share. And this is 
 combined with the feeling that all have expended 
 labour, skill, or money, and have perhaps undergone 
 personal risk, and so are still further entitled, on this 
 ground, to an equal share. Whether this is an equal 
 share per capita at the moment of dividing the 
 acquisition, or whether it is the share that follows 
 from the grade in the table of descent, depends on the 
 nature and origin of the family, or the clan group, 
 whether they have a monarchical, " feudal," system 
 or not. 
 
 We cannot tell whence the joint family and 
 joint inheritance rules long observed in India were 
 originally derived. We know of no time when the 
 custom can be affirmed to have been non-existent 
 among the tribes who formed the villages of Northern 
 India. 
 
 As regards the general progress of ideas of owner- 
 ship in India, we may resume the whole subject by 
 saying that it is quite possible — and indeed almost 
 certain — that we have first to allow for a nomadic 
 
138 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 stage, which gradually passes into an elementary form 
 of village settlements, or rather of little groups of 
 hamlets, each having a patch of cultivation only for 
 its own common purposes ; and that here it is likely 
 that a (barbarous) matriarchal rule will subsist. 
 The people gather at a festival, and the men of one 
 village form temporary connections with the women 
 of another (as Mr. Hewitt has described). The children 
 born know only their mothers, and become the " chil- 
 dren of the village," in which the males (who are not 
 their fathers) are the managers. No hereditary or 
 permanent chief can exist ; but some one of the more 
 capable persons is chosen as the managing head. 
 In such a stage, " property " can hardly exist at all ; 
 and there is little objection to say that cultivation is 
 practised for the common support of the local group. 
 But the time comes when more advanced tribes, 
 having the idea of marriage, and consequently of 
 " the family," and of patriarchal society (with its elders 
 and chiefs), obtain the upper hand ; and then it is 
 that we see more a complete village, divided into 
 allotments, but still subject to customs of tribal 
 union and redistribution of holdings — to secure 
 equality — becoming organised. This village it is 
 that originates the plan of the allotted or " severalty " 
 village, which is the commonest form. In still later 
 times another series of tribes, or families with the 
 joint inheritance custom, dominate Upper India ; and 
 it is their family law, or their idea of allotting land 
 
THE JOINT FAMILY 139 
 
 to each member of the tribe or clan, that produces 
 the form of "joint" village known in the north. 
 
 The early condition of landed property in village 
 groups is not then one of ''communal ownership," 
 but is one dependent on the tribal organisation of 
 society which provides an equal subsistence lot for 
 every member of the tribe. And if this is followed by 
 further developments of joint family inheritance and 
 the domination of particular aristocratic or influential 
 families, we have co-sharing brotherhoods claiming 
 landlord rights. Moreover, in all cases the circum- 
 stances of life demand a close union for defence, so 
 that, whether by tribal aggregation or family union, 
 or by voluntary association, the joint or cohesive 
 village as we see it in the North of India is preserved. 
 
VIII 
 
 SOME PRACTICAL ASPECTS OF VILLAGE 
 INSTITUTIONS 
 
 It remains only to make a few remarks as to the 
 social and political advantages (or disadvantages) 
 arising from the village organisation of agrarian 
 society, whether that organisation is in the form of 
 the severalty village under a headman, or a body 
 which, organised under joint family custom, or under 
 some other form of tribal or family allotment, is in 
 some sense "joint" and dealt with as a " proprietary 
 unit " by the Administration. 
 
 In early days, whenever a district came under the 
 N.W. Provinces authorities, the system required the 
 village to be dealt with as a whole, as an unit, whether 
 it was so naturally or not ; and the method of the 
 (so-called) raiyatw&ri provinces, where each holding 
 was dealt with separately, was regarded by officials 
 trained in the north-western school with something 
 like horror.^ But all that has long passed away. 
 
