84. The Ethnology of India. 
horseman. ‘These latter again have come to be divided under the 
operation of the rules of inheritance, But this system, it will be 
observed, is only adopted abroad for purposes of foreign domination. 
Beyond the caste system common to them with most Indo-Germans, 
the Jats have very little of the ceremonial strictness of Hindu caste. 
In Punjabee Regiments, they mess freely like Europeans, and have their 
comfortable two or three meals a day. 
’ The Jats sometimes claim to have been originally Rajpoots, and it 
is so stated in some of the written accounts; but that is only one of 
the many stories of the kind prompted by a desire to stand high in 
the Hindu scale, and its futility is illustrated by a counter-story 
told by some of the Mahommedan Jats, viz. that they are descended 
from one of the companions of the prophet. That the Jats and 
Rajpoots and their congeners are branches of one great stock, I have 
no doubt. It may be possible that the Rajpoots are Jats who have 
advanced farther into Hindustan, have there more intermingled with 
Hindu races, have become more high and strict Hindus, and achieved 
earlier power and glory. But that the Jats are Rajpoots who have 
receded from a higher Hindu position, is a theory for which there is 
not the least support, and which is contradicted by every feature in - 
the present position of the now rapidly progressing Jats. 
The suggestion that Rajpoots may be Jats more highly developed 
in a Hindu point of view, would make the latter the earliest and most 
primitive, though at the same time perhaps the purest of the race ; 
just as I have supposed the Bramins of Cashmere and the Frontier 
hills to be Hindus of an earlier stage of Braminical development. 
But I am more inelined to suppose the Jats to be later immigrants 
from Central or Western Asia. ‘The character of the northern hills 
is such that immigration from thence could only gradually filtrate 
into the plains; but by the passes of the Bolan, great immigrations 
are possible. Looking at the area of Jat occupation, it is just that 
which we might suppose to be covered by the steady flow of a large 
flood of population issuing from the Bolan, about Lat. 28° or 30°, as 
from a funnel, and thence spreading over the plains and pushing 
away before it other populations. The Rajpoots, again, when I come 
to treat of them, will be found to be ranged in a kind of horse shoe 
form round the outer edge of the Jat area, the mags of them occn- 
