86 The Ethnology of India. 
are not a part of the original Hindu system, but rather something 
engrafted upon it, is (I think) to be found in the difficulty of defining 
what is and what is not a Rajpoot. I have already shown, in noticing 
many tribes, that it is almost impossible to say where the Rajpoots 
begin and where they end. I shall now, however, confine myself as 
far as possible to the tribes who are generally acknowledged to be 
real Rajpoots of blue blood. 
They can scarcely be said to have any broad general tribal name 
like that of the Jats. It is hardly contended that they are really the 
old Kshatryas of the early Braminical accounts; and though, in a 
military point of view, they have occupied and more than occupied 
the place assigned to the Kshatryas, still their numbers, their position 
and the existence among them of the institutions shared with them 
by the Jats and unknown to the old Hindoo Shasters (in them we 
find no trace of democracy) would all go to show that the Rajpoots 
are another race. In fact the days of the Kshatryas were those of the 
earliest Hindu annals, many hundred years before Christ, while the 
Rajpoots may be considered to have been the immediate predecessors 
of the Mahommedans in the rule of Hindustan. Except then in 
an affected way and with direct reference to the old Sanscrit Nomen- 
clature, the Rajpoots are not usually called ‘ Kshatryas,’ while the 
name Rajpoot also is by no means universal among them, and merely 
means ‘Son of a Raja’ or ‘ Royal. In some parts of the country, 
they usually call themselves ‘ Thakoors,’ a word which also means 
Chiefs or Nobles. 
They are more frequently known by the names of their tribes 
s ‘Chouhans,’ ‘ Soorujbansees,’ ‘ Bais,’ ‘ Rahtores,’ ‘ Baghels’ (or 
Waghels’) or the like, but the practice of marrying into another tribe 
makes all these high-caste tribes identical for ethnological purposes. 
I shall continue, then, to call them Rajpoots. 
They are chiefly known to Europeans in their aE character 
and as feudal conquerors. But in reality, in their own villages in 
the plains of the Ganges, they are simple agriculturalists of a con- 
stitution very much like that of the Jats, only less pure and complete. 
The fact is that the Rajpoots have had their day, and are now a 
down-going race. Partly the furnishing of armies and feudal hosts 
has exhausted the material and corrupted the simplicity of their ori- 