 ^ Even Sir H. Maine, who was too philosophically minded to 
 suppose that it was really wrong, says — contrary to all historical 
 fact — that it was not the ancient system of the country ("V. C," 
 
 140 
 
PRACTICAL ASPECTS 141 
 
 With the later well-organised establishments, it is just 
 as easy to deal with thousands of separate holdings, 
 grouped in villages, as it is to deal with a number of 
 whole villages. And we have two Land-Revenue 
 systems — one treating the village as a whole (but 
 carefully recording all shares and separate rights), the 
 other frankly adapted to the severalty village of the 
 peninsula, and assessing each holding in complete 
 independence. 
 
 The village organisation of society — whether the 
 village itself is of one type or the other — offers many 
 facilities for rural administration, for repression of 
 crime, and gradually for bringing about attention to 
 simple systems of sanitation. The village system 
 also enables the agrarian districts to dispense with a 
 poor law. Each village will secure its infirm and 
 pauper inhabitants at least from starvation, without 
 the intervention of any poor-rate machinery. 
 
 Moreover, the district officers are much more 
 
 readily brought into friendly contact with the people, 
 
 from village to village ; each brings forward a new 
 
 group of headmen and local elders, from whom the 
 
 state cf the country, the prevalence of sickness or 
 
 cattle disease, or suffering from drought, or local 
 
 famine, can be at once known. A vast number of 
 
 p. 106). What was, we may ask, the ancient system, if it was 
 not the taking of a share of the grain from every separate hold- 
 ing in each village, under the superintendence of the headman 
 and the king's agent or accountant — the village itself being 
 usually in the raiyatwari form ? See the note to p. 70. 
 
142 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 separate points of communication exist, and the 
 whole area of a district is divided up into small 
 sections, which can be examined one by one, just as 
 an engraver divides a picture he has to copy into 
 little squares, so as to concentrate attention, and 
 direct it successively to every section in detail. In 
 parts of Bengal, for example, the district officer is 
 almost dependent on the police officers scattered 
 about at local stations for information regarding the 
 country affairs. There are no other points of com- 
 munication : the village organisation has almost 
 completely decayed under the influence of the 
 greater landlords. This, however, does not apply 
 so much to those parts where the landowners are 
 really peasant proprietors, and no larg-e estates exist. 
 The village system produces all the advantages, 
 but also the disadvantages, of "peasant proprietor- 
 ship " in their full extent. For whether it is a sepa- 
 rate (individual) holding, or a whole village regarded 
 as. the estate of a joint group, the land may be sub- 
 divided again and again, till the ultimate holding is 
 so small that it barely affiards the means of subsis- 
 tence. In much-divided joint villages, especially 
 'where the plan of division is at all complicated, the 
 whole of the co-sharers are really in the hands of the 
 village accountant (J>atw&rt), who' alone knows all 
 the details of the little scattered plots, and the charge 
 upon each. The joint village is also peculiarly liable 
 to develop cliques and parties, and even to split into 
 
PRACTICAL ASPECTS I43 
 
 fierce factions ; and the co-sharer in one paiit, or 
 section, hates the members of another section cor- 
 dially.' The success of the northern village largely 
 depends on the energy and character of the tribe 
 or family group holding it. There is a vast differ- 
 ence — I must say superiority — for example, when 
 one compares the villagers of the West Panjab with 
 those of Ambfila, or — farther east — of AHgarh (for 
 example), or of Bih&r : not that each race may not 
 have some conspicuous good qualities of its own. 
 
 When the village or the holding becomes much 
 subdivided, the holders are sure to get into debt. 
 If the clan, caste, or tribe is of a good fibre, it does 
 not allow such excessive subdivision : the energetic 
 members, who see that all cannot thrive on the 
 paternal inheritance, take service in the army, the 
 police, or the numerous branches of minor 'public 
 service; but even so, the supply of occupation is 
 limited, because all crafts and industries are so tied 
 to particular castes and hereditary groups and guilds 
 that any general turning of surplus hands to indus- 
 trial occupations is hardly possible.^ 
 
 But when a landholder gets into debt he generally 
 ends by mortgaging his land, and finally selling it. 
 
 ^ I have noticed this more particularly in the Panjib, north 
 of the Gujrinwaia district. 
 
 ^ Something can, of course, be done in this direction, espe- 
 cially in helping the village women to take up embroidery and 
 other such work as they are naturally skilled in, to help out the 
 family maintenance. 
 
