The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 1

21. Status of the cultivator

The above details have been given to show how the different agricultural castes originated. Though their origin is so diverse they have, to a great extent, the same status, and it seems clear that this status is dependent on their possession of the land. In the tracts where they reside they are commonly village proprietors and superior tenants. Those who rank a little higher than the others, as the Jāts, Marāthas, Dāngis and Lodhis, include in their body some ruling chiefs or large landed proprietors, and as a rule were formerly dominant in the territory in which they are found. In primitive agricultural communities the land is the principal, if not almost the sole, source of wealth. Trade in the modern sense scarcely exists, and what interchange of commodities there is affects, as a rule, only a trifling fraction of the population. India’s foreign trade is mainly the growth of the last century, and the great bulk of the exports are of agricultural produce, yet in proportion to the population the trading community is still extremely small. It thus seems quite impossible that the Aryans could have been a community of priests, rulers and traders, because such a community would not have had means of subsistence. And if the whole production and control of the wealth and food of the community had been in the hands of the Sūdras, they could not have been kept permanently in their subject, degraded position. The flocks and herds and the land, which constituted the wealth of early India, must thus have been in the possession of the Vaishyas; and grounds of general probability, as well as the direct evidence already produced, make it clear that they were the herdsmen and cultivators, and the Sūdras the labourers. The status of the modern cultivators seems to correspond to that of the Vaishyas, that is, of the main body of the Aryan people, who were pure and permitted to join in sacrifices. The status, however, no longer attaches to origin, but to the possession of the land; it is that of a constituent member of the village community, corresponding to a citizen of the city states of Greece and Italy. The original Vaishyas have long disappeared; the Brāhmans themselves say that there are no Kshatriyas and no Vaishyas left, and this seems to be quite correct. But the modern good cultivating castes retain the status of the Vaishyas as the Rājpūts retain that of the Kshatriyas. The case of the Jāts and Gūjars supports this view. These two castes are almost certainly derived from Scythian nomad tribes, who entered India long after the Vedic Aryans. And there is good reason to suppose that a substantial proportion, if not the majority, of the existing Rājpūt clans were the leaders or aristocracy of the Jāts and Gūjars. Thus it is found that in the case of these later tribes the main body were shepherds and cultivators, and their descendants have the status of good cultivating castes at present, while the leaders became the Rājpūts, who have the status of the Kshatriyas; and it therefore seems a reasonable inference that the same had previously been the case with the Aryans themselves. It has been seen that the word Visha or Vaishya signified one of the people or a householder. The name Kunbi appears to have the same sense, its older form being kutumbika, which is a householder or one who has a family,⁵¹ a pater familias.

22. The clan and the village

It has been seen also that Visha in the plural signified clans. The clan was the small body which lived together, and in the patriarchal stage was connected by a tie of kinship held to be derived from a common ancestor. Thus it is likely that the clans settled down in villages, the cultivators of one village being of the same exogamous clan. The existing system of exogamy affords evidence in favour of this view, as will be seen. All the families of the clan had cultivating rights in the land, and were members of the village community; and there were no other members, unless possibly a Kshatriya headman or leader. The Sūdras were their labourers and serfs, with no right to hold land, and a third intermediate class of village menials gradually grew up.

The law of Mirāsi tenures in Madras is perhaps a survival of the social system of the early village community. Under it only a few of the higher castes were allowed to hold land, and the monopoly was preserved by the rule that the right of taking up waste lands belonged primarily to the cultivators of the adjacent holdings; no one else could acquire land unless he first bought them out. The pariahs or impure castes were not allowed to hold land at all. This rule was pointed out by Mr. Slocock, and it is also noticed by Sir Henry Maine: “There are in Central and Southern India certain villages to which a class of persons is hereditarily attached, in such a manner that they form no part of the natural and organic aggregate to which the bulk of the villagers belong. These persons are looked upon as essentially impure; they never enter the village, or only enter reserved portions of it; and their touch is avoided as contaminating. Yet they bear extremely plain marks of their origin. Though they are not included in the village, they are an appendage solidly connected with it; they have definite village duties, one of which is the settlement of boundaries, on which their authority is allowed to be conclusive. They evidently represent a population of alien blood whose lands have been occupied by the colonists or invaders forming the community.”⁵² Elsewhere, Sir Henry Maine points out that in many cases the outsiders were probably admitted to the possession of land, but on an inferior tenure to the primary holders or freemen who formed the cultivating body of the village; and suggests that this may have been the ground for the original distinction between occupancy and non-occupancy tenants. The following extract from a description of the Marātha villages by Grant Duff⁵³ may be subjoined to this passage: “The inhabitants are principally cultivators, and are now either Mirāsidars or Ooprees. These names serve to distinguish the tenure by which they hold their lands. The Oopree is a mere tenant-at-will, but the Mirāsidar is a hereditary occupant whom the Government cannot displace so long as he pays the assessment on his field. With various privileges and distinctions in his village of minor consequence, the Mirāsidar has the important power of selling or transferring his right of occupancy at pleasure. It is a current opinion in the Marātha country that all the lands were originally of this description.”

