cayed, the land came
to be regarded as the private property of the family, and when this
idea had been realised it was made alienable, though not with the same
freedom as personal property. But the word _pecunia_ for money, from
_pecus_ a flock, like the Hindi _dhan_, which means wealth and also
flocks of goats and sheep, and feudal from the Gaelic _fiu_, cattle,
point to conditions of society in which land was not considered a
form of private property or wealth. M. Fustel de Coulanges notices
other primitive races who did not recognise property in land:
"The Tartars understand the term property as applying to cattle,
but not as applying to land. According to some authors, among the
ancient Germans there was no ownership of land; every year each member
of the tribe received a holding to cultivate, and the holding was
changed in the following year. The German owned the crop; he did not
own the soil. The same was the case among a part of the Semitic race
and certain of the Slav peoples." [59] In large areas of the Nigeria
Protectorate at present, land has no exchangeable value at all; but
by the native system of taxation a portion of the produce is taken
in consideration of the right of use. [60] In ancient Arabia 'Baal'
meant the lord of some place or district, that is, a local deity,
and hence came to mean a god. Land naturally moist was considered as
irrigated by a god and the special place or habitation of the god. To
the numerous Canaanite Baalims, or local deities, the Israelites
ascribed all the natural gifts of the land, the corn, the wine, and
the oil, the wool and the flax, the vines and fig trees. Pasture land
was common property, but a man acquired rights in the soil by building
a house, or, by 'quickening' a waste place, that is, bringing it under
cultivation. [61] The Israelites thought that they derived their title
to the land of Canaan from Jehovah, having received it as a gift
from Him. The association of rights over the land with cultivation
and building, pointed out by Professor Robertson Smith, may perhaps
explain the right over the village lands which was held to appertain
to the village community. They had quickened the land and built houses
on it, establishing the local village deity on their village sites,
and it was probably thought that their life was bound up with that of
the village god, and only they had a right to cultivate his land. This
would explain the great respect shown by the Marathas f