144 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 This does not always, or even frequently, involve his 
 removal. The purchaser, unless he is a richer co- 
 sharer (under the operation of the custom of />re- 
 emption which prevails in many villages) will fre- 
 quently be the village money-lender, or some non- 
 resident banker desirous of accumulating land as 
 an investment. The old owner or co-sharer resides 
 still on the land, only he is now the tenant of the 
 purchaser. This plan is not likely to answer very 
 Jong if the holding is such that it does not afford 
 more profit than sufiSces to support the tenant's 
 family. The tendency must be either for a whole 
 village to fall piecemeal into the hands of some (non- 
 agricultural) owner, or else it will become held by 
 absentee money-lenders and traders of various origin, 
 and having no connection one with the other. 
 
 It may seem strange that in the progress of ideas 
 regarding the State's dealing with the land in India, 
 it never occurred to anyone to utilise, rather than 
 abandon, the State ownership of the land. It is well 
 known that when land administration first came 
 under the direct control of British officers in Bengal 
 in the eighteenth century, it was a firmly-estab- 
 lished doctrine that the State was the owner of all 
 land. Mr. James Grant, in Bengal, even argued that 
 this was legal and constitutional; and it is not certain 
 whether Lord Cornwallis took this view or not. It 
 is not necessary here to discuss the question as it 
 may be argued from the texts of the Hindu or 
 
PRACTICAL ASPECTS 14S 
 
 Muhammadan law. It is quite enough to remember 
 that long before the eighteenth century, de facto the 
 right had been fully established, and is asserted to 
 this day by all the native states.' Lord Cornwallis 
 simply desired to abandon it, substituting the Zamin- 
 ddr landlords, whom he found in managing possession 
 of large estates in Central Bengal. These he hoped 
 to see acting the part of benevolent owners, at once 
 securing the State revenues and blessing their tenants 
 by their liberality and kind dealing. When, in the 
 N.W. Provinces (in the absence of such landlords), 
 attention was turned to establishing the independent 
 rights of the villages, it was still the policy to give 
 up the State right. The "joint body," dealt with as 
 the ideal landlord of the village, is not declared by 
 the Regulation (of 1822), in so many words, to be 
 "actual proprietor"; but this right is implied, and 
 the whole body, as well as the several co-sharers, are 
 treated in all respects as owners. Not only so, but 
 when in Bombay and Madras the individual holding 
 was separately dealt with (without the intervention 
 of any middleman proprietor or joint responsibility) 
 and when the supreme ownership of the State was 
 maintained, or at least not formally abrogated,^ still 
 
 \ See "Ind. Vill. Comm.," p. 207 ff. It is quite possible, 
 no doubt, to find in Sanskrit books passages which contain 
 vague assertions of the king's power, and of his being owner of 
 everything ; but it would be beyond the scope of this little book 
 to enter on the discussion of such a matter. 
 
 ^ It is expressly maintained under the terms of the Bombay 
 
 K 
 
1^6 INDUM YJJ^IiAQ]^ QQMMU^ITIES 
 
 np rpstriptipin was placed on the pQWfr pf .alie)T.^!tiiiig 
 {He permanent: hereditary pccupancy, which fpr aU 
 practical purpose^ wag as gQpd as pvv^nersliip. U 
 plight have occurred %o, spn^eone iq authority tp thjnk 
 that tlje State p'jyn^rship s]:^pn!f} |g foriiially fefajng^ 
 for beneficial purppge^, ^p prevent the ignorant agri- 
 cultural clgsse? froiq losiijg fheir lancjs. The 3|:ate 
 would, iri fact, h^YP. FStaJned the nucfa p.xoprietci,s—i 
 the hare ownersjiip pf the soil^r-while giving all the 
 pFactjpal benefits to tlje vjlJage pprs})|irer pf tj|g rypi 
 cyltivajpr; and thie effect woulcj havg b§gR that Jljie 
 holder could not sell the land which was not hjs ; 
 and mprepver, by express enactment it plight haye 
 ^eefl prpvicjgd thai jie shp}i}4 nqit sgll (or cl^rgg 
 beyon4 hig own lifetinve) Ithe op cupancy Pf PuUiy.Sting 
 right in the holding. 
 