As regards the internal relations of clans and village groups, Sir H. Maine states: “The men who composed the primitive communities believed themselves to be kinsmen in the most literal sense of the word; and, surprising as it may seem, there are a multitude of indications that in one stage of thought they must have regarded themselves as equals. When these primitive bodies first make their appearance as landowners, as claiming an exclusive enjoyment in a definite area of land, not only do their shares of the soil appear to have been originally equal, but a number of contrivances survive for preserving the equality, of which the most frequent is the periodical redistribution of the tribal domain.”⁵⁴ Similarly Professor Hearn states: “The settlement of Europe was made by clans. Each clan occupied a certain territory—much, I suppose, as an Australian squatter takes up new country. The land thus occupied was distributed by metes and bounds to each branch of the clan; the remainder, if any, continuing the property of the clan.”⁵⁵ And again: “In those cases where the land had been acquired by conquest there were generally some remains of the conquered population who retained more or less interest in the lands that had once been their own. But as between the conquerors themselves it was the clansmen, and the clansmen only, who were entitled to derive any advantage from the land that the clan had acquired. The outsiders, the men who lived with the clan but were not of the clan, were no part of the folk, and had no share in the folkland. No services rendered, no participation in the common danger, no endurance of the burden and heat of the day, could create in an outsider any colour of right. Nothing short of admission to the clan, and of initiation in its worship, could enable him to demand as of right the grass of a single cow or the wood for a single fire.”⁵⁶

