78 The Ethnology of India. 
known as a somewhat pastoral and light-fingered tribe; and Burton 
in his ‘Scinde’ speaks of a tribe of Beloochis bearing the name; also 
says that it is the name of a wandering tribe found about Candahar, 
Herat, Meshed, &c., and that in all the Western parts of Central Asia, 
the term is used as synonymous with thief and scoundrel. These 
gentry may be offshoots of our Jats thrown by circumstances on the 
resources of their mother-wit, or they may be some other tribe; but 
at any rate they are in no way a type of the great agricultural nation 
whose habitat I am about to describe, and about whose oneness and 
complete ethnological nationality there can be, I think, no doubt 
whatever. 
Tn all the east of Beloochistan, about the routes by which the most 
open and constant communications between India and the countries 
to the west are maintained, in the Provinces marked in the maps as 
‘ Sewestan’ and ‘ Cutch Gandava,’ Jats forma large, probably the largest 
portion of the agricultural population, and claim to be the original 
owners of the soil. In fact the Beloochis are there but a later wave 
and upper stratum. The Persian Tajiks are the original agricultural 
class of all the west of Affghanistan and Beloochistan; then there is 
a tribe apparently somewhat mixed, called ‘ Dehwars,’ found about 
Candahar and thereabouts. The Jats are not found in Affghanistan, 
but in Beloochistan they succeed the Tajiks and Dehwars, as we go 
east by the Bolan and routes thereabouts. Here then they are not 
confined to the plains, but occupy the hilly country. 
Descending into the plains, we find the Jats spread to the right and 
left along the Indus and its tributaries, occupying upper Scinde on 
one side and the Punjab on the other. But it is particularly to be 
remarked that im the Punjab they are not found in any numbers 
above the Salt Range, and they are wholly unknown in the Hima- 
laya. In fact, to the north they are altogether excluded from the 
hilly country, a circumstance which seems to me conclusively to show 
that they did not enter India by that extreme northern route. The 
hills to the north seem on the contrary to be a barrier by which the 
flood of Jats was checked. 
In all Upper Scinde the Jats are still the prevailing population, and 
their language is the language of the country. It is moreover matter 
of history that they were once the aristocracy of that land, though 