 As it is, the "ryot," no Jess than the sp-^hafing 
 proprietor of fhg north, is free to Ipsg Jiis .rig}}t 
 by mortgaging jind ultimately sglling it. Thug jjjanj? 
 agriculturists havg got into debt^ and thgir li^]4j 
 became hopelessly enpumbered, yncjer either systgui, 
 I am not faying that thi§ complete laiuf?, frirf. |P 
 
 p..evenue Code. In ^^adras^ where no such code has bepn en- 
 acted, it is more or less tacitly or inferentially maintained, 
 because it is so essentifilly a part of the systenj (formerly of 
 great practical impprtaijpe) that any " opcupant " may relipquish 
 his land by notice at a suitably ^pason, and t\^}is. become fre^ pf 
 tjie respqnsi{)ility tp pay the Jsjid-reygjjijje. \yhilf fj}is \s, 
 maintained, it woul4 be inconsistent \§ c^j |^ " gccmsxiX"- 
 or "jygt" J^Jie tvilp'ifner of hi? hoj^iti^. 
 
the ordinary action of economic forces was or was 
 not right ; but no one sefiously considered any other 
 View. The « Rybts Relief Acts " i and similar pro- 
 Visions have rarely had any gireat success. To some' 
 extent this is due to the fact that they require very' 
 exceptional qualities in the officers who vi^of-k them-^ 
 sympathy, resource, great knowledge of Ideal con- 
 ditions and the like. But the provisions at best can only 
 touch a part of the evih When the debt burdening 
 the share, or holding, is examined, it is usually found 
 to consist of a vas^mass of interest piled up ; and the ' 
 whole matter is complicated by the fact that thd 
 debtor's payments on account have been mostly in 
 kind, that even if these have been fully credited in 
 respect of quantity — which is by no meahs always the 
 case — the money-lender has put his own market 
 value on the credit items. The unfortunate debtor 
 disputes both the smallness of the quantity and the 
 meagreness of the value allowed him ; but, alas ! he 
 has no evidence; — no receipts, no regular accounts of 
 his own ; and when the arbitrating judges come to 
 settle the account, thouigh they can reduce the interest 
 easily enough, they can only deal with the items of 
 the principal account, almost by guess. And even if 
 the debt is reduced to a reasonable, and pet' se 
 tolerably accurate, figure, it may well be that the 
 
 '^ They have been applied both in parts of the N.W. Provinces 
 and in the Dakhan for the relief of encumbered village owners, 
 and for ryots whose holdings have become burdened with debt. 
 
148 INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES 
 
 holding is not capable of yielding enough to support: 
 the family, and also to give a surplus for the instal- 
 ment of the. debt besides the revenue and rates. In 
 that case the fixing of the debt, and even the advance- 
 of the whole from the public treasury — to be repaid 
 by fixed instalments constituting a first charge on the 
 land, and extending over a number of years, at 
 moderate (simple) interest — does not really relieve the 
 holding, unless the mouths to be fed from it can be 
 largely reduced ; and this is rarely practicable.. We 
 have recently heard of proposals to restrict the 
 alienation of land in India. The difficulty is how — 
 after the free property system has gone on so long — 
 to introduce any change. I am only here speaking 
 of villages, and therefore do not allude to the cases of 
 landlords in Madras, Oudh, etc., where primogeniture 
 prevails, and the owner may have no power to alienate, 
 or charge the estate beyond his own lifetime. But in 
 the peasant class, any attempt to deal with the subject 
 by a general law would, I fear, result in a great diffi- 
 culty. If any change is made, it must be very 
 cautiously in separate provinces, and even separate 
 districts, and experimentally — first where the condi- 
 tions are such that it could be tried with the least 
 appearance of a violent bouleversement. Especially 
 where many holdings have already passed into the 
 hands of money-lenders and others, an inquiry, unless 
 very cautiously conducted, might have the effect of 
 stirring up alarm and spreading excitement over the 
 
PRACTICAL ASPECTS 149 
 
 towns, in which the monied and trading interest 
 naturally congregates. 
 