23. The ownership of land

Thus it appears that the cultivating community of each village constituted an exogamous clan, the members of which believed themselves to be kinsmen. When some caste or tribe occupied a fresh area of land they were distributed by clans in villages, over the area, all the cultivators of a village being of one caste or tribe, as is still the case with the Kunbis in Berār. Sometimes several alien castes or groups became amalgamated into a single caste, such as the Kurmis and Kunbis; in others they either remained as a separate caste or became one. When the non-Aryan tribes retained possession of the land, there is every reason to suppose that they also were admitted into Hinduism, and either constituted a fresh caste with the cultivating status, or were absorbed into an existing one with a change of name. Individual ownership of land was probably unknown. The patel or village headman, on whom proprietary right was conferred by the British Government, certainly did not possess it previously. He was simply the spokesman and representative of the village community in its dealings with the central or ruling authority. But it seems scarcely likely either that the village community considered itself to own the land. Cases in which the community as a corporate body has exercised any function of ownership other than that of occupying and cultivating the soil, if recorded at all, must be extremely rare, and I do not know that any instance is given by Sir Henry Maine. A tutelary village god is to be found as a rule in every Hindu village. In the Central Provinces the most common is Khermāta, that is the goddess of the village itself or the village lands. She is a form of Devi, the general earth-goddess. When a village is founded the first thing to be done is to install the village god. Thus the soil of the village is venerated as a goddess, and it seems doubtful whether the village community considered itself the owner. In the Marātha Districts, Hanumān or Mahābīr, the monkey god, is the tutelary deity of the village. His position seems to rest on the belief of the villagers that the monkeys were the lords and owners of the soil before their own arrival. For the worship of these and the other village gods there is usually a village priest, known as Bhumka, Bhumia, Baiga or Jhānkar, who is taken from the non-Aryan tribes. The reason for his appointment seems to be that the Hindus still look on themselves to some extent as strangers and interlopers in relation to the gods of the earth and the village, and consider it necessary to approach these through the medium of one of their predecessors. The words Bhumka and Bhumia both mean lord of the soil, or belonging to the soil. As already seen, the authority of some menial official belonging to the indigenous tribes is accepted as final in cases of disputed boundaries, the idea being apparently that as his ancestors first occupied the village, he has inherited from them the knowledge of its true extent and limits. All these points appear to tell strongly against the view that the Hindu village community considered itself to own the village land as we understand the phrase. They seem to have looked on the land as a god, and often their own tutelary deity and protector. What they held themselves to possess was a right of occupancy, in virtue of prescriptive settlement, not subject to removal or disturbance, and transmitted by inheritance to persons born into the membership of the village community. Under the Muhammadans the idea that the state ultimately owned the land may have been held, but prior to them the existence of such a belief is doubtful. The Hindu king did not take rent for land, but a share of the produce for the support of his establishments. The Rājpūt princes did not call themselves after the name of their country, but of its capital town, as if their own property consisted only in the town, as Jodhpur, Jaipur and Udaipur, instead of Mārwār, Dhūndhār and Mewār. Just as the village has a priest of the non-Aryan tribes for propitiating the local gods, so the Rājpūt chief at his accession was often inducted to the royal cushion by a Bhīl or Mīna, and received the badge of investiture as if he had to obtain his title from these tribes. Indeed the right of the village community to the land was held sometimes superior to that of the state. Sir J. Malcolm relates that he was very anxious to get the village of Bassi in Indore State repopulated when it had lain waste for thirty-six years. He had arranged with the Bhīl headman of a neighbouring village to bring it under cultivation on a favourable lease. The plan had other advantages, and Holkar’s minister was most anxious to put it into execution, but said that this could not be done until every possible effort had been made to discover whether any descendant of the former patel or of any watandār or hereditary cultivator of Bassi was still in existence; for if such were found, he said, “even we Marāthas, bad as we are, cannot do anything which interferes with their rights.” None such being found at the time, the village was settled as proposed by Malcolm; but some time afterwards, a boy was discovered who was descended from the old patel’s family, and he was invited to resume the office of headman of the village of his forefathers, which even the Bhīl, who had been nominated to it, was forward to resign to the rightful inheritor.⁵⁷ Similarly the Marātha princes, Sindhia, Holkar and others, are recorded to have set more store by the headship of the insignificant Deccan villages, which were the hereditary offices of their families, than by the great principalities which they had carved out for themselves with the sword. The former defined and justified their position in the world as the living link and representative of the continuous family comprising all their ancestors and all their descendants; the latter was at first regarded merely as a transient, secular possession, and a source of wealth and profit. This powerful hereditary right probably rested on a religious basis. The village community was considered to be bound up with its village god in one joint life, and hence no one but they could in theory have the right to cultivate the lands of that village. The very origin and nature of this right precluded any question of transfer or alienation. The only lands in which any ownership, corresponding to our conception of the term, was held to exist, were perhaps those granted free of revenue for the maintenance of temples, which were held to be the property of the god. In Rome and other Greek and Latin cities the idea of private or family ownership of land also developed from a religious sentiment. It was customary to bury the dead in the fields which they had held, and here the belief was that their spirits remained and protected the interests of the family. Periodical sacrifices were made to them and they participated in all the family ceremonies. Hence the land in which the tombs of ancestors were situated was held to belong to the family, and could not be separated from it.⁵⁸ Gradually, as the veneration for the spirits of ancestors decayed, the land came to be regarded as the private property of the family, and when this idea had been realised it was made alienable, though not with the same freedom as personal property. But the word pecunia for money, from pecus a flock, like the Hindi dhan, which means wealth and also flocks of goats and sheep, and feudal from the Gaelic fiu, cattle, point to conditions of society in which land was not considered a form of private property or wealth. M. Fustel de Coulanges notices other primitive races who did not recognise property in land: “The Tartars understand the term property as applying to cattle, but not as applying to land. According to some authors, among the ancient Germans there was no ownership of land; every year each member of the tribe received a holding to cultivate, and the holding was changed in the following year. The German owned the crop; he did not own the soil. The same was the case among a part of the Semitic race and certain of the Slav peoples.”⁵⁹ In large areas of the Nigeria Protectorate at present, land has no exchangeable value at all; but by the native system of taxation a portion of the produce is taken in consideration of the right of use.⁶⁰ In ancient Arabia ‘Baal’ meant the lord of some place or district, that is, a local deity, and hence came to mean a god. Land naturally moist was considered as irrigated by a god and the special place or habitation of the god. To the numerous Canaanite Baalims, or local deities, the Israelites ascribed all the natural gifts of the land, the corn, the wine, and the oil, the wool and the flax, the vines and fig trees. Pasture land was common property, but a man acquired rights in the soil by building a house, or, by ‘quickening’ a waste place, that is, bringing it under cultivation.⁶¹ The Israelites thought that they derived their title to the land of Canaan from Jehovah, having received it as a gift from Him. The association of rights over the land with cultivation and building, pointed out by Professor Robertson Smith, may perhaps explain the right over the village lands which was held to appertain to the village community. They had quickened the land and built houses on it, establishing the local village deity on their village sites, and it was probably thought that their life was bound up with that of the village god, and only they had a right to cultivate his land. This would explain the great respect shown by the Marāthas for hereditary title to land, as seen above; a feeling which must certainly have been based on some religious belief, and not on any moral idea of equity or justice; no such deep moral principle was possible in the Hindu community at the period in question. The Hindu religious conception of rights to land was thus poles apart from the secular English law of proprietary and transferable right, and if the native feeling could have been, understood by the early British administrators the latter would perhaps have been introduced only in a much modified form.

24. The cultivating status that of the Vaishya

The suggested conclusion from the above argument is that the main body of the Aryan immigrants, that is the Vaishyas, settled down in villages by exogamous clans or septs. The cultivators of each village believed themselves to be kinsmen descended from a common ancestor, and also to be akin to the god of the village lands from which they drew their sustenance. Hence their order had an equal right to cultivate the village land and their children to inherit it, though they did not conceive of the idea of ownership of land in the sense in which we understand this phrase.

The original status of the Vaishya, or a full member of the Aryan community who could join in sacrifices and employ Brāhmans to perform them, was gradually transferred to the cultivating member of the village communities. In process of time, as land was the chief source of wealth, and was also regarded as sacred, the old status became attached to castes or groups of persons who obtained or held land irrespective of their origin, and these are what are now called the good cultivating castes. They have now practically the same status, though, as has been seen, they were originally of most diverse origin, including bands of robbers and freebooters, cattle-lifters, non-Aryan tribes, and sections of any castes which managed to get possession of an appreciable quantity of land.