Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c4.s2.37

c4.s2.37

Secondly, the villagers themselves, perhaps through their committee, exercised not a little amount of influence on the activities of the headman. In both the instances cited above, *viz.*, of prohibitions against animal-slaughter and sale of intoxicating liquors, the villagers make a representation in a body to their headman to suspend or annual the prohibitions, for those were their time-honoured practices. The headman had to yield and say: "Do as you have always done aforetime."¹ The village-committee must have been a potent force in the carrying out of the affairs affecting the common interests of the villagers in general. Although it is not possible to say anything definitely regarding the constitution of such committees, indications are not wanting to point out the fact that the heads of the houses in a village carried on their common affairs in remarkable harmony and co-operation. It is necessary to point out in this connection, that though the majority of villages very likely contained a heterogeneous population, there were others, inhabited exclusively or mainly by members of a single class or followers of a single occupation, thus making a homogeneous whole.² In this latter case, the guild or corporation (seṇi), which was, as we shall see later on, already a powerful factor in the economic and social life of the people, shared with the headman the responsibility of carrying on the management of rural affairs. And if the village consisted of men following more than one profession, the village-committee might have comprised a representative of each family in the village. Thus we see in the hamlet of Macala in the kingdom of Magadha, heads of thirty families of which its population was composed, assembling together in the middle of the village, and carrying on the business of the village.³ Similarly in another place⁴ we find the same number of men transacting the village-affairs. This is significant. And as has been well observed,⁵ "it may not also be improbable that, irrespective of the total population of a village, the committee usually consisted of thirty members or thereabouts."