assume that the impulse to form associations and corporations was not unknown to the cities on the Ganges: we are however without any information as to the extent of these corporations, or the length of time during which they were able to maintain themselves against the power of the kings. The advice of the book that the king should place chief overseers over the cities has been mentioned above (p. 215). On the other hand, the village communities remain intact in their old form till this day, and they with the clans form the principal entrenchment behind which the old Indian character has maintained itself against native and foreign despotism. The change of princes or government has little influence on the village communities; they manage their own affairs independently: the business rarely amounts to more than an increase or diminution in taxes. The violence of the princes fell on the surrounding districts, not on quiet humble villages; it was only the tax-gatherer and the overseer of the districts that they had to fear. But even if specially bad times came, if invasion reached and devastated the village, and the inhabitants were slaughtered or driven out, all who survived the sword and famine returned, or their children returned, to the land they had left, rebuilt their huts, and began again to cultivate the fields which their fathers had cultivated from immemorial antiquity. In spite of the violence and barbarity of native kings and foreign conquerors, and the severe claims made upon them here and there, the Indians in their clans and village communities possessed a considerable share of freedom and self-government in the personal relations of life; this was the case with the majority of the cultivators of the soil, and the householders of all the upper castes. From the worship of the ancestors, the combination of families, there grew up within the castes of the Brahmans, the Kshatriyas, and the Vaiçyas a pre-eminence and favoured position for those families which claimed to be not only of purer, but also of older and nobler origin than the rest. In the circles of the separate castes this aristocracy took the place of the ancient aristocracy of the Kshatriyas. However little weight might be attributed to it by the kings, the example and pattern of these families had great influence on the lower members of the caste. In later centuries the importance of this aristocratic element was strengthened by the fact, that in the land of the Ganges the office became hereditary to which the princes had to transfer the collection of land-taxes or taxes generally in the various districts of the land. Thus the tax-gatherers were enabled to perpetuate their functions in these families; they oppressed the village communities, from which they took the taxes till they became their serfs, and thus in course of time they reached an influential and important position, which they were able to maintain with success, and