In his “Village Communities: in the East and the West”, Sir Henry Maine observes that the ‘Indian Village Community was a living and not dead institution.” Baden Powell has given us an exhaustive account of these village settlements in “the Indian village community”. Prof. Altekar’s “History of Village Communities in Western India” is a valuable record of the working of the rural commonwealths in our country. But by far the best treatment of the subject is to be found in Dr. Radhakumud Mookerji’s “Local Government in Ancient India” and Dr. Radhkamal Mukerjee’s “Democracies of the East”.
