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The village was not only a territorial area but also a revenue unit. It was viewed as a discrete entity not only in terms of its physical space but also in the sense of a social collective represented by the village community with the muqaddam as its chief spokesman. This is most clearly brought in representation made to the higher authorities by the muqaddam pleading on behalf of the entire village on a variety of issues common to the whole cultivating community. In the official writings of the early British administrators on the rural Indian society the village communities are identified on the social foundation of the peasant economy in India. The village community is characterized as a closed corporate foundation depending on small production to meet its own requirements. According to the British official writing India was a land of little village republics and the people of India lined under this simple form of municipal government or small republic. Sir Charles Metcalf describes the character of the village community as little republics almost independent of any foreign relations and unchanging in the character. He also believes in the independent community character of the various classes of inhabitant living in the village. James mill confirmed his believe in the village community as a corporation. Sir hennery Maine found the Indian communities as an organized self acting group of families exercising a common proprietorship over a definite tract of land. According to him there were two types of village communities 1) in which the village authority was lodged with the village panchayet. 2) In which the authority was in the hands of village headman. Elphinstone also believed in the concept of village community as being a form of municipal institution with some local jurisdiction. He also asserted that 1) the village community was not a universal phenomena in India. 2) He also maintained that not all the classes of functionaries lived in every village and that 3) within the village the waste land was owned by the state rather than the village community. Baden Powell assumed that the concept of village community was associated with land revenue system and that the village community was not invariably the simple survived of a primitive age. He did not agree that the Indian village was inherently democratic or republican in its constitution. He viewed the village essentially as a community of separate cultivating land holders and other village functionaries organized as a small monarchy or oligarchy. He identified two types of villages’ raiyati or non zamindari and zamindari village all these formulation need critical examination in the context of the complexity of the structure and functioning of the village community. The view of the village community as democratic or primitively democratic institutions seems questionable. In all populists accounts of the village community the starting point is to postulate the village community on a more or less universal basis of social organization with special features such as political autonomy, economic anarchy, social homogeneity and the unchanging character of this closed collectivity. The village was viewed as a territorial concept as well as a fiscal unit. It was also viewed in the sense of a social collective represented by a headman. He made representation to the higher authorities on behalf of the entire village on a variety of incuse common to the whole cultivating community. In course of time the village economy was becoming more and more market oriented. Thus the village economy was not a closed stationary but a strongly collective foundation.