Those small and extremely ancient Indian communities, some of
 which have continued down to this day, are based on possession in common
 of the land, on the blending of agriculture and handicrafts, and on an
 unalterable division of labour, which serves, whenever a new community
 is started, as a plan and scheme ready cut and dried. Occupying areas of
 from 100 up to several thousand acres, each forms a compact whole producing
 all it requires. The chief part of the products is destined for direct
 use by the community itself, and does not take the form of a commodity.
 Hence, production here is independent of that division of labour brought
 about, in Indian society as a whole, by means of the exchange of commodities.
 It is the surplus alone that becomes a commodity, and a portion of even
 that, not until it has reached the hands of the State, into whose hands
 from time immemorial a certain quantity of these products has found its
 way in the shape of rent in kind. The constitution of these communities
 varies in different parts of India. In those of the simplest form, the
 land is tilled in common, and the produce divided among the members. At
 the same time, spinning and weaving are carried on in each family as subsidiary
 industries. Side by side with the masses thus occupied with one and the
 same work, we find the “chief inhabitant,” who is judge, police, and tax-gatherer
 in one; the book-keeper, who keeps the accounts of the tillage and registers
 everything relating thereto; another official, who prosecutes338 criminals,
 protects strangers travelling through and escorts them to the next village;
 the boundary man, who guards the boundaries against neighbouring communities;
 the water-overseer, who distributes the water from the common tanks for
 irrigation; the Brahmin, who conducts the religious services; the schoolmaster,
 who on the sand teaches the children reading and writing; the calendar-Brahmin,
 or astrologer, who makes known the lucky or unlucky days for seed-time
 and harvest, and for every other kind of agricultural work; a smith and
 a carpenter, who make and repair all the agricultural implements; the potter,
 who makes all the pottery of the village; the barber, the washerman, who
 washes clothes, the silversmith, here and there the poet, who in some communities
 replaces the silversmith, in others the schoolmaster. This dozen of individuals
 is maintained at the expense of the whole community. If the population increases, a new community is founded, on the pattern of the old one, on
 unoccupied land. The whole mechanism discloses a systematic division of
 labour; but a division like that in manufactures is impossible, since the
 smith and the carpenter, &c., find an unchanging market, and at the
 most there occur, according to the sizes of the villages, two or three
 of each, instead of one. [37] The law that regulates
 the division of labour in the community acts with the irresistible authority
 of a law of Nature, at the same time that each individual artificer, the
 smith, the carpenter, and so on, conducts in his workshop all the operations
 of his handicraft in the traditional way, but independently, and without
 recognising any authority over him. The simplicity of the organisation
 for production in these self-sufficing communities that constantly reproduce
 themselves in the same form, and when accidentally destroyed, spring up
 again on the spot and with the same name [38] – this simplicity supplies the key to the secret of the unchangeableness of Asiatic societies,
 an unchangeableness in such striking contrast with the constant dissolution
 and refounding of Asiatic States, and the never-ceasing changes of dynasty.
 The structure339 of the economic elements of society remains untouched
 by the storm-clouds of the political sky.