20 



BESTRICTIONS ON TflE ALIENATION OF LANDS. 



Yusafzais, Muhammadzais, Khalils, Mohmands and Daudzais estab- 

 lished themselves in the Peshawar Valley. When the Delhi empire 

 fell to pieces, and in the Punjab the confusion consequent on its ruin 

 was worse confounded by the successive irruptions of Nadir Shah and 

 Ahmad Shah Durani, many of the tribes of the Western Punjab 

 asserted an independence similar to that with which we are familiar in 

 the case of the Afridis and the Orakzais. Amongst these independent 

 tribes I may instance the Gakkhars of Rawalpindi, the Janjuas of 

 Jheluni and the Sials of Jhang. By this time also the Sikh misls, 

 which were in origin predatory bands like those of the Pindaris, were 

 acquiring or had acquired political and territorial power. The inde- 

 pendent tribes came into conflict with the now formidable Sikh misls, 

 and the misls in their turn were incorporated in the vigorous army and 

 the tolerably well consolidated kingdom of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. 

 In the Eastern Punjab the history was rather different. But in the 

 border land between the Sikh and the Mahratta Powers strong Jat 

 villages frequently defied all authority; and the Sikh misls, as in the 

 Central and parts of the Western Punjab, acquired dominant autho- 

 rity in the country between the Sutlej and the Jumna. The composi- 

 tion of the Sikh misls is somewhat obscure, and the misls certainly 

 often included men other than those belonging to the dominant clans ; 

 but I think I may safely say that the misls were mainly recruited from 

 Jats, that is, from men of those very agricultural tribes thickly 

 clustered in the central Punjab whom it is an object of the present 

 measure to maintain in the enjoyment of their ancestral lands. 



Now, one result of all the history is that we still have the lands 

 of the Punjab plains held largely, though not exclusively, by tribes of 

 bold traditions and high spirit, whose courage and love of adventure 

 commands the hearty sympathies of men of our race, but whose in- 

 herited qualities, formed in times of war and depredation, are far 

 better suited to success in the field of battle than in the Courts of law. 

 No one wishes men of this type, whose courage in our cause has again 

 and again earned our gratitude, to be dispossessed of their ancestral 

 lands. I say no one advisedly, for I do not believe that even the 

 trading classes, who, by the undesigned effects of our system, are 

 being drawn into the possession of some of these lands, really them- 

 selves desire the social revolution which would ensue if we did not 

 interfere to check that process while there is still time to check it with 

 effect. The insidious danger with which the old dominant agricultural 



