The existing system of exogamy affords evidence in favour of this view, as will be seen.

All the families of the clan had cultivating rights in the land, and were members of the village community; and there were no other members, unless possibly a Kshatriya headman or leader.

The Sudras were their labourers and serfs, with no right to hold land, and a third intermediate class of village menials gradually grew up.
The law of Mirasi tenures in Madras is perhaps a survival of the social system of the early village community.

Under it only a few of the higher castes were allowed to hold land, and the monopoly was preserved by the rule that the right of taking up waste lands belonged primarily to the cultivators of the adjacent holdings; no one else could acquire land unless he first bought them out.

The pariahs or impure castes were not allowed to hold land at all.