ates it from every religious
association.--A. W.]

[Footnote 29: Manu VII. 115.]

[Footnote 30: H. M. Elliot, "Supplement to the Glossary of Indian
Terms," p. 151.]

[Footnote 31: I see from Dr. Hunter's latest statistical tables that
the whole number of towns and villages in British India amounts to
493,429. Out of this number 448,320 have less than 1000 inhabitants,
and may be called villages. In Bengal, where the growth of towns has
been most encouraged through Government establishments, the total
number of homesteads is 117,042, and more than half of these contain
less than 200 inhabitants. Only 10,077 towns in Bengal have more than
1000 inhabitants, that is, no more than about a seventeenth part of
all the settlements are anything but what we should call substantial
villages. In the North-Western Provinces the last census gives us
105,124 villages, against 297 towns. See London _Times_, 14th Aug.
1882.]

[Footnote 32: "Ancient India as described by Megasthenes and Arrian,"
by McCrindle, p. 42.]

[Footnote 33: "Perjury seems to be committed by the meanest and
encouraged by some of the better sort among the Hindus and Mussulmans,
with as little remorse as if it were a proof of ingenuity, or even a
merit."--Sir W. Jones, Address to Grand Jury at Calcutta, in Mill's
"History of India," vol. i., p. 324. "The longer we possess a
province, the more common and grave does perjury become."--Sir G.
Campbell, quoted by Rev. Samuel Johnson, "Oriental Religions, India,"
p. 288.]

[Footnote 34: Vasish_th_a, translated by Buehler, VIII. 8.]

[Footnote 35: Mr. J. D. Baldwin, author of "Prehistoric Nations,"
declares that this system of village-communities existed in India long
before the Aryan conquest. He attributes it to Cushite or AEthiopic
influence, and with great plausibility. Nevertheless, the same system
flourished in prehistoric Greece, even till the Roman conquests. Mr.
Palgrave observed it existing in Arabia. "Oman is less a kingdom than
an aggregation of municipalities," he remarks; "each town, each
village has its separate existence and corporation, while towns and
villages, in their turn, are subjected to one or other of the
ancestral chiefs." The Ionian and Phoenician cities existed by a
similar tenure, as did also the Free Cities of Europe. It appears,
indeed, to have been the earlier form of rule. Megasthenes noticed it
in India. "The village-communities," says Sir Charles Metcalf, "are
little republics,