Gahapati A gahapati was the owner, master or head of a household, who exercised control over the women, children, slaves and workers who shared a common residence. He was also the owner of the resources – land, animals and other things – that belonged to the household. Sometimes the term was used as a marker of status for men belonging to the urban elite, including wealthy merchants. The importance of boundaries The Manusmrti is one of the best-known legal texts of early India, written in Sanskrit and compiled between c.
second century BCE and c. second century CE . This is what the text advises the king to do: Seeing that in the world controversies constantly arise due to the ignorance of boundaries, he should … have … concealed boundary markers buried – stones, bones, cow’s hair, chaff, ashes, potsherds, dried cow dung, bricks, coal, pebbles and sand. He should also have other similar substances that would not decay in the soil buried as hidden markers at the intersection of boundaries.
Ü Would these boundary markers have been adequate to resolve disputes? Source