utions; (5) that the Indian
parallels carry the subject a step further than the European examples
because they are stamped with the mark of difference in race-origin,
one portion belonging to the Aryan people and the other to the
non-Aryan.

I shall now pick out some examples, and explain from them the evidence
which seems to me to prove that race-distinction is the key for the
origin of these agricultural rites and usages in Europe as in India. I
have dealt with these examples at some length in my book on the
village community, and I shall only use such details as I require for
my immediate purpose.

My first point is that to get at the survivals of the village
community in Britain it is not necessary to approach it through the
medium of manorial history. Extremely ancient as I am inclined to
think manorial history is, it is unquestionably loaded with an
artificial terminology and with the chains so deftly forged by
lawyers. An analysis of the chief features in the types of the English
village community shows that the manorial element is by no means a
common factor in the series. These types mark the transition from the
tribal form to the village form. In Harris Island we have the chief
with his free tribesmen around him, connected by blood kinship, living
in scattered homesteads, just like the German tribes described by
Tacitus. Under this tribal community is the embryo of the village
community, consisting of smaller tenantry and cottar serfs, who live
together in minute villages, holding their land in common and yearly
distributing the holdings by lot. In this type the tribal constitution
is the real factor, and the village constitution the subordinated
factor as yet wholly undeveloped, scarcely indeed discernible except
by very close scrutiny.

At Kilmorie the tribal community is represented merely by the
scattered homesteads. These are occupied by a joint farm-tenantry, who
hold their lands upon the system of the village community. Here the
village constitution has gradually entered into, so to speak, the
tribal constitution, and has almost absorbed it.

At Heisgier and Lauder the tribal community is represented by the last
link under the process of dissolution, namely, the free council of the
community by which the village rights are governed, while the village
community has developed to a considerable extent.

At Aston and at Malmesbury the old tribal constitution is still kept
alive in a remarkable manner