82 The Lithnology of India. 
in some degree more beautiful non-Pathan races of the northern 
hills. Altogether then they are not excelled by any race in Asia. 
There is among them a large proportion of High-Arian feature, 
but there is much more variety and not so universal a high-nosed 
type as among the men of the frontier hills. Compared to northern races 
they are dark, but in every other respect they are, take them all in all, 
a very remarkably fine handsome people. 
- They are as energetic in the arts of peace as in those of war. 
There are no better cultivators; hard-working and thrifty, they let 
little land lie waste, and pay their revenue punctually. They have 
this great advantage too that among them a woman is almost as good 
as a man, works as well and makes herself as generally useful. They 
are not literary, they leave that, with proper mercantile business, to the 
Khatrees (to be afterwards noticed). But many men and some women 
can read and write in their own rough way, and as waggoners they 
not unfrequently carry their grain and other goods to distant markets 
on their own account. 
They have an excessive craving after fixed ownership in the soil, 
and are essentially agriculturists. They seldom undertake a garden- 
ing style of cultivation, and prefer broad high lands to more cramped 
though moister locations. Where the country is more fitted for 
cattle, they breed them largely, and both ordinary carts and large 
mercantile waggons are generally plentiful in the Jat countries. 
Camels too they sometimes breed. But still, in India the Jats have 
never anything of the pastoral, roving, Gypsy-like character. 
I have alluded to the democratic institutions of the Jats, institu- 
tions to which we do not find allusions in the books of the Bramins. 
Yet it is certain that such institutions prevailed in the North of 
India as early as the time of Alexander the Great. The Greek 
accounts are distinct on the point. They represent the institutions 
as in fact extremely democratic, and add that the Indians ascribed 
their free constitution to Bacchus, by whom they were led into the 
country. I mentioned Col. Tod’s testimony to the former existence 
of Jat republics in great part of what is now Rajpootana. I know 
of only one recognised republican State which came down to our 
day, that of ‘Phool’ or ‘Maraj,’ from which sprung the chiefs who 
founded the States of Patteealah, Nabah, Jheend, &. The old terri- 
