It was customary to bury the dead in the fields which they had held, and here the belief was that their spirits remained and protected the interests of the family.

Periodical sacrifices were made to them and they participated in all the family ceremonies.

Hence the land in which the tombs of ancestors were situated was held to belong to the family, and could not be separated from it.

[58] Gradually, as the veneration for the spirits of ancestors decayed, the land came to be regarded as the private property of the family, and when this idea had been realised it was made alienable, though not with the same freedom as personal property.

But the word _pecunia_ for money, from _pecus_ a flock, like the Hindi _dhan_, which means wealth and also flocks of goats and sheep, and feudal from the Gaelic _fiu_, cattle, point to conditions of society in which land was not considered a form of private property or wealth.