442 INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



A noteworthy fact must be added. &quot;While these com 

 munities, maintained for mutual protection during turbulent 

 ages, have been disintegrating elsewhere, they have retained 

 their original form in Montenegro. Says Sir H. Maine : 



&quot;The dominant notion there is that, as the house-community is 

 liable for the delinquencies of its members, it is entitled to receive all 

 the produce of their labour ; and thus the fundamental rule of these 

 communities, as of the Hindu joint families, is that a member working 

 or trading at a distance from the seat of the brotherhood ought to 

 account to it for his profits.&quot; 



Evidently the chronic warfare which the Montenegrins carry 

 011, is the cause of the implied cohesion. 



785. As simple family-groups grow into compound 

 family-groups, so these, becoming too large for single house 

 holds, grow, as implied above, into clusters of households: 

 house-communities develop into village-communities. These 

 we have now to consider. 



There is evidence that in the 4th century, B. c., such vil 

 lage-communities existed in India. ISTearchus, one of Alex 

 ander s generals, is reported by Strabo as observing that : 



&quot; Among other tribes the ground is cultivated by families and in 

 common ; when the produce is collected, each takes a load sufficient 

 for his subsistence during the year ; the remainder is burnt, in order 

 to have a reason for renewing their labour, and not remaining inactive.&quot; 

 During two thousand and odd years, distorting changes have 

 produced various forms, but the essential nature of these 

 social groups remains traceable. In his essay on &quot; The 

 Village Community of Bengal and Upper India,&quot; Mr. 

 Jogendra Chandra Ghosh tells us that in certain parts of 

 India, villages are &quot; extensive habitations, which are far too 

 big and too irregular, to be called a single dwelling-house, 

 and of which the external appearance may not be very 

 remote from that of a walled village &quot; a structure which he 

 compares with the structures left by the Pueblos of E&quot;ew 

 Mexico compound houses so built as to &quot; wall out black 

 barbarism &quot; ( 730). The defensive purpose of these united 



