But it may be supposed that as they gradually increased, clans came into existence either in one large village or a number of adjacent ones, and sometimes traced their descent from a single family or from an ancestor with a nickname.

As a rule, the artisan castes do not appear to have formed villages of their own in India, as they did in Russia, though this may occasionally have happened.

When among the cultivating castes the lands were divided, separate joint families would be constituted; the head only of each family would be its representative in the clan, as he would hold the share of the village land assigned to the family, which was their joint means of subsistence, and the family would live in one household.

Thus perhaps the Hindu joint family came into existence as a subdivision of the exogamous clan with male descent, on which its constitution was modelled.

In Chhattisgarh families still live together in large enclosures with separate huts for the married couples.