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Chapter 5 – The Indian Village As It Is

(a) The Severalty (or “Raiyatwari”) 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. I I, 12). In the “severalty” village the ownership is in the form of independent holdings, and there is no acceptance of a joint responsibility 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

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village affairs52. 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

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though there was no longer any question of tribal, custom in the establishment of new locations53.

Now, who were the people that first started organised 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 i.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 severalty 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 headman54. And having regard to the fact that the

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Aryans and other conquerors became monarchical, it is very likely that, apart from the chief princes and “barons” taking the rule over states and provinces55, cadets of the ruling families, courtiers, and others would soon obtain the lordship over individual villages, and become virtual owners of them, and so in time change the constitution in the manner which will presently be explained.

The villages as established by the humbler and purely agricultural tribes, whether Dravidian or Aryan, would be in the severalty form. All analogy of later times leads us to this inference. In the history of the mediaeval Rajas of Oudh, for example, it is clear that the subject villages were in the severalty form, paying the Raja’s grain-share from each holding. And we have evidence how by grant (birt) of the king, or by the association of some local family, the village became owned by the joint heirs of such a grantee, and so acquired a different form56.

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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. Circumstances 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 village 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 Nagpur) 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

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like the Santal, Ho, Munda, etc.57, 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 Nagpur. And I do not think that anyone with local knowledge will be disposed to doubt that those peoples were organised in tribes, and that they established the territorial divisions still known as nad (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 provided 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 Nagpur 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

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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 the parha, 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 group58. Apart from the fact that we have no evidence of any wide distribution of Kolarian races beyond the limits

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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 later Dravidians their larger and better organised village, which we can also observe in the central Chota Nagpur districts. At any rate, it was such a Dravidian village that can be argued to be the direct progenitor of the surviving severalty form, whatever 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 Kandh tribe in Orissa59.

The important feature of these typical village settlements is that certain leading families of the group were the principal members (known as bhuinhar families), and that other cultivators were associated with them, 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

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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 Raja, 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 produce 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 patel and kulkarni’s special holdings were in former days allowed to be free of State charges. (See pp. 10, 11.)

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

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theory of primitive common holding) show that it affords no indication of an idea of “common property.” The ruling idea was allotment of a subsistence share in the tribal territory to every member, according to his grade or position60.

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 cultivating 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 evidence.

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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 all, 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 villages became contiguous, the area of each would become definite. Should one village extend its cultivation 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 Raja, each village retained the right to the actually allotted lands in severalty, but that the waste was regarded as at the disposal of the Raja: 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

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needed to extend its cultivation. It cannot fail to be observed that when the Raja 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 body61.

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 possible62. The revenue

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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.

(b) 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 Panjab, 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.

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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 according to the rule and principle of their constitution.

I have mentioned that the existing joint villages are not due to “Aryans,” in the sense of any 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 some indefinitely ancient local tribes have joint villages, the formation of such villages in general is due to the later tribes – the Rajputs of various clans, the Jats and Gujars (p. 55 foll.), who are representatives of the various “Indo-Scythian” and other invasions of post-Aryan times.

To put it a little more explicitly, we may classify the villages according to race, as (1) Rajput settlers and adventurers (mostly mediaeval) coming to Oudh, the N.W. Provinces and Panjab, from an earlier home in Rajputana, and other places; (2) Jat

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and Gujar communities largely found in the Panjab, 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 recognised by the popular custom as “Rajput,” while the humbler and more purely agricultural were “Jat”63; (3) a variety of other tribes, some earlier, some later, probably of mixed race, but approximating to (1) and (2); they are chiefly in the North Panjab (Awan, Ghakar, Arain, etc.); (4) we may separate a group of (Moslem) tribes on the north-west frontier who are still living in a very perfect state of tribal organisation (p. 58); (5) 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 formation, and the way in which 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

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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 formed on different principles or in different ways, so that there is more to be said about the joint village. And the first great distinction is that in one large class of villages the community (as a matter of fact) is a body descended from one man (or from one or two brothers) who obtained at some former time – maybe hardly a century ago, maybe six centuries or more – the lordship or superiority of the village. The “lord,” however, 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 dominated the village and now constitutes the community.

