skrit equivalent for it, and certainly there is nothing like it in the Dravida dialects. We must not hastily assume, therefore, that any collection of human beings precisely and in all points corresponding to an English family, as we understand the phrase in ordinary talk, actually exists at the present moment in the Madras Province.

In like manner I have failed so far to discover Sanskrit words corresponding to 'joint' and 'undivided,' though of course 'avibhakta' stands for one still unseparated from his brethren. And I venture to regard it as being quite within the bounds of possibility, that the whole of what is denoted and connoted by the words 'joint undivided family' may turn out to be foreign to, and unwarranted by, the Sanskrit law-treatises.

The institutions of the Aryan race have been dealt with at length by Doctor Hearn in his Aryan Household, and I cannot do better than quote here some of his introductory observations on the character of the archaic clan, and its constituent families, since this writer appears to represent with sufficient fidelity the latest school of investigators in the new field of prehistoric and very early sociology. He says at p. 4: In all its leading characteristics-political, legal, religious, economic-archaic society presents a complete contrast to that in which we live. There was in it no central government, and consequently there were no political organs. There was no law to make, and there was none to be executed. There were neither parliaments, nor courts of justice, nor executive officers.

There was no national church. The great bulk of property, not only as to its tenure, but as to its enjoyment, was in the hands not of individuals, but of corporate households. There were few contracts, and no wills. Men lived according to their customs. They received their property from their fathers, and transmitted it to their heirs. They were protected or, if need were, avenged by the help of their kinsmen. There was, in short, neither individual nor State. The clan, or some association founded upon the model of the clan, and its subdivisions, filled the whole of our forefathers' social life. Within its limits was their world. Beyond it they could find no resting-place. For the origin of this clan-relation we must ascend a long way in the history of the human mind. It is due neither to force nor to fraud, nor to any calculation of personal advantage. It has its source in the sentiment of religion. In archaic society, the one unfailing centripetal force was community of worship. As many as were forms of worship, so many were the associations of men. Where men were associated, there a special worship is found. The symbol of the common worship was a meal shared in honour of the Deity. Of these various worships, probably the oldest, and certainly the most persistent, was the worship of the Lares, or house-spirits, or, in other words, deceased ancestors. These spirits, together with their living descendants, whether natural or adoptive, in their several ranks formed collectively that corporate body which, though it is known by a variety of names, I have called the Household. Over the

He was

household the House Father presided, with powers limited only by the custom of his race. generally the eldest male of the line. He represented the household in all external dealings. He was charged with the management of its property, and with the celebration of its worship. Sooner or later, when the household became inconveniently large, it spontaneously divided into several households, all related to each other, but each having a separate existence, each holding distinct corporate property, and each maintaining its special worship. The continued increase of these related households gave rise to the clan, the form in which, historically, our ancestors first became apparent to us. This wider association, which naturally resembled, in many respects, the household of which it was the expansion, marked the boundary line of human sympathy in the archaic world. Within the clan there was the truest loyalty and devotion. Beyond the clan there was at best absolute indifference, and usually active hostility. The clan was settled upon land of which it, in its corporate character, had the exclusive ownership, and which it shared among its members according to certain customary rules. It possessed an organisation sufficient for its ordinary wants, and was essentially autonomous.'

Whilst we may very properly claim the right to reserve our judgments on several of the propositions here put forward, we may, I think, accept without hesitation the general picture given of archaic Aryan institutions. Then, with regard to the archaic 'Household,' Doctor Hearn observes (at p. 64) that

6

it differed in every respect from the modern English family, inasmuch as it was an organised permanent body, distinct from its individual members, owning property, and having other rights and duties of its own. In it all its members, whatever might be their position, had interests according to their rank. Over it the House Father presided with absolute power, not as owner in his own right, but as the officer and representative of the corporation.' The members of the Household were bound together not by blood, or by contract, but by the tie of community of domestic worship, the joint perpetuation of the sacra peculiar and essential thereto. Not only was its termination not expected, every effort was made to maintain its existence. Ordinarily, it extended to collateral as well as lineal relatives. It included servants and dependents, and children by adoption, all in fact who came under the hand or power of the Father; whose business it was 'not only to administer the temporal affairs of his family, but to perform the ceremonies of its religion and to maintain the purity of its ritual.'

Doctor Hearn specially insists on the (supposed) fact that the Household was a corporate body, though he admits that it is not easy to prove it. He quotes various writers, from Ortolan to Mr. Justice Markby, to show that amongst the Romans, the Germans, the Irish, and other peoples, the family had a corporate character; and this may have been the case, but I do not see that the original proposition has been quite established.

The first step in the formation of the Household

was marriage, which was sought 'not as in itself a good, but as a means to an end,' to procure the birth of a son. It was the lawfully begotten son alone who could continue the Household. son was not a member of the admitted by the House Father. And even for the slave some mode of initiation appears to have been necessary.

But the newly-born Household till duly

Assuming the corporate character of the Household, Doctor Hearn goes on (at p. 74) to deduce from it the rules of property proper to the household, as thus: Over all movables, over the family and the stock, over the produce of the land, and the labour of his subjects, the power of the House Father was absolute. Although, in the cultivation of his land, he was bound by the customary rules of his community, he could determine to what use he would apply the produce. But he could not sell or charge the land itself. The land belonged to the Household; and the continuance of the Household depended upon the maintenance of the hearth and of the tomb, and of the offerings at them, which formed the first charge upon the common property. Of this primitive inalienability of land there is little doubt.'

As the Father could not sell, so also he could not mortgage, the lands of the Household, except for his own life. Nor could he, of his own mere motion, devise his property to strangers, or even alter its devolution among his children. He was the officer of the corporation, the steward or manager of the property, with all the powers needed for the efficient