470 



VILLAGE SYSTEM OF THE DECCAK Chap. XXVIL 



uses as the carob in Peru. The hard tough wood is exten- 

 sively used for ploughshares, naves of wheels, and tent-pegs ; 

 its necklace-shaped pods are favourite food for sheep and 

 goats, and the bark is used for tanning.^ It flourishes on dry- 

 arid plains, and especially in black cotton-soil, where other 

 trees are rarely met with. The hedges round Shirwul are of 

 prickly pear or milk-bush {Eupliorbia tirucalli^). 



Shirwul is one amongst many of those village communities 

 of the Deccan which have retained their peculiar customs 

 and organization from time immemorial. The Hindu Eajahs 

 have been succeeded by Mohammedan E-ings, who in their turn 

 have been followed by Mogul Subadars, Mahratta Peishwas, 

 and English Collectors, but the village communities have 

 continued unchanged through all these revolutions, and thus 

 the great mass of the people still live under institutions 

 which excite veneration from their immense age. The cul- 

 tivator of the Deccan obeys precisely the same rules and has 

 the same customs as were followed by his ancestor before the 

 period of history commenced ; and, as the land-assessment 

 has now been established for tliirty years, on remarkably easy 

 terms, his condition may not disadvantageously be compared 

 with that of any other peasantry in the world. 



The village-system of the Deccan is so curious in itself, and 

 so interesting from its unknown antiquity, that some account 

 of one of the villages a few miles from Poena, similar in all 

 respects to that of Shirwul, will not be out of place. I have 

 taken it from an article written thirty years ago.^ 



The land belonging to the village comprises 3669 acres, 

 1955 arable and the rest common pasture, with hedges of 

 milk-bush {Euphorbia tirucalli) enclosing the garden-grounds. 

 The village, which is surrounded by a mud wall with two 



3 Cleghorn, p. 222. Dalzell, p. 86. 

 ' Or Euphorbia neriifolki. Dalzell, 

 p. 226. 



2 Account of the village of Lony, by 

 T. Coats. Transactions of the Bombay 

 Literary Society, 1823, vol. iii. p. 172. 



