About The Book
There are many illuminating accounts of the village life in our epics and classics. The observation of Dube is very correct that "From time immemorial the village has been a basic and important unit in the organisation of Indian social polity. It finds prominent mention in the classical texts of the land. For example, according to Rig Veda (generally dated in the latter half of the 2nd millennium B.C.) society developed in a series of ascending formations, starting from the family (griha or kula) and gradually extended to the village (grama) the clan (vis) the people (jana) and the country (rashtra). The term grama still largely used in India for village, denoted an aggregate of several families sharing the same habitation. Besides mentioning that the village was headed by the gramini, the chief of the village. The Mahabharata (2nd century B.C.-2nd century A.D.) mentions several types of habitations and settlements such as cattle farm (ghosh or Varaja), small barbarian hamlets (poli), forts to protect surrounding settlements druga) village developing around the forts (grama), Own (kharvata or pattan) and city (nagara)" (1955 p. 1). Importance of Village Study in Indian Anthropology In the classics of India, the mention of a few aspects of the village life is regarded as the earliest writing One, while analysing these studies on the line of sociological writings, finds that those have hardly to do any thing in describing the society as a system. In the modern history of the village in India, one would find that even before the first half of the 19th century, a few works dealing with the land revenue or forest right were published by the administrators, missionaries, economists, geographers, visitors and social workers. It helped in creating a favourable atmosphere for further study in anthropological studies. In a brilliant paper on Social Anthropological Researches in India, Prof. L.P. Vidyarthi (1966) has highlighted some of the basic factors about the genesis and stages of development of Anthropology in India. The three phases mentioned are given below: (i) Formulator period (1774 - 1919) (ii) Constructive period (1920-1950) (iii) Analytical period (1950 -) In the formulatory period, the village study was initiated, in the latter half of the 19th century, by the publication of few books namely "Ancient Law" (1861), and "Village communities in the East and West" (1871) by Sir Henry Maine. "Ancient Law" was mainly devoted to the study of the land system
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