CHAPTER I. the under world, seems so suggestive of all that is terrible, sensational, and mysterious in humanity, that it will lead the imagination far beyond the limits of experience, unless the attention is strictly confined to actual data. The European regards the serpent with an instinctive antipathy; and such may have been the feeling of the Aryan invaders.32 But this antipathy is by no means shared by the masses. The Aryan element is perhaps weakest in Bengal, and amongst the Dravidian populations of the south; and there the serpent is regarded as a beneficent deity, and is approached with reverential awe. It is propitiated as the deity of a tree, as the guardian of secret treasure, as the domestic god of the family or household, and as a symbol of the power of reproduction. In Bengal barren wives. creep into the jungle to propitiate the serpent of a tree with an offering of milk, in the simple faith that by the favour of the serpent deity they may become mothers. Under such kindly aspects the poisoned fang is forgotten, and the reptile is invested with a benevolent character. But there are strong reasons to suspect that the worship of the snake, and the practice of snake charming, formed important elements in an old materialistic religion, which may at one time have prevailed amongst the Dravidian populations, and of which the memory still lingers throughout the greater part of India. In the later mythological system, the world itself is supported by the great serpent; whilst Siva and Durgá, the

32 The great god of the later Aryans was Vishnu, a spiritual conception of a supreme deity which grew out of the worship of the sun god. The antipathy of Vishnu towards the Nágas, is shown by his being represented as riding on the man-bird Garuda, the devourer of serpents and remorseless enemy of the serpent

race.

deities of death and reproduction, are represented CHAPTER I. with cobras in their hands as symbolical of their

supposed powers.33

tween nature

The results of the collision between the nature Collision be worship of the Aryans, and the phallic worship of worship and the Nágas and Dravidians, must be in a great measure left to conjecture. But one new and important form of religious thought appears to have been an outgrowth of the collision, and has for thousands of years exercised a paramount influence over the Indian mind. This was Brahmanism, or the worship of the supreme spirit as Brahma, which was taught by a class of holy men or sacred philosophers, known as Bráhmans. This religious question, however, must be reserved for a separate chapter. Meantime it may be as well to bring under review such information as can be gathered from ancient legends and inscriptions regarding the original forms of government which prevailed in India, and to ascertain how far they may be traced in the governments of modern times.

communities of

The political organization of the people of India, Hindú constituwhether Aryan or Dravidian, seems to have borne a landholders. general resemblance to that of the Teutonic people.

33 The part played by the serpent in the later mythological systems of the Hindús, will be further illustrated in dealing with the history of the Brahmanical revival in chap. vii. It may, however, be remarked that the worship of the serpent was almost universal in ancient times. It appears in Egypt as well as in India; in the garden of Eden where it tempted Eve, and in the temple of Jerusalem where it was broken up by Hezekiah. According to Greek tradition the Scythian race was fabled to be descended from Herakles and the serpent woman Echidna (Herod. iv. 9, 10); and the people of Burma claim to be descended in a like manner from a mother half serpent and half woman. Doubtless it was the traditional hatred of the serpent, combined with a morbid animosity against the fair sex, that led Milton to personify Sin as

"Woman to the waist and fair, But ended foul in many a scaly fold."

34

CHAPTER I. It originated in the clearance of primeval forests by the pioneers of humanity. Bands of colonists appear like the Pandavas to have migrated from some parent settlement, and cleared the jungle with fire and axe; and finally to have established new homes and means of livelihood, without throwing off the ties of allegiance and kindred to the parent stem.3 Every new clearance gradually grew into a village; and every village became subject to those internal changes and revolutions which are inseparable from the progress of the human race. In the first instance the village was probably formed by a group of colonists, who cultivated the lands in their collective capacity for their common benefit; and it is not improbable that in this primitive stage of colonial society, the rude system of polyandry prevailed similar to that which was practised by the Pándavas. But the idea of landed property seems from a very remote antiquity to have followed a corresponding development to those of marriage and family. In due course the village com

