The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c17.41

v1.c17.41

There is no hint in the Rigveda of the size to which a family might grow and yet keep together. It is clear that there might be three generations under the same roof, and a family might thus be of considerable dimensions. But life can hardly have been long—so much stress is laid on longevity as a great boon that it must have been rare—and, even if we decline to accept the view that exposure of aged parents was normal, there must have been a tendency for the family to break up as soon as the parent died, especially if, as is probable, there was no such land hunger as to compel the sons to stay together. The sons would, however, naturally enough stay in the vicinity of one another for mutual support and assistance. The little knot of houses of the several branches of the family would together form the nucleus of the second stage in Rigvedic society, the *grāma*, 'village,' though some have derived its name originally from the sense 'horde'¹ as describing the armed force of the tribe which in war fought in the natural divisions of family and family. Next in order above the *grāma* in the orthodox theory was the *viç* or ‘canton,’ while a group of cantons made up the *jana*, ‘people.’ This scheme can be supported by apparent analogies not only from Greece, Italy, Germany, and Russia, but also from the Irānian state with the graduated hierarchy of family or households, *vīs*, *zantu*, and *dahyu*¹. But for Vedic India the fourfold gradation cannot successfully be maintained. It is not merely that the various terms are used with distressing vagueness—so that for example the Bharatas can be called at one time a *jana* and at another a *grāma*—but that the evidence for the relationship of subordination between the *grāma* and the *viç* is totally wanting. Moreover the Irānian evidence tells against the theory that the *viç* is removed by the *grāma* from the family in the narrower sense: the more legitimate interpretation is to see in the Irānian division a step further than that of the Rigveda and to set the *jana* as parallel to the *zantu*, acknowledging that in the time of the Rigveda the political organisation of the people had not extended to the creation of aggregates of *janas*, unless such an aggregate is presented to us in the twenty-one *janas* of the two Vaikarṇas who are mentioned in one passage of the Saṁhitā. The *viç* will thus take its place beside the Irānian *vīs* as a clan as opposed to family in the narrower sense, and be a real parallel to the Latin *gens*, and the Greek *genos*. It is possible that the *grāma* is originally the *gens* in its military aspect, but even that is not certain, for the word may originally have referred to locality. Nor can we say with any certainty for the period of the Rigveda whether the *grāma* contained the whole of a *viç*, or part of a *viç*, or parts of several *viças*. But amid much that is conjectural it is clear that the *viç* was not a normal unit for purposes of government, for the term *viçpati*, ‘lord of a *viç*,’ has not in any passage the technical sense of ‘lord of a canton.’ On the other hand, the *grāma* as a unit is recognised by the use of the term *grāmaṇī*, ‘leader of a village,’ an officer who appears in the Rigveda, and who was probably invested with both military and civil functions, though we have no details of his duties or powers.