I have had in the Punjab and in the Secretariat of the Government of India some special opportunities which have enabled me to trace the living and inspiring influence of Maine's ideas in certain fields of policy and administration… I heard Maine deliver in the hall of my college at Oxford the lectures which were published in his book entitled Village-Communities in the East and West; and his pregnant suggestions have constantly guided my work in India, and throughout my life have chiefly inspired my studies… [When the appalling number of murders among the Pathan tribes forced us to revive their jirgas, or customary courts,] we looked back to another ancient society, to a time in this country when jurymen were in effect witnesses, and when, by the system of frankpledge, the men of a tithing were responsible each for any offence of the rest. We did not, of course, pedantically try to imitate Anglo-Saxon… institutions. We based our project on the facts we found. But that Maine had taught us to compare one archaic society with another, and to accept as part of the course of nature some of the differences between tribal and civilised society, helped us both in understanding our case and in reporting it. (Tupper, 1898: 390, 396)