Excerpt from The Origin and Growth of Village Communities in India It cannot be necessary to write a formal preface to so small a book. But I may be allowed to make use of the space for two purposes. First, I have to express my thanks to Prof. W. J. Ashley, M.A., of Harvard University, and late Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, not only for the suggestion that a short account of the Indian village should be written, but for valuable advice and criticism in the course of writing it. Secondly, I have to say a few words about the (not very frequent) Indian words (Hindi, Persian, etc.) which occur. I have avoided them wherever I could; but sometimes they are needed for the sake of readers in India, or because there is no satisfactory equivalent; partly also because they show that the thing indicated is, or is not, indigenous; that it has been borrowed from the Moslems, or is an older Hindu institution. Now, the only tolerable way in which such words can be given in print, is by transliterating into Roman character; and people then say "we do not know how they should be pronounced." But for practical purposes, it is quite easy to pronounce Indian words at least intelligibly. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.