The Ethnology of India. 83 
tory of the Phoolkeean race was recognised, and treated, among the 
Protected Sikh States, as a regular republic. But I fear that, with 
many less creditable institutions, it has now been brought under the 
general rule of British dominion. 
However, States apart, every Jat village is on a small scale a demo- 
cratic republic. As respects property, there is neither that common 
tribal right which we find among the wilder Arabs, Turcomans, and 
New Zealanders, nor that complete joint family which figures go 
largely in the Hindu Law of the Braminical sages. Every man has 
his share of the cultivated land, separate and divided. It may be that 
a father and sons cultivate in common, but entire commensality 
seldom goes farther. The union in a joint village community is 
rather the political union of the Commune, so well known in Europe, 
than a common enjoyment of property. The village site, the waste 
lands and grazing grounds, and it may be one or two other things 
belong to the commune, and the members of the commune have in 
these rights of common. For all the purposes of cultivation, the 
remainder of the land is in every way separate individual property. 
And the government of the commune is no patriarched rule, but 
simply representative government. A Communal Council or Punchayet 
tules by right of representation. For the rest, the laws of these people 
are of Arian, Indo-Germanic, and to some extent of the more liberal 
Hindu type. Marriage is a sacred and irrevocable bond, though 
remarriage of widows is permitted; and alliances are restricted by 
the bonds of caste. The hereditary succession and general hereditary 
character of everything, which usually attends this system of caste 
and exclusive marriage, prevails among the Jats. Property is equally 
divided among sons. Daughters get nothing but that which may be 
given to them at the time of marriage. All the Jats are divided into 
many Gentes and Tribes, after the universal fashion of the peoples of 
this stock, and the usual fashion is to marry into another Gens, 
In that portion of the Protected Sikh Territories which Sikhs 
from the Lahore country had occupied as conquerors, there was a 
periect feudal system. The chief of a tribe, as General, had a large 
appanage; smaller chiefs owed him allegiance and service for their 
smaller domains, and under-holders under them again (all holding on 
a permanent hereditary tenure), till we come to the tenure of a single 
