Vanaspati: Plants and Plant-Life as in Indian Treatises and Traditions c6.t3.90

c6.t3.90

The 5th verse supplemented by the 7th gives us an idea of the village life based on communal principle. It does not seem to be improbable that the villagers used a plot of land in common, where they used to graze their cattle, and cultivate the land, and sow and reap the corn collectively. The five races of men referred to may be the five bodies of men—namely, the ploughmen, the sower, the reaper, the gatherer and the bringer and the distributor. All these were engaged in the common work of cultivation in the most comprehensive sense of the word. The theory of the division of labour seems to have been understood, realised and thoroughly practised by the Ancients. At the very early stage of society a race of invading immigrants, just settled in groups in an unreclaimed land, could not do better than fall upon the method of organisation on communal basis—one headman with his band of followers, supervising, controlling and distributing the produce of the common land amongst his followers much after the fashion of a father in a family.