the ethnological notebooks of karl marx - Marxists Internet Archive

the Vaisja (Kaufmann’s) Kaste nur evidenced by Brahmanical writers.(248) The great hulk o f the descendants of the original settlers (speaking o fvillages in the mass) less careful of purity of blood, or o f preserving anymark of descent from the immigrant race ... mit ihnen gradually intermixedpeople of all kinds, aborigenes, run-aways from other abads forcause o f pauperism, feud, or otherwise, some of whom came to be evenallowed a portion of the village lands. (248, 249) Probably the Brahman,Kschatria, Vaisja u. Sudra der Brahmanical codes bios Utopian class distinctionsof a prehistoric More. (2 5 o)In allem there is at most conceived only the right to cultivate land, and adeputing o f that right to another in consideration of a share in the produce.(255) Selbst in seinem private land or nij d. chief had only theright to cultivate by himself ’ or to get somebody else to do it on conditionof dividing the product. (2 56) The share of produce which the Chief couldtake from the cultivators was not regulated by his own pleasure, orby the making of a bargain, but by custom, or practice, in regard to which thevillage panchayat was the supreme authority, and the chief had no powerto turn the cultivator out of possession. (257) D . Verwandlung dieserquotas o f produce into money payments, or their equivalent (an event whichhas not happened universally even yet) machte sie nicht zu rent paid foroccupation and use of land as an article belonging to and at the disposal of the personpaid, but were dues payable to a superior ruling authority___ D . Chief,though zamindar of all the land within the Zamindary, was at mostlandlord, (u. das nur als one merely having the right to dispose of theoccupation and tilling of the soil) o f his nij lands, and in some instancesprobably of the wastes. Seine machinery was sein Kachahri, the centre oflocal authority, side by side womit the panchayat, i.e. the old abad selfgovernment.(257, 258)In Manu’s Institutions nowhere a mention o f land as a subject o f propertyin the modern English sense. Private ownership of cultivated plots is recognized,ist aber simply the ownership of the cultivator; the land itselfbelongs to the village; no trace of rent; owner is only another name forcultivator. E r ist under obligation to cultivate lest the Rajah’s or lord’sdues in kind be shortcoming, aber er might cultivate by servants, or154 arrange with someone else to cultivate on a division of crops (i.e. | the bataisystem, a form of metayer). In another place o f Manu, everyone enjoinedTto keep a supply of grain sufficient for his household for yyears___ AlmostI everybody so supposed to be an actual cultivator The practice ofbatai... did not in fact lead to the letting of land; u. rent in any form unknownto Manu. (258, 259) Selling of land, or even of the use of land, nirgendswodirectly alluded to ___ Appropriating a field, giving a field u. seizing a fielderscheinen alle bei Manu, aber nicht buying or selling a field. (259, 260)Etwas später, nach the Mitakshara, separated kinsmen had acquireduncontrolled power of disposing of their respective shares of the family allot-282