THE INDIAN VILLAGE COMMUNITY

The accounts of the Indian village which have hitherto appeared are either brief and generalised or they represent an ideal rather than an actual form of the institution. There has been no means of testing such accounts and it is small wonder that a particular theory of the Indian Village has become accepted and indeed some times taken for granted by the ablest authors when discussing the rules of hindu law or tracing the history of institutions. It is impossible for any later writer wishing to give a faithful account of village-tenures to avoid pointing out the errors which an abstract and unified conception of ‘the village’ can hardly fail to produce.