Have there been any major/minor changes in
the occupations in today's villages as compared
to those in ancient times?
Answers
Difference between Villages in Ancient India and Villages of Today!
Mahatma Gandhi is often quoted as having said: “Real India lives in its villages.”
The development of Village India, for Gandhi, was the development of India. Illiteracy, ignorance, and poverty characterized the vast population of rural India. Gandhi organized mass movements to draw attention to the problems of the rural people, and also to involve the peasants in the freedom struggle. Social scientists also became interested in studying rural problems, particularly the deteriorating rural economy. Being illiterate and attached to their land, the villagers led a simple life.
Villages in Ancient India:
There is sufficient evidence to suggest that the village was one of the important settlements in ancient India. The Rig Veda talks about the gram to which various families owed their allegiance. Valmiki’s Ramayana talks of two types of villages – the ghosh and the gram. The ghosh was smaller than the gram and was also known as vraja, or brij (signifying a cattle farm). Both types of villages had their officials, called the mahattar. There is also a reference to a senior official called gramani or gramik.
The administrator of ten villages was called dashi; of 20 villages, vinshati; of 100 villages, shati, and of over 1,000 villages, sahasra gramadhipati. This is a clear indication of the interlink-ages between the villages. Kautilya’s Arthashastra suggests that river, hill, forests, ditches, tanks, bunds or trees demarcated village boundaries. He prescribed that villages should be situated at distances of one or two krosha (in Rajasthan, it is spelt as koss, which is the equivalent of two miles or 3.219 km) from each other so that in times of need, one village could go to the help of the other.
The villages were organized thus:
10 villages Samgrahana
200 villages Karvatika
400 villages Dronamukha
800 villages Mahagrama or Sthatnuja
During the period of Chandragupta Maurya, the villages were divided into three categories according to their size: Jyeshtha (the biggest), Madhyama (medium sized) and Kanishtha (smaller ones).
In terms of land revenue, these villages were put into four categories:
Gramagra:
Ordinary villages paying tax in cash
Pariharak:
Revenue free, given to priests and teachers, who would collect the tax from the villagers and use it as their salary for spreading education and pursuing a religious life
Ayudhuja:
Revenue free, for supplying soldiers during a war
Anya:
Villages allowed to pay tax in kind in the form of agricultural products, minerals or labor The villages have remained the administrative units of various princely states. The maharajas or maharanas appointed jagirdars or zamindars and collected revenues, called lagaan, through them. The practice of giving a village to a priest or not charging any lagaan from an agriculturist family continued until recently. In Rajasthan, such lands or villages were called Mafi ki Zameen or Mafi ke Gaon.
Villages Today:
There were 580,781 villages in India, according to the 1991 Census. Of these; the largest number (390,093) consisted of small-sized villages with a population of less than 1,000. In the category of 1,000-2,000 population are another 114,395 villages. Taken together, they represent 86 per cent of the villages of India.
Villages with 2,000-5,000 population total 62,915, and those having a population of between 5,000-10,000 numbers 10,597. The highest concentration of very large villages, with more than 10,000 people, is to be found in the state of Kerala, which has 1,007 (of the 2,779) large villages.
At the time of the 2001 Census, the number of villages had gone up to 638,691. Like the 1991 Census, Uttar Pradesh (UP) continues to have the largest number of villages, although the state has become somewhat smaller with the state of Uttaranchal carved out of it. UP has 107,452 villages and Uttaranchal, 16,823, making a combined total of 124,275.
The distribution of village groups in different zones of India in 1951 is given below:
Distribution of villages According to Population size,1991
These figures give an idea of the size of villages both in terms of area occupied and the population that inhabits it. Because the average size of the village is smaller in North India, the number of villages in this zone is much larger as compared to the South.
Village Groups in different Zones (1951)
This point will become further clear if we compared the distribution of villages of different sizes in various zones. The data are from the 1951 Census, but they hold good for this purpose.