In another class of cases the villages represent the fission of a whole clan 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

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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 pretended 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 three heads, which 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’s64 share” of the grain from the village cultivators. As in the course of time they gradually multiplied, they came to form a co-sharing

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proprietary community of the village, numbering 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 shared65.

In order to explain what is meant whenever the “fractional” or “ancestral” scheme of shares is referred 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-

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ample, that the original overlord leaves three sons; whether divided or not, there are three (major) shares (patti). If one of those sons dies leaving two grandsons, 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-subshares (behri or tula), each consisting of one-fourth of one-half of one-third of the whole, and paying the corresponding fraction of the charges. Later descendant families will continue to succeed (within the major and minor groups to which they belong)66.

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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 owned67. 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 according to existing “possession,” but the waste (or other undivided) land may still be enjoyed (or its

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income) in the correct ancestral shares, showing that the whole village was once governed by that rule and belonged to this class68.

As in this 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 profits69. But what really happens in

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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 proportionate 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

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in rotation70. 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 this kind which we might well call “manorial,” because, in fact, the village has been dominated by an “overlord” (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 rule71. More need not here be said; but I shall have some

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further observations to make in a closing section which relates to ideas of property in land.

It may be observed that this form of village with its major and minor divisions (patti, thok, 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 Rajput or some other superior (or at least non-cultivating) class, and that they almost always have tenants under them. Sometimes 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 –

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how such families came to have the pre-eminence.

(1) A very common case (and one of the latest origin 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 injustice; 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.g., after the Rohilla troubles) to claim any independent rights72.

(2) A large number of villages (often of Rajput 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 support73.

(3) Similar “rights” were obtained by some energetic family settled in the place; their growth being due to their superior wealth, energy, or influence74. In all these cases, observe that the original grant or usurpation was not formally of the ownership, nor did an usurping resident think at first of ownership. It was the “king’s share,” or perquisites of authority, that were

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granted, or an “overlord” share of the produce that was demanded 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 proprietorship 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 Rajput Raja, 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 Raja’s principal male relatives. At first this was all a question 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 offering them a settlement. Then (in time) in village after village the ruler’s rights and perquisites, 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 speaking 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 “community75.” Sometimes misfortune overtook the rulership; the principal members followed the Raja 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 territory76. The whole former “barony”

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(or the raj) 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 communities of co-proprietors over the villages that I have to mention a feature which is conclusive as to the character of the process. There are cases in which the “proprietary communities” 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 (mahal)77 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 mirasdar 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

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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 held78. 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 representative 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 sufficient 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

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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 number79. In these cases the tribe or group are sometimes spoken of as constituted “democratically” – i.e., there was no Raja or baronial government, and, as a rule, no dominant families to take possession 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 Panjab, 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 hundred

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years ago) that their constitution is well known, and the distribution of their land in sections and subsections is plainly visible on the ground (p. 24); while the tradition of the chief; and how he made the distribution of lots – first the major territories and then the final groups – is still well preserved80. 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 bigha, 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 settlement81. Where so much

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elaboration is not needed, the object of making the burden (of taxes, etc.) is equal attained by counting the bigha of poor land as twice or thrice as large as the bigha 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 originally 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 section 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 groups82. 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 convenience 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

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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 “democratic,” some of the villages are found to have been dominated by single families, and to be held on the ancestral (pattidari) scheme. This shows that here and there a particular chief, or his son, or some leading person, has managed to get possession of a village, and made it his “manor.”83

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 “Raja” and “barons,” and establish a military and territorial rule. Even among the Rajput 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 Rajas84, 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

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general principle of equality. In the interesting province 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 (Rajput) 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 possible85.

