agricultural institutions, there is nothing more to be said. But they
leave out of consideration a whole set of connected institutions.
Readers of Mr. Frazer's _Golden Bough_ are now in possession of facts
which it would take a very long time to explain. They see that side by
side with agricultural economics is agricultural religion, of great
rudeness and barbarity, of considerable complexity, and bearing the
stamp of immense antiquity. The same villagers who were the observers
of those rules of economics which are thought to be due to Roman
origin were also observers of ritual and usages which are known to be
savage in theory and practice. Must we, then, say that all this ritual
and usage are Roman? or must we go on ignoring them as elements in the
argument as to the origin of agricultural institutions? One or the
other of these alternatives must, I contend, be accepted by the
inquirer.
Because the State has chosen or been compelled for political reasons
to lift up peasant economics into manorial legal rules, thus forcibly
divorcing this portion of peasant life from its natural associations,
there is no reason why students should fix upon this arbitrary
proceeding as the point at which to begin their examination into the
origin of village agriculture. Manorial tenants pay their dues to the
lord, lot out their lands in intermixed strips, cultivate in common,
and perform generally all those interesting functions of village life
with which Mr. Seebohm has made us familiar. But, in close and
intimate connection with these selfsame agricultural economical
proceedings, it is the same body of manorial tenants who perform
irrational and rude customs, who carry the last sheaf of corn
represented in human or animal form, who sacrifice animals to their
earth deities, who carry fire round fields and crops, who, in a
scarcely disguised ritual, still worship deities which there is little
difficulty in recognising as the counterparts of those religious
goddesses of India who are worshipped and venerated by non-Aryan
votaries. Christianity has not followed the lead of politics, and
lifted all this portion of peasant agricultural life into something
that is religious and definite. And because it remains sanctioned by
tradition, we must, in considering origins, take it into account in
conjunction with those economic practices which have been unduly
emphasised in the history of village institutions. In India primitive
economics and re
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