 One very hopeful experiment has been made in the 
 Panjab. Here there are in the great " Do^bs " or 
 tracts between two rivers — in the central parts equally 
 removed from the moistening influence of either river 
 — great stretches of alluvial land fertile enough if 
 artificially irrigated, but which can only be irrigated 
 by expensive State-made canal works. In some cases 
 Government has been able to provide the water, laying 
 ,out (with reference to the straight canal cuts and 
 cross channels) a number of rectangular blocks suit- 
 able to form holdings, a number of which will 
 aggregate into an (artificial) "village." Here the 
 (originally waste) land belongs, without any question 
 to the State ; and so (by law) does the water ; hence 
 it is possible that all settlers, who can be tempted 
 away from the " congested " districts, can be located as 
 Government tenants, at a very moderate rent and 
 revenue rate, and without any power of alienation. 
 This plan, though recent, has now been in working 
 for some time. But we have not heard much of its 
 results ; but, as far as I know, they have been very 
 satisfactory. It is a great pity that this and similar 
 matters concerning the economic welfare of the 
 peasantry are not thought more worthy of occasional 
 notice by local " correspondents." The Pahjib scheme 
 has been worked on a considerable scale. For ex- 
 ample, the Dodb near the Chinib River contains many 
 
ISO INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITIES. 
 
 hundred thousand cultivable acres laid out in this 
 way; and there are other centres. The Panj^b 
 Government has to deal with (on the whole) varied 
 and superior agricultural races, a large prbportion df 
 whom cultivate their own lands; 
 
 In existing villages, the Panjib law does not 
 encourage the dissolution of the bond of joint 
 responsibility ; and a village cannot become separated 
 completely into independent parts, except when a 
 " Settlement " (p. 28) is in progressj and then under 
 special conditions. In the N.W. Provinces, a much 
 larger proportion of the village owners employ tenants, 
 and look to rental rather than to cultivating profits: 
 Here there is hardly any restriction oh complete 
 severance (includirtg the revenue responsibility) so • 
 long as all concerned agree in asking for it. And the 
 plan is coeimonly adopted of allowing separate land- 
 holders ift the villages to pay their own share of the 
 revenue and rates direct into the local treasury.^ The 
 tendency of the N.W.P. villages is certainly towards 
 their becoming completely raiyativdri, though the 
 title to the holding is that of cdmplete proprietary 
 right. And in all cases where the owner is of a 
 
 ' Ordinarily they pay to the lambardar or representative head 
 of the village, or of the section (Jiatit) to which they belong, the 
 representative being persotially responsible for the total being 
 paid in. Complaints became frequent that the payments made 
 to this person were misapplied, on one pretext or another ^ hence 
 the rule that permission to pay direct might be given. But this 
 tends powerfully to break up the idea df a " commuriityi" 
 
PRACTICAL ASPECTS 151 
 
 non-agricultural caste, originally or by purchase, we 
 shall have a series of small properties, often held by 
 non-resident owners, and worked by tenants, some 
 having " occupancy" rights, and other privileges under 
 the Tenant Law,^ some being tenants at will paying 
 what is already, virtually, a competition rent. Such 
 propeirties will probably tend gradually to reaccumu- 
 late in the hands of a few owners, who will buy up 
 first one plot and then another, and have estates 
 Scattered in plots through half-a-dozen villages or 
 inore ; but the '* village " will be only a geographical 
 or survey unit ; it will hardly have any meaning, 
 except as a monument of some forgotten unity, which 
 may be once more gilded by the halo of theories. 
 
 ^ It wbiild l3e beyond my scope to explain the nature of the 
 Tenant Law, which, as may be supposed, is chiefly needed in 
 the Northern Prbvinces *irhere there are landlords, of joint- 
 villages employing tenint^, and wherfe these tenants are ofteft 
 the remains of older settlers whose rights have been overborne, 
 but too long ago to makfe it possible to do more than recognise 
 certain privileges attaching to long possession. There is a 
 general account of the Tenancy Law in my little book called 
 " A Short Account of the Lafid Administration of British 
 India" (Claretidoh Press, 1894), pp. 133-144. 
 