It will be asked: If this method of allotting equal shares (in one form or another) to all the members for their several enjoyment is the feature of so large a class of village, where does the joint 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 alienating 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 government; – when a revenue-farmer is kept at a distance,

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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 partitioned, 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 out86; 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 headman to have so much direct managing authority.

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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 pattidari, 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 community 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

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labour and money which each village co-proprietor contributed to the (co-operative) well sinking.

(1) In these villages we sometimes see different sections (tarf) occupied by families of a different origin, whose tradition is that they clubbed together and got lands together in one circle for defence87. 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 Panjab88. The villages not only belong each to a separate clan or sub-division of fats, 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 hal 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. Panjab – is known by uniform tradition to have been formed, at no very distant date, by voluntarily associated parties of colonists, each under a leader.

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Here land-shares were at once made out, and were distributed among the cultivating families by the process of casting lots89. 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 cultivates 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

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“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 it90.

And, lastly, it has to be noted that in some cases, villages like those in Kangra (Panjab Hills) in Ajmer, and in Jhansi (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. Panjab, too, there are no real villages separate farms or holdings have been clubbed together with the intervening waste, and made into villages91.

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

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joint property) to each body, the Government determined to confer the proprietary right on the headman or on the person whom the Marathas had made answerable for the revenue (our officers called him the Malguzar). 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 villages92.

Footnotes

52. These heads constitute the baradari, or brotherhood proper. All the co-sharers and landowners are often described as warisan yak-jadi = “heirs of the common descent.” (This refers to the Panjab.)

53. 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.

54. Mention of a village as a whole, or of the general boundaries 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 importance in village life, apart from any consideration of the village being jointly owned or otherwise. One of the most definite allusions to the village is in the “Laws of Manu,” and there it is certainly the severalty village under a headman that is mentioned.

55. I need hardly allude to the fact that in the Puranas and Epics the advance of Aryan tribes in the Ganges Valley is always represented under the guise of the great chief and his clan building a city and setting up a state of which it was the capital.

56. This is very clearly brought out in Mr. W. C. Benett’s admirable Settlement Report of the Gonda District in Oudh (1878). See §§ 64–77. The passage will well repay perusal.

57. “Ind. Vill. Comm.,” p. 154 ff.

58. 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 “common” cultivation went beyond the family hamlet, nor that all the land in the parha was held by the several sections in common; if, indeed, any definite ideas of property existed at all.

59. The village is described by Mr. Hewitt (who had been Commissioner and Settlement Officer both in Ch. Nagpur and in the Central Provinces), in Journal of the Soc. of Arts (May, 1887, p. 622). See also my “Ind. Vill. Comm.,” 179 ff., and Mr. Hewitt’s paper on “Chota Nagpur” in the Asiatic Quarterly Review, April, 1887. The Kandh was a tribe which acknowledged marriage and the patriarchal family.

60. 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) Nagpur 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 (matriarchal) village, was “communal.” But, in all his accounts, I have not succeeded in finding any mark of a “common holding,” except the allotment and redistribution, which I cannot admit to be such.

61. 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 sufficient area for grazing.

62. The raiyatwari 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 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 headman 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 demanded, 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.

63. This is all discussed and exemplified in “Ind. Vill. Comm.,” pp. 99 and 277.

64. To explain this word once more, I may refer to the note at p. 19.

65. For the sake of Indian readers (others may pass it by), I mention that these conditions answer to the zamindari-khalis (the village lord is still a single individual); zamindari-mushtarka (the joint family has succeeded, and the body have not partitioned); pattidari (where the land is completely partitioned on the ancestral shares) and imperfect pattidari (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.

66. This diagram will at once explain how an ancestrally-shared (pattidari) 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)
Patti Division 800 acres 800 800 (Each section will probably bear the name of the son, and be referred to as Patti Manohar Lal, etc.)
(2 grandsons) etc. etc.
Thok 400 acres 400
Primary Sections (4 great-grandsons) etc.
Tula (or behri) 100 100 100 100 (Each pays accordingly one-fourth of one-half of one-third (or one-twenty-fourth) of the whole burdens.)
(2 sons) etc. etc. etc.
Later and existing members. 50 50 etc.
(2 sons)
25 25
etc. etc.

