The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c19.s2.19

v1.c19.s2.19

The clan subsisted on the produce of their rice fields and their cattle. The villages were of grouped, not scattered, huts on the margin of the rice field. The cattle wandered in harvest time, under the charge of a village herdsman, through the adjoining forest (of which the village groves were a remnant), and over which the Sākiyan peasantry had common rights. Men of certain special crafts, most probably not Sākiyans by birth—carpenters, smiths, and potters for instance—had villages of their own ; and so also had the Brāhmans whose services were often in request for all kinds of magic. The villages were separated one from another by forest jungle, the remains of the Great Wood (the *Mahāvana*), portions of which are so frequently mentioned as still surviving throughout the clanships. The jungle was infested from time to time by robbers, sometimes runaway slaves. But we hear of no crime (and there was probably not very much) in the villages themselves—each of them a tiny self-governed republic.