Page:Elements of Hindu Law.djvu/49

 ELEMENTS OF

CHAP. I. ON PROPERTY.

disquisition on the origin of property, among a people with whose early history we are unacquainted, must needs be conjectural; and, as such, misplaced in a work, which, in its nature, excludes fancy. What the state of it was anciently in India, able inquirers have been divided in shewing.(1) Till lately, the prevailing opinion was, that the right to the soil was in the sovereign; a persuasion, that has been elaborately combated, in an incidental chapter of a comparatively recent history, of deserved celebrity.(2) The general idea of property comprehending, as it does, personal, as well as real, moveables, with that which is immoveable,—in most civilized countries, the land for obvious reasons, takes the lead, in