Vedic Index of Names and Subjects v1.c3.s21.948

v1.c3.s21.948

³⁵ Baden Powell, whose various works (*Indian Village Community*, 1896; *Village Communities in India*, 1899, etc.) have done most to combat the view of the village community in India as a land-holding institution, is prepared to recognize the family as a land-owning unit, considering that the *patria potestas* is a later growth, and not Indian (see, *e.g.*, *Village Communities in India*, 128 *et seq.*). Hopkins, *India, Old and New*, 218 *et seq.*, adopts a theory which allows of individual and joint family ownership side by side, the latter being apparently the earlier but the decadent stage. He expressly considers (p. 222) that the son had an indefeasible right to prevent the father from alienating the hereditary land, which could only be parted with by the consent of the village (*cf.* the verse cited by Jolly, *Recht und Sitte*, 94). But it must be remembered that, as is very clearly shown in the case of English law by Pollock and Maitland (*History of English Law*, 2, 337-352), the recognition of the rights of sons may well be, not a sign of original joint or family ownership, but a development from the existence of intestate succession, and as in England, so in India, there is no trace of a corporate joint family in the early books. And, as Jolly (*op. cit.*, 76, 80) shows, there are clear traces, both in old and modern times, of a despotic control of the family by the father even after his sons grew up, provided only that he was physically able to control them. The same state of affairs seems proved for early English law, as it is beyond question for Roman law (see Smith’s *Dictionary of Antiquities*, 2, 351 *et seq.*). In Greece also, which is sometimes contrasted with Rome, there is the clearest trace of both a real *patria potestas*, and of the absolute ownership of the land by the father as against the son, especially in the archaic laws of Gortyn (see Gardner and Jevons, *Greek Antiquities*, 404, 405, 563, 566).