It has been seen also that Visha in the plural signified clans. The
clan was the small body which lived together, and in the patriarchal
stage was connected by a tie of kinship held to be derived from a
common ancestor. Thus it is likely that the clans settled down in
villages, the cultivators of one village being of the same exogamous
clan. The existing system of exogamy affords evidence in favour of this
view, as will be seen. All the families of the clan had cultivating
rights in the land, and were members of the village community; and
there were no other members, unless possibly a Kshatriya headman or
leader. The Sudras were their labourers and serfs, with no right to
hold land, and a third intermediate class of village menials gradually
grew up.

The law of Mirasi tenures in Madras is perhaps a survival of the
social system of the early village community. Under it only a few
of the higher castes were allowed to hold land, and the monopoly was
preserved by the rule that the right of taking up waste lands belonged
primarily to the cultivators of the adjacent holdings; no one else
could acquire land unless he first bought them out. The pariahs or
impure castes were not allowed to hold land at all. This rule was
pointed out by Mr. Slocock, and it is also noticed by Sir Henry Maine:
"There are in Central and Southern India certain villages to which a
class of persons is hereditarily attached, in such a manner that they
form no part of the natural and organic aggregate to which the bulk
of the villagers belong. These persons are looked upon as essentially
impure; they never enter the village, or only enter reserved portions
of it; and their touch is avoided as contaminating. Yet they bear
extremely plain marks of their origin. Though they are not included
in the village, they are an appendage solidly connected with it;
they have definite village duties, one of which is the settlement of
boundaries, on which their authority is allowed to be conclusive. They
evidently represent a population of alien blood whose lands have been
occupied by the colonists or invaders forming the community." [52]
Elsewhere, Sir Henry Maine points out that in many cases the outsiders
were probably admitted to the possession of land, but on an inferior
tenure to the primary holders or freemen who formed the cultivating
body of the village; and suggests that this may have been the ground
for the original distinction between occupancy and non-occu