ht. Nothing short of admission to the clan,
and of initiation in its worship, could enable him to demand as of
right the grass of a single cow or the wood for a single fire." [56]

23. The ownership of land.

Thus it appears that the cultivating community of each village
constituted an exogamous clan, the members of which believed themselves
to be kinsmen. When some caste or tribe occupied a fresh area of land
they were distributed by clans in villages, over the area, all the
cultivators of a village being of one caste or tribe, as is still
the case with the Kunbis in Berar. Sometimes several alien castes or
groups became amalgamated into a single caste, such as the Kurmis and
Kunbis; in others they either remained as a separate caste or became
one. When the non-Aryan tribes retained possession of the land, there
is every reason to suppose that they also were admitted into Hinduism,
and either constituted a fresh caste with the cultivating status, or
were absorbed into an existing one with a change of name. Individual
ownership of land was probably unknown. The _patel_ or village headman,
on whom proprietary right was conferred by the British Government,
certainly did not possess it previously. He was simply the spokesman
and representative of the village community in its dealings with the
central or ruling authority. But it seems scarcely likely either that
the village community considered itself to own the land. Cases in
which the community as a corporate body has exercised any function
of ownership other than that of occupying and cultivating the soil,
if recorded at all, must be extremely rare, and I do not know that
any instance is given by Sir Henry Maine. A tutelary village god
is to be found as a rule in every Hindu village. In the Central
Provinces the most common is Khermata, that is the goddess of the
village itself or the village lands. She is a form of Devi, the
general earth-goddess. When a village is founded the first thing to
be done is to install the village god. Thus the soil of the village
is venerated as a goddess, and it seems doubtful whether the village
community considered itself the owner. In the Maratha Districts,
Hanuman or Mahabir, the monkey god, is the tutelary deity of the
village. His position seems to rest on the belief of the villagers
that the monkeys were the lords and owners of the soil before their own
arrival. For the worship of these and the other village gods there is
usu