APPENDIX I 
 
 It has been stated (p, 109) that the behef in an original " com- 
 munal " form of village in peninsular India was largely due to 
 the conservation of some forms of joint village, which (without 
 asking anything in detail as to their date or other features), 
 were at once assumed to be ancient, and to represent relics of 
 an early universal common ownership. I therefore briefly 
 sketch the different cases where such survivals occur. 
 
 I. In Bombay we find (a) in the Gujarit districts a limited 
 number of actually existing joint villages— in strong contrast 
 with the "severalty" villages all round. In the Dakhan dis- 
 tricts there are only traces of a (more ancient) mir&si tenure 
 preva,ilingfrom former times down to the days of the Mahrithas. 
 II. In Madras, especially in the Chingleput district and the 
 immediate vicinity, we have (fast disappearing) traces of a 
 privileged co-sharing tenure of villages, also called by the 
 Moslems mir&si, and by the indigenous people kAnidtsi. 
 
 I. {a) In some of the Gujarit districts a limited number of 
 villages {narwad&ri and bhagdari) are known to be compara- 
 tively modern, though a precise date is not assignable. In both 
 cases they represent the growth of certain dominant families 
 over the village. In the Broach district these are Bohra ^ 
 families, often descended from one ancestor. In the Kaira 
 district villages the families are of the Kunbi caste, and here 
 apparently (in some cases) several families had originally joined 
 together for the purpose of restoring cultivation or taking the 
 revenue responsibility. In time, the families multiplying in num- 
 
 1 The Bohra are a caste partly of traders, partly of agriculturists. The 
 Kunbi are the well-known cultivating caste of Western India. The total 
 number of these villages does not exceed 347 ("L. S. B. I.," Vol. III., p. 
 260). The la:gest number is in the Broach district, much fewer in Kaira, 
 and about a dozen in Sttrat. 
 
APPENDIX 153 
 
 bers, divided their interests and responsibilities in suitable shares. 
 But (as usual) they kept together as jointly liable bodies, with- 
 out which they would have soon lost their privileged position. 
 As it was, these dominant bodies came to constitute the com- 
 m unity— the joint proprietors of the whole village. The Bohras 
 adopted the plan of dividing into fractional shares, according to 
 the "ancestral" system, following the table of descent— each 
 share of the holding corresponds to a similar fraction of the 
 revenue liability. ^ The Kunbis (being probably associate 
 groups of different families) contracted for a lump sum of 
 revenue on the whole village, and proceeded to divide it and the 
 cultivation — not by (ancestral) fractional shares— but by ar- 
 ranging groups of cultivation (including portions of each kind of 
 soil), and making out a Tiarwa, or distribution scheme, which 
 apportioned the revenue responsibility over the holdings of the 
 different sections or family groups. 
 
 (J>) The more interesting ancient mirSisi traces in many 
 Dakhan villages are fully discussed in a paper contributed by 
 me to the Royal Asiatic Society's Journal in 1897. ^ It was long 
 ago noticed that in these villages certain lands were said to be 
 mirasi, and had once constituted shares in a property which, in 
 fact, included the whole village. In some cases the complete 
 list of shares could still be traced, and they were all known by 
 Hindu-Aryan names, and the holders were superior in rank and 
 dignity. Looking back at the known early history of Western 
 India, I think there can be no doubt that these were the shares 
 in villages which had become dominated by families of some 
 rank, perhaps connected with the Yidava kingdom of Devagiri, 
 or with the Chilukya or the Rashtrakfita clans, all well known 
 to history and to our epigraphists. These, being of military, 
 not agricultural caste, perished in the wars that (as a matter of 
 fact) overthrew the Yadava and Chalukya kingdoms in the 
 Middle Ages. The names and locale of the shares {bhag) re- 
 mained, owing to the tenacity of tradition which is so notorious 
 throughout the East ; and as the miras tenure was an advan- 
 tageous one, it was found possible (for a long time) to continue 
 
