18 SOCIAL SCIENTIST the paramount power of the Great Mogul was broken by Mogul Viceroys. The power of the Viceroys was broken by the Mahrattas. The power of the Mahrattas was broken by the Afghans, and while all were struggling against all, the Briton rushed in and was enabled to subdue them all. A country not only divided between Mohammedan and Hindu, but between tribe and tribe, between caste and caste; a society whose framewoik was based on a sort of equilibrium, resulting from a general repulsion and constitutional exclusiveness between all its members. Such a country and such a soceity, were they not the predestined prey of conquest? If we knew nothing of the past history of Hindustan, would there not be the one great and incontestable fact, that even at this moment India is held in English thraldom by an Indian army maintained at the cost of India? India, then, could not escape the fate of being conquered, and the whole of her past history, if it be anything, is the history of the successive conquests she has undergone.4 A host of scholars who have gone into the question of how Indian society came to be formed in historical times have come to the conclusion that, instead of the old primitive communist tribal society being replaced by slave society as in Europe, India developed a distinctive type of society combining the three 'basic social institutions5, the joint family, the caste, and the village community. Distinctive Social Structure These three 'basic social institutions5 were by no means free from the social oppression and economic exploitation which characterized the slave and feudal societies of ancient Greece or Rome or of medieval Europe, The social oppression and economic exploitation were covered up in the ancient and medieval Indian society by the three 'basic social institutions5 which guaranteed some rights to the individual members of the family, the caste and the village community. The eminent sociologist, Iravati Karve, assessed Indian society in its development as follows: This society had brought to near perfection a mode of self-government which needed the least supervision from a central power. The caste had a cell-like structure, but for subsistence as a caste it needed a certain t}pe of contact and give-and-take with people of other castes. A village was an almost perfect cell as an area of subsistence which was self" sufficient, independent and isolated from others through its very individuality. In the village the articulation of each caste to the others became defined and through this was developed an amazing system of self'te-gulation which needed almost no central supervision and withstood all central interference. The regulation was local and atomic. The caste society had two kinds of structures which cut across each other without coming into conflict. The principle of regulation of the caste from within was the principle which led together and regulated the kin. This involved the localized patrilineal or matrilineal family (joint or