The Ethnology of India. Va 
Tur JAts. 
On the general scheme of tracing the Arian races from the North- 
West, I take the Jats before the Rajpoots. These Jats are in fact by 
far the most perfect specimen of the democratic and more properly 
Indo-Germanie races, whom I believe to have appeared in India later 
than the early Braminical Hindus, and who, while Hindu in much 
of their speech, laws, and manners, have also some peculiarities and 
institutions, and perhaps some grammatical forms of speech not to be 
traced in the earlier Braminical writings. These tribes, now consti- 
tuting over a great part of India an upper and dominant stratum of 
society, have given to a great degree their own tone and colour to 
many Provinces. In great part of Jat-land the Jats are not only 
the upper stratum, but the great body and mass of the free people ; 
and hence we have among them their original institutions in the 
greatest purity, little modified by modern Braminical Laws, or by those 
necessities of Military and Feudal organisation which so much alter 
the institutions of a free people, when they become dominant con- 
querors over other races greatly superior in number. 
There is some variation in the pronunciation of the word ‘ Jat,’ it 
being sometimes (chiefly in the west country) pronounced so short that 
it may be written ‘ Jut ;’ sometimes (in much of the Punjab) variably 
used, and sometimes (chiefly in the east) pronounced very long as ‘ Jat’ 
and even occasionally written by early English authors ‘ Jaut.’ And 
the present religion, dress, &c. of the race also differing in different 
regions (they are Mussulmans in the west, Sikhs in great part of the 
Punjab, and in some sense Hindus in the east), some people have 
supposed Mahommedan Jats of Scinde to be radically different from 
Hindu Jauts of Bhurtpore, and the wide extent and populousness of 
this great race is not very generally known. In fact, however, any 
apparent differences in the extreme of the type disappear, when we 
trace them as one great continuous population throughout the whole 
tract, and find that the one extreme gradually and imperceptibly merges 
into the other. 
To prevent future doubts, I will, however, add that there may 
possibly be small local western tribes of similar name, distinct from the 
great Jat nation. It seems that on some parts of the frontier Jats are 
