ABSTRACT
The village was the social unit which the Lele valued most. Its members strove consciously to maintain its membership, canvassing young men from all quarters with a zeal which later set problems of authority and co-ordination. New members from other villages had to be welded into a corporate group, so tendencies to split the village on lines of descent were checked. Other principles of organization dominated, less liable to provoke rifts than kinship.