 1 For details and examples, see " Ind. Vill. Comm.,*' p. 386 ff. 
 
 2 Vol. for 1897, April, p. 239. See also my " Ind. Vill. Comm.," p. 
 380 £f. 
 
1S4 AppmDix 
 
 the pHvilegfe; and fill the vacant Holdings b^r the revenue authb- 
 ritieS granting (of feveh selling) the mz'rScs titlie. Here, then, we 
 havfe only the "manorial" grb*th bi doininant, cS-sharing 
 families over the villages. But in this case the families shared 
 the misfortunes of their rac6 arid disappeared i while in other 
 parts df India the joint families persisted, multiplied, and fur- 
 riiShfed quite numerous "communities,'' dominating the Villages, 
 and introdiicing their own co-sharing febftstitution. 
 
 II. The vestiges of mirdsi tenare in Madras are of a different 
 order. J^ Tradition in this case— aJ accepted by all the best 
 authorities' — is supported by the caste and other features of the 
 villages, which were still plainly in evidence at the end of the 
 eighteenth cerituryj They were chiefly medieval villages estab- 
 lished by a succession of immigrants of a peculiar agricultural 
 race (Vell3,Ian) from North Kanara and elsewhete, who \vere with 
 difficulty induced to settle by the promise of exceptional privi- 
 leges, and a permanent interest in the villages they established. 
 The success of this sjjecial colonising enterprise, after riiany 
 failurfes; is referred to thei efforts of one of the later CholS. kings 
 who riiled in the eleventh century A.D. The case was alto- 
 gether exceptional ; and the families appear to have fo"und a 
 close co-operation necessary, both to insurfe a victory oVer the 
 difficulties Of the enterprise, and also to secure among them- 
 SelVeS the due sharing of the privileged tenure, with its partial 
 exemption froin taxation. We have fair evideiice of ^heir rriode 
 of allotting the lands each year for cultivatiouf and of sharing 
 the profits. In some cases they actually divided the shares on 
 the ground permanently.^ 
 
 In all these cases we have varieties of ways in which a Special 
 privilege, a grant, or eveA the usurpation, of families of supterior 
 ability Or rank, results in producing a joint body of proprietors. 
 
 1 These are the traces discussed in the volume entitled " MirSsl Papers," 
 Madras, iSSa, to Which Sir H. S. Maine once alludes (see p. 36); 
 
 2 The details are given in "IraJ. Vill. Coram. ," p. 362 ff. Of course 
 colonist parties have been found in other parts of India, most commonly 
 on a smaller scale, and with no particular difBculties to contend with, so 
 that exceptional advantages are not expected or granted. In tBe S.E. 
 PanjSb many (ihdividnal) villagSs were founded by colonist bodies, Who hav 
 fallen into the joint village class bebausB they readily accepted 4 joint 
 liability for revenue (pp. 94-5). 
 
APPENDIX I5S 
 
 In some cases it is over existing severalty villages ; in other*, 
 the dominant groups (with the same sense of superiority) have 
 occupied nevvly established villages,, so tljat there weye iio former 
 landholders to become vassals, but only such slaves, tenants, 
 and helpers as the superior settlers themselves introduced and 
 located. But the whole circumstances in each case clearly 
 negative the idea that in such traces we have ^ primitive and 
 general institution. The raiyatwa^ri was the general form, the 
 mirdsi right a special and privileged grpwth in and oypjr it, and 
 it certainly had nothing of a communistic cliaracter. In so 
 brief a note I have not attempted fo a.lludp to every instance 
 of an alleged mirdsi interest in Madras ; but an examination of 
 any village to which the term mirdsi can properly be applied, 
 in districts other than Chingleput, ycill always show that it is a 
 pase of some gran): or dqijainaiit right apquireji. 
 
 Printed by Cowan 6* Ctf,, Limited^ Perth, 
 
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 The Indian Village Community. Examined with Reference 
 to the Physical, Ethnographic, and Historical Condi- 
 tions of the Provinces; chiefly on the Basis of the 
 Revenue-Settlement Records and District Manuals. 
 By B. H. Baden-Powell, M.A., CLE. With Map. 
 8vo, 1 6s. 
 
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