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Chapter 6 – 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 (a) 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:

(1) The Indian village communities may differ locally and in detail; they may exhibit signs of decay and change; but for purposes of comparative study

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they may be represented by a single typical form to which all approximate93.

(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 holdings94. The typical village has no headman, or single chief, being governed by a committee or council of the brotherhood95.

(3) Sir H. S. Maine speaks of the typical village

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marked by collective ownership, as archaic and representing 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)96.

(4) Originally the bodies owning in “common” had no definite shares; the acknowledgment of them (in one form or another) was a later invention – a stage in the process of development from “common” to “individual” property97.

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(5) The groups consist of persons originally connected 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 common98. The (only) raison d’être of these communities is the tillage of the soil99.

(6) And lastly, we are informed that these communities are not simple bodies, with equal rights: they 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, etc100.

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(a) The Theory with reference to the Severalty (or Raiyatwari) 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 insisted101, 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 consideration

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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 foll.) given some details showing the probability that the severalty village is a direct derivation from a Dravidian form, of which the important feature is that the holdings were all allotted, and separated according to fixed custom, for enjoyment 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 between 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 gradually die out, and the allotted holdings would cease

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to be exchanged or re-distributed – would become 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 villages102, re-distribution (vesh)

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undoubtedly prevailed – in some cases till quite recent times. But when permanent occupation 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 individual right; 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 common” and cultivated for the benefit of a common

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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 connection, 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 property” really are; and this we must at present defer.

It will be observed that even if this attempted reference 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 objection 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 justified except (1) by showing some reasonable indications of a “common ownership” – the same as that in the north – and prevailing over the whole region of

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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 assertion of “decay” of the joint form into the severalty. Thus Mr. J. D. Mayne, in his valuable book on “Hindu Law and Usage103,” 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 devastations of the Muhammadans, Marathas, and Pindaris 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 Hindustan and the Panjab 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) Muhammadan rule began, the tendency was rather to preserve

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village and other popular institutions104. The Marathas also did not destroy the village forms; no indication of anything of the kind is presented either by the districts longest under Maratha rule, or by those merely raided or subjected to an impost for a brief period. The object of that greedy and oppressive 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 adhering to the old customary “Hindu” method of taking the share of the grain from each holder on each threshing floor (or taking an estimated amount from each as the later custom was) the Maratha collector insisted on a total cash revenue from the village105 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 could, not merely what he ought. A series of holdings that had long been held in severalty would, under

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such treatment, lose all traces of union arising from a reminiscence of earlier days of tribal allotment. But such a system did not alter the whole village form, nor turn a “joint” village into a “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 others106. Privileges, like the free-landholding of the headman, tended to disappear; the hereditary rights attached to village offices were actually seized and held by Maratha chiefs and jagirdars for their own profit; 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 mirasdar. 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

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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

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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 headman, and his watan land, in particular. Even if it is true that rudimentary groups of cultivation, undertaken 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 the paria of the primitive Kolarian.

(b) 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 enumerated 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

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population was “Aryan,” and that all villages might be assumed to be Aryan, and therefore archaic and of one type. But we know that this is not the case; we know also 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 sharing, 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 to 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 principles. Their “jointness” is due (1) 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

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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 associated bodies who have allotted the land by consent, according to the number of persons in each household, 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)

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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 ownership with common ownership in general will be considered 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 the 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 sometimes joint-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 himself, 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

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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 known107. 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-terms108, 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

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zamindari, 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 zamindari mushtarka, or the landlord village where the superior interest is held by an undivided coparcenary body. The words have nothing whatever to do with “communal” ownership. When such joint heirs partitioned their estate, the shares were necessarily according to the ancestral scale which follows from the place in the table of descent (see Diagram, p. 77). 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 really in the nature of a holding “in common” or “collectively.”

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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, sometimes 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 inconsistent 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 circumstances and the character of the people have preserved

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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 (b) 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.

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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) bhaiachara 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” share109.

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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 existence 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 agreement 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 payment 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 originated, 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 scattered 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

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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 contract110, 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 many111. That the scheme of distribution is often arranged without difficulty112 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,

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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 of 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 cases113. No doubt artificial additions to the families

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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 completely. 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 it114.

And this naturally leads to the last point in the theory (No. 6, p. 101) – the structure of the community 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 proprietors. If wronged, the tenants and village helpers

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would find their cause locally espoused, and protection 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 Rajput 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 “brotherhood,” is something quite grotesque. This “brotherhood” does not constitute any graded “hierarchy” in any case whatever, nor has it any social strata in parallel layers, representing the successive “amalgamation” of groups at remote periods. The “brotherhood” consists of just as many families as have actual shares in the land – as are existing co-proprietors, and no more (see pp. 60 note, 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

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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 Panjab – 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 observed, 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 “brotherhood.”

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, principally, to the idea of parallel layers or strata in the social constitution of communities. But let it be said

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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 superiority. 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 newcomers 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 occupancy or other privilege115. 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

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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.

Footnotes

93. “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.”

94. “V.C.” p. 41: “The system is one of 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.)

95. “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. 155).

96. This appears passim. 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 Indogermanic 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.)

97. 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. 79–81, where the Hindu joint family is referred to. (In the judgment there referred to, Lord Westbury 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 property represented the “share” of any member before partition.)

98. “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: “cultivating groups ... in which ... the assemblage of cultivators is held together solely by the land which they till in common.” And compare id., p. 81.

99. “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 Rajputs, in particular (unless reduced by poverty), never cultivated; their raison d’être was not tillage; they looked to the land as a source of livelihood from rents paid to them as “lords of the manor.”

100. “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 major 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. ...”

101. p. 14.

102. 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 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 Provinces) 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 custom; but the reported instances of actual exchange date from Maratha times, and were connected with the cultivating arrangements made (or rather, I should say enforced) by the Revenue Manager. I do not, however, 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.

103. 4th Ed., § 201, p. 219. This seems also to be the idea suggested in Sir G. Campbell’s paper in the Cobden Club series.

104. In Gujarat it was in the (Moslem) Nawab’s territory that the narwadari and other joint villages are best preserved. In Nimar – 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.

105. This was usually the amount of the old Muhammadan valuation, made up, on one pretence or another, to a “full” or “perfect” (kamal) assessment. It was of course not often realised in full; but there it was as the standard to be aimed at.

106. This latter, however, the Marathas rarely allowed; the moment a village manager, farmer, or official was known to be securing a position, they came down upon him at once.

107. 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 cultivated by means of their families in common (κατα συγγεναιαν κοινη), 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 Translation, p. 113 (Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1891).

108. This is evident in Mr. J. D. Mayne’s “Hindu Law and Usage,” p. 200, when he alludes to the “communal zamindari.”

109. 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.

110. “V.C.,” p. 109. The author, it will be remembered, regarded shares as a sort of later invention, so that he could not account for the ready settlement of all questions as to use of irrigation water. Certainly it was not arranged as a mere business 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.”

111. 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.

112. But not always; bitter enmities and fierce quarrels sometimes arise out of the matter.

113. See point 5, at p. 101, and quotations there given.

114. See “Ind. Vill. Comm.,” p. 274, for an example where separate families are aggregated, but the wider tribal feeling still unites them; or again, in the North Panjab, 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.

115. 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.

This collection transcribed by Chris Gage
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