The shares at last become so small that the descendants can no longer get a subsistence; but it will be remembered that very often a holder dies childless, and his share falls in to increase the holdings of the others, so that it may be long before an actual starvation limit is reached.

67. 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 = 1 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, r rupee= 16 anas, 1 ana =12 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 bigha (area measure), and a half-share would be 10 hiswa, etc.

68. The varieties resulting from the shares becoming incorrect may be seen in detail in “Ind. Vill. Comm.” p. 338. It is probably to distinguish such cases as those mentioned in the text that the official classification separates the “imperfect” (i.e., partly divided) class of village.

69. In every village, it will be understood, there may be the income from rents, and from wild produce, grass, grazing-dues, fruits, wood, etc., and perhaps small rents or dues from shopkeepers 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, entertaining strangers, repairs to public buildings, etc., etc. When all are brought to account, the surplus is distributed in the proper shares.

70. See “Ind. Vill. Comm.,” p. 281, and in my “L.S.B.I.,” Vol. II., pp. 542, 640, there is a diagram illustrating the method of division and the reasons of it.

71. 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.

72. See “Ind. Vill. Comm.,” p. 303, and the references there given. In the Bareli district (N.W.P.) out of 3,326 villages, 2,611 had become the property of dominant families in this way.

73. See “Ind. Vill. Comm.,” 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.

74. See “Ind. Vill. Comm.,” p. 310 ff., and p. 321.

75. 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.

76. As to the village proprietary body arising on dismemberment of ruling families and their territory, see “Ind. Vill. Comm.,” pp. 308 ff., specially p. 314.

77. Which becomes the unit with which the Government deals. A notable instance of this occurs in the Azamgarh district (N.W. Prov.).

78. 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.

79. 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 principal sections – i.e. the shares of the original sons of the family, and their sons and grandsons. That is because while the number 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.

80. For details, see my “Ind. Vill. Comm.,” pp. 247 and 253.

81. 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 bhaiachara. The artificial measures are spoken of as bhaiwadi-bigha, tauzi-bigha, etc. The bigha, as an ordinary area measure in use in India, varies in different provinces. Commonly, it is five-eighths of an acre.

82. For examples, see “Ind. Vill. Comm.,” pp. 270–271, and also at pp. 262, 285, and as to the larger (frontier) Khel areas splitting up into villages, see id., pp. 245, 251, 261, etc.

83. It would be very interesting, if our statistical information were such as to show (for the Panjab), how many of the entire mass of the Jat villages are held on the ancestral or pattideiri plan. It is at present uncertain how far the early Jat races had Rajas and a monarchical rule like the “Hindus.”

84. Those who care to pursue the subject will find some excellent remarks is the Oudh Gazetteer, Vol. II., p. 40 (Article Hardoi).

85. And this feature sorely puzzled the Resident (Mr. Duncan) in 1796, when he reported on the villages, and noticed the bhaiwadi bigha, 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.

86. This matter will come up again in another connection.

87. See the example (Gujrat district, Panjab) in “Ind. Vill. Comm.,” p. 339.

88. In the Lodiana district there is a very full account of these curious settlements, which I have abstracted in “Ind. Vill. Comm.,” pp. 274–6.

89. See “Ind. Vill. Comm.,” p. 323 if 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 illustrating 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.

90. Hence in the returns, all are, or were, lumped together as bhaiachara villages – estates held “by custom,” – quite forgetting 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.

91. In Ajmer at the latest Revenue Settlement, the joint responsibility was virtually abolished. As to the troubles in the case of the Jhansi districts, see “L.S.B.I.,” Vol. II., pp. 120–1. As to the (Multan and other south-western) Panjab holdings, see “Ind. Vill. Comm.,” p. 65.

92. Those who are curious to follow the history of the experiment will find it described in “L.S.B.I .,” Vol. II., pp. 382–385.

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