Next to Russia, India is the moat important example of the present existence of village com.
munities, although in the manner described by Sir H. Maine (Village Communities, Lect. IV.) their primitive simplicity and essential features were sacrificed for a time at least to alien English and Mohammedan law, the ZEMINDAR or official collector of customary taxes having been converted into a kind of manorial proprietor. In recent years, however, the tendency has been to protect these communities, and over large districts to regard them as the agricultural and fiscal unit. The general features— allowance being made for differences in climate— are not unlike those of the Russian mir and the early Teutonic settlements described below. There is the division into strips, and the cultivation according to minute customary rules of the arable portion, and there is a certain portion of waste enjoyed as pasture by the different members. The village consists of households, each under a despotic head, the family life being characterised by extraordinary secrecy and isolation. In many communities the customs are declared and interpreted not by a council of elders but by the headman alone, his office being sometimes hereditary and sometimes nominally elective. The various trades or crafts necessary to a self-supporting village are also often hereditary, e.g. the blacksmith, the harness maker, etc.
In Java a system prevails closely analogous to that of India. The village is jointly responsible for the payment of taxes, and there is common use of the waste. The rice fields are periodically divided amongst the village families and the houses and gardens are private property. Irrigation is conducted according to communal rules and plans (cp. De Laveleye, Primitive Property, ch. iv.) The Allmends of Switzerland furnish another example of common cultivation. These are lands belonging to the communes, the right of use, however, being hereditary in certain families only, and most residents even of long standing and although having political rights, are excluded. The Allmend furnishes wood for fire and building, pasture for cattle on the alp, and a certain portion of arable land. In some cases there is still periodical division of the land, in others the land is let and the proceeds devoted to the expenses of the commune.
In Scotland, in the crofting parishes, we find as a rule that the tenants have a certain amount of hill ground on which they have the right to pasture so many sheep or cattle, the number varying in different cases according to the holding. As soon as the crops are gathered the ground is thrown open in the same way. There are, however, no periodical divisions, and the village had no rights not derived from the feudal proprietor until the recent legislation giving effect to presumed custom established fixity of tenure at a "fair rent," and made provisions for consolidating holdings.
In England there still survive a number of CoMMoNs and LAMMAS-LANDS in which certain members of a village have definite rights, and there are abundant traces of the old agricultural communities. In most of the countries of
Europe where private property has become the rule there are also survivals which point to the wide prevalence of customary cultivation in common. On the historical development and gradual decay of the village community, the reader should consult Mr. Seebohm's remarkable work, which, on its broad outlines has been mainly followed in the rest of this article. Although nominally this work is confined to England, the search for a rational explanation led the writer to make a wide survey of many other countries at different times. Before Mr. Seebohm's work appeared many writers had called attention to the wide prevalence of common cultivation in England in recent times. A passage is quoted by Sir Henry Maine (Village Communities, p. 90) from Marshall's Treatise on Landed Property (1804), in which the writer from personal observation of "provincial practice " attempts to construct a picture of the ancient agricultural state , of England. He notices the division of the arable land into three great unenclosed fields adapted for the regular triennial succession of fallow, wheat (or rye), and spring crops (oats, beans, peas, etc.) He describes also the division of these fields into strips and the mode in which the meadows and the waste were used. He gives also statistics on the extent to which in his day these open and common fields existed, which have been summarised by E. NASSE, The Common Field System for England in the Middle Ages. Mr. Seebohm points out (p. 14) that taking the whole of England with roughly speaking its 10,000 parishes, nearly 4000 Enclosure Acts were passed between 1760 and 1844, the object of these acts being expressly to get rid of the old common unenclosed fields. But in spite of the Enclosure Acts the old system has left many indelible traces on the surface of the land itself and the nature of the holdings in the size and shape of the fields (compare also Canon Taylor's paper in Domesday Studies on " Domesday Survivals "). The open fields were nominally divided into long acre stripe a furlong (i.e. a furrow-long) in length and four rods in width. Originally these strips were separated by green balks of unploughed turf, and these balks can still be traced. A bundle of these long acre strips a furlong in width made a " shot " (AngloSaxon) " quarentena " (Latin) " furlong " (old English), and these furlongs were divided by broader balks generally overgrown with hushes. The roads by which access was obtained to the strips usually lay along the side of the furlong and at the end of the strips, and these roads, often at right angles to one another, still survive. There are further traces on the land itself of the old " head-lands " (Scotch headrig), the " linches," " butts," " gored acres " and pieces of " no man's land " (Seebohm, p. 6). Canon Taylor in the paper cited above gives some very remarkable examples of the effects of the same method of ploughing in these open fields having been practised for many generations.