ABSTRACT
THOUGH both tsu and guild were important for the control they exercised over their members, large and important areas of life fell outside their scope. Whereas ancestral ceremonies had to be performed only at intervals, and regulating the condition of work or sale in given trades directly affected only people working in them, the mass of the population was concerned all the year round with the processes of agriculture and the routine transactions of rural life. They were engaged in a continuous struggle to add to their holdings of land if they could, either by purchase or lease, since this was the surest way of increasing income; disposing of it or borrowing against this land as security, if driven by pressing need for money; all the time defending their enjoyment of possession or use and guarding their plots against intrusion. Those who belonged to tsu which owned large areas of land would no doubt have engaged in all these activities without entering into relations with anyone outside their own tsu, but most families had at times to have dealings with outsiders. On account of tsu exogamy, all had to, when marriage was contemplated. These transactions were carried on according to custom, and adjudication of disputes arising out of them was the province of leaders in the locality where they arose—usually the village leaders, 1 though within a large village there might also be leaders for the different subdivisions of thevillage. To these leaders also fell the solution of other inter-personal or inter-tsu conflicts in their area: for example, cases of marriage and divorce, which because of tsu exogamy necessarily involved two tsu; questions of inheritance, if tsu solidarity and authority was not strong enough to prevent quarrek; and, sometimes, friction between members of different tsu or neighbourhoods who had entered into customary relationships with one another for specific purposes (e.g., co-operative loan societies and burial clubs) in the course of which grievances against one another had developed.
