earth. All the early travellers were struck by the display of wealth, and our rising industries were obliged to be protected against Indian competition. Aurungzib's renewal of the poll-tax on Hindoos, which had been abrogated by the wise tolerance of Akbar, was a most oppressive measure politically, and the system of farming the revenue again assumed dangerous and most harmful proportions towards the close of the dynasty; but it remains true that during the time that we were slowly working our way from being merchants to conquerors, India remained a wealthy country, with a revenue enormous in comparison with that of any European State, and with apparently a great power of rebound from any temporary misfortune, such as a Mahratta rising or an Afghan invasion. Nor should we overlook the fact, that in spite of much cruelty and rapine, the rivalry of the states and rajahs, the display of native courts, the magnificence of native architecture, gave a life and colour to the whole people such as is unknown in British India of our time.

This capacity of rapid recovery from disaster, which has been remarked before by all observers as a striking characteristic of India in the period prior to our invasion, was undoubtedly due to the permanence of the village community. The village community or township was the unit of early Aryan civilisation, as the gens was the unit of the social system in the Gentile organisation of savagery and barbarism. It formed, and in many districts still forms, a complete organism in itself, which can be grouped with, but never absorbed by, other similar organisms. The primitive communal arrangements

on which they were based have been handed down from countless generations, and the manner in which the payment of land revenue to a chosen centre arose can now almost certainly be traced. In its origin the arrangement was democratic rather than monarchal. But what concerns us is the steady prosperity and marvellous continuity of these village communities, which were the main element of a society where the enormous majority of the population was agricultural. Thorough masters of their own method of tillage, and well able to deal with problems of irrigation in dry regions which our own engineers have so far failed to grapple with successfully, they are self-supporting, and practically independent of all outsiders. These little republics have each and all their headman, who is chiefly supported by the community which he represents in respect to the government, and administers in a popular way the business of the community in regard to the division of lands, the apportionment of water, etc. The accountant, the watchman, the priest, followed by the smith, the carpenter, the barber, the potter, and others, have all their places in the little society, who are all dependent for their support upon the agriculture of the group, and hand on their avocations from father to son from generation to generation.

If another village is formed, though the extent of territory and number of inhabitants may be different, the same functionaries are provided for, and all take their part in some way in the communal business. In such a case there is absolutely no complete property, but the whole village is responsible for the payment, through the headman, of its percentage

of revenue on the crops calculated on land of three degrees of fertility. Clearly these village communities, when grouped in tens or hundreds under the old native system, might afford fine opportunities for plunder to a collector or zemindar of a pergunnah, as the group of a hundred was called. But, in spite of many instances of extortion, there is nothing to show that the country was exhausted by the demands made upon it, and the villages survived the raids and misgovernment of Afghan and Patan, Mogul, Sikh, and Mahratta, who might be masters and conquerors for a time, but the villages still lived on.

"In times of trouble they arm and fortify themselves; a hostile army passes through the country; the village communities collect their cattle within their walls, and let the enemy pass unprovoked. If plunder and devastation be directed against themselves, and the force employed be irresistible, they flee to friendly villages at a distance; but, when the storm has passed over, they return and resume their occupations. If a country remain for a series of years the scene of continued pillage and massacre, so that the villages cannot be inhabited, the scattered villagers nevertheless return whenever the power of peaceable possession revives. A generation may pass away, but the succeeding generation will return. The sons will take the places of their fathers; the same site for the village, the same position for the houses, the same lands will be reoccupied by the descendants of those who were driven out when the village was depopulated; and it is not a trifling matter that will drive them out, for they will often maintain their post through times of disturbance and convulsion,

and acquire strength sufficient to resist pillage and oppression with success. This union of the village communities, each one forming a separate little state in itself, has, I conceive, contributed more than any other cause to the preservation of the people of India through all the revolutions and changes which they have suffered, and is in a high degree conducive to their happiness and to the enjoyment of a great portion of freedom and independence."

Tyranny, lawlessness, and rapine might, in short, reign above, while below these conservative communes maintained almost unruffled the peaceful continuity of their existence. Nor should it be forgotten, that great as might be the temporary oppression exercised by the Government, the Rajah, the Nawab, or the Zemindar, the agricultural wealth extorted from the villagers was at least used in the country, and expended on retainers and others. Bad in Bad in every way as many of the Mahommedan rulers of India were prior to the Mogul dynasty, they at least lived in the country, and Nadir Shah's loot of Delhi was quite an exceptional event, as well it might be.

Consequently we find that during the whole period from the first English acquaintance with India through the reigns of Jehangir, Shah Jehan, Aurungzib, and Mohammed Shah, until in the last century we began to compete with the French for the supremacy, the records of impoverishment and famine are but trifling. Here again the popular opinion is, to a great extent, incorrect. Aurungzib was a powerful but harsh and bad ruler; he imposed obnoxious taxes, and ravaged with cruelty the terri

*Sir Charles Metcalfe.

tories of those who had revolted against him; the Mahratta cavalry were no respecters of persons, and their tribute or chout was levied upon all with complete indifference to anybody's welfare but their own; the weakness of the central power, when the Moguls were tottering to their fall, gave functionaries in Hyderabad, in Bengal, and other territories, opportunity to rob and fleece the inhabitants; and at a later date the Mahommedan adventurers of Seringapatam acted as seemed good in their own eyes until they came into collision with the English power. But through all this long period of tumult and intestine war, of good government under Akbar, and of apparent anarchy during the Mahratta raids, the records of really serious dearth or famine are few and far between. Prior to the present century famine was rare in India.

Not only did the village communities and the Government provide in numberless cases against periods of drought and flood by storage of grain, but even the harshest native ruler, for his own sake, and almost as a matter of course, lessened, or even failed to make, his demand when even trifling scarcity threatened. Much as the method of collection might vary, this judicious laxity may be said to have been almost invariably practised in Native States, as it is now. When the oppression was carried beyond bounds insurrection against the local tyrant was still possible, and not unfrequently successful.

From the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, and from the slopes of Assam to the Persian Gulf, the agricultural population, with their simple but beautiful arts, growing up naturally out of their society, were generally in a prosperous condition. In the great towns