31 Besides the mythic account of the colonization of Indraprastha by the Pandavas, which is to be found in its original form in History, vol. i., Mahá Bhárata, chap. v., a valuable tradition has been preserved of the colonization of the great forest in the southern peninsula, which was carried out in the days of the old Rajas of Chola, or Chola mandalum, the Choromandel or Coromandel of the seventeenth century. In ancient times the kingdom of Chola occupied the lower Carnatic between the eastern ghats and the sea; but the region north of the river Palar was a dense jungle. According to a legend preserved in the Mackenzie manuscripts, a Raja of Chola took a Nága lady, either as his wife or concubine, by whom he had a son whom the people would not accept as their Raja. Accordingly the prince went out with a miscellaneous band of emigrants, slaves and volunteers, and began to make clearances and establish villages in the forest northward of the Palar. During the first six years no share of the crops was to be claimed by the Chola Raja. For the seventh year of cultivation the emigrants were to pay one-tenth of the produce as land tax; for the eighth year one-ninth; for the ninth year one-eighth; and for the tenth year oneseventh; and for all following years one-sixth. See Mackenzie MSS. in the Library of the Bengal Asiatic Society, vol. i.

prised a community of independent householders, CHAPTER I. each of whom had his own family, his own homestead, his one separate parcel of arable land for cultivation, and a common right to the neighbouring pastures. The multiplication of families was followed by new clearances; and thus the deep forest was more and more brought under the subjection of man, and cultivation advanced with the increase of the population. But whilst the individual householder was the supreme head of his own family within the limits of his own homestead, he was bound as a member of the village community to conform to all its multifarious rules and usages as regards the order of cultivation, and the common rights of his neighbours to graze their cattle on the pastures. In the present day the independence and privacy of the family are maintained by the Hindús to an extent which renders their domestic life a sealed book to Europeans; whilst land is regarded more and more in the light of property, belonging as strictly to the family as the homestead in which they dwell. The ancient village community of independent landholders, governed by common rules and usages, naturally acquired a political organization of its own. It comprised the homesteads of

35

15 Maine's Lectures on Village Communities. Stubbs's Constitutional History of England, chaps. ii. and iii. Elphinstone's History of India, Book II. chap. ii. As regards the Teutonic communities Sir Henry Maine observes that the land was always originally distributed into exactly equal proportions, corresponding to the number of families in the township; and that at first the proprietary equality of these families was further secured by a periodical re-distribution of the several consignments. He adds that traditions of this periodical distribution are still preserved in Indian villages, and that the disuse of the practice is sometimes mentioned as a grievance. Some further evidence as regards the existence of these traditions would be valuable. Probably they refer to the ancient system of cultivation, known as the Joom system, in which a portion of the jungle is burnt down and serves as manure. This system is still in vogue amongst hill tribes, and necessitates an annual removal to different lands during a period of ten years.

CHAPTER I. the different families; the several allotments of arable lands; and the common land for pasture. Its affairs were conducted by a council of elders; or by the council in association with a head man, who was either elected to the post by the village community, or succeeded to it as a hereditary right.36

Village officials and artisans.

The village thus became not only the basis of a political organization, but the type of the kingdom of which it was an individual member. The head man corresponded to the Raja; the council of elders to the council of chiefs and people. At a later period of development each village had its own officials, such as the accountant, the watchman, the priest, the physician, and the musician. It also had its own artisans, as the blacksmith, the carpenter, the worker in leather, the tailor, the potter, and the barber. These officers and artisans were generally hereditary, and were supported by grants of land rent free, or by fees contributed by the landholders in grain or perhaps in money.

36 The general type of a Hindú village remains much the same in the present day, but in the course of ages the organization of individual villages has been greatly modified by their individual histories, especially as regards the mode of paying the annual land revenue to the ruling power. Three different revenue systems may be especially mentioned, namely, the village joint-rent system, the ryotwary, and the zemindary. Under the joint-rent system, the inhabitants of each village pay through their head man a yearly lump sum for the whole of their lands; and thus they are left to allot to each one of their number the lands he is to cultivate and the yearly contribution he is to pay. In the ryotwary system the government takes the rent direct from each individual ryot, or village landholder. In the zemindary system the revenue is collected through a middle man, known as a zemindar, whose powers vary with circumstances, and range from those of a tax collector to those of a baron.

Besides the village landholders there are four other classes, namely, permanent tenants, temporary tenants, labourers, and shopkeepers. But wherever there are village landholders, they form the first class of inhabitants.

37 The duties of the watchman are more multifarious than the name seems to convey. He is the guardian of boundaries, public and private. He watches the crops, and is the public guide and messenger. He observes all the arrivals and departures; and next to the head man, is the principal officer of police.