192 



THE LIVING RACES OF MANKIND 



brought to the hamlet, was welcomed at 

 every threshold, daintily fed, and kindly 

 treated till the fatal day arrived. He was 

 then solemnly sacrificed to the earth-god, 

 the people shouting in his or her dying 

 ears, " We bought you with a price; no 

 sin rests with us." His flesh and blood 

 were distributed among the village lands. 



Among these people the custom of 

 "marriage by capture" prevails. The 

 young man snatches up his bride, while 

 her friends pretend to pursue them. How- 

 ever, his friends come to the rescue and 

 prevent her recapture. As soon as his own 

 village is reached he is safe, and the young 

 couple settle down to married life. 



In spite of the cruel human sacrifices 

 above referred to, which of course have a 

 religious aspect, the Khonds have good 

 points in their favour. According to Captain 

 Macpherson, their nine cardinal sins are: 

 to refuse hospitality; to break an oath or 

 promise; to speak falsely, except to save a 

 guest; to break the pledge of friendship; 

 to break an old law or custom; to commit 

 incest; to contract debts, the payment of 

 which is ruinous to the man's tribe, they 

 being responsible; to skulk in time of A PARSI GIRL. 



war; to divulge a public secret. On the 



other hand, their three chief virtues are: to kill a foe in public battle; to die in public, 

 battle; and to be a priest. 



THE JATS AXD KAJPUTS. 



AMONG the people of the Punjab the Jats and Uajputs come first, they being the most 

 numerous. Both may perhaps belong to the same stock, although differing in appearance. 

 They are considered by Sir J. B. Lyall, late Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab, to be directly 

 descended from the military clans which the Indian chiefs led against Alexander the Great 

 when he invaded the Punjab in 325 B.C., but the latest view is that they came from 

 Central Asia. The Greek historians of that time described these people as eminently brave in 

 war, tall, and graceful. This is still true of them. In the Sikh wars they opposed us in 

 the hardest battles ever fought in India; aud since then they have fought side by side 

 with British soldiers. Among the Jats those who are Mohammedan are usually not so fond 

 of fighting as the Hindu Jats; the most martial of them are those living in the centre of the 

 Punjab and belonging to the Sikh religion. It was the Jats who in the eighteenth century 

 gradually overturned the Mohammedan government of the Punjab ("India," British Empire 

 Series). Professor Keane, however, accepts Mr. William Crooke's view that they represent an 

 invasion of the Yu-cchi from Central Asia. 



