168 JAMES NEIL, M.A., 
almost as many traces of joint-ownership and common culti- 
vation as the countries of the North of the Continent ; but our 
interest culminates, I think, when we find that these primitive 
European tenures and this primitive European tillage consti- 
tute the actual working system of the Indian Village-Com- 
munities, and that they determine the whole course of 
Anglo-Indian administration.”* In another place this learned 
English jurist tells us, “ The most distinguished public 
servants” of the last century “have left much on record 
which implies an opinion that no ownership of Indian land 
was discoverable, except that of the Village-Communities, 
subject to the dominion of the State.”t 
We are told of these Communities, as they were found 
existing in India, that the Headman or council of village 
elders (this latter always bearmg “a name which recalls its 
ancient constitution of Five persons”) who ruled them did 
not command but merely declared what had always been 
done, for custom with them was omnipotent and inexorable, 
Thus any one who had been aggrieved did not appeal to the 
authorities on the ground of an individual wrong, but of the 
disturbance of the order of the entire community. Disputes 
of a civil nature came before the village elders, but criminal 
law was left to trial and execution by the individuals 
wronged, who with their own hands avenged manslaughter, 
murder, and adultery in the case of a wife by the punishment 
of death. Each farmer had his portion allotted to him by 
the village, which he cultivated himself with the aid of his 
sons and slaves; but he could not cultivate as he pleased. 
He must sow the same crop as the rest of the community. 
There was a periodical redistribution of the several holdings. 
The system was that of “shifting severalties,” not the 
separate perpetual holding, much less the absolute power to 
alienate any part of the soil. ‘The description,” says 
Sir Henry Sumner Maine, “ given by Maurer of the Teutonic 
Mark of the township as his researches have shown it to him 
might here again pass for an account, so far as it goes, of an 
Indian village.” ‘To which I may add that both the former 
Indian village and the Teutonic Mark answer in all this to 
the present Palestine Village-Community, which is evidently 
nothing else but the ancient Mark surviving to this hour in a 
still more ancient and perfect form. 
Julius Faucher of Berlin, in his paper on Systems of Land 
* Village-Communities in the East and West, pp. 61, 62. 
+ Ibid., p. 154. 
