94 The Ethnology of India. 
In Hindustan the Koormees, as a lower class, are on an average 
darker and less good looking than Bramins and Rajpoots, but still 
they are quite Arian in their features, institutions, and manners. So 
they are in the Maratta country ; indeed the Marattas are still known 
to the people of the south as ‘ Aryas,’ but they have probably towards 
the south a larger intermixture of Aboriginal blood, and it is noto- 
rious that the Marattas are small men compared to the northern tribes. 
The constitution of the Koonbees seems to be less democratic than 
that of Jats and Rajpoots. In the Maratta country (and indeed in 
the countries to the north of that also) the villages are for the most 
part ruled by hereditary patels or headmen without much trace of 
representation, so far as I could learn, and individual property in land 
has been in many parts subject to many changes and vicissitudes. 
Nothing puzzled me more than this, viz. to understand whence came 
the great Maratta Military element. In the Punjab one can easily 
understand the sources of Sikh power ; every peasant looks fit to be a 
soldier. But the great mass of the Maratta Koonbees look like 
nothing of the kind, and are the quietest and most obedient of hum- 
bie and unwarlike cultivators. On inquiry I gathered that in fact 
throughout by far the greater part of the Maratta-speaking country, 
all through Nagpore, Berar, and the Northern Bombay districts, the 
agricultural Koonbees furnish very few soldiers, nor ever did furnish 
many. Although the Koonbee element was the foundation of the 
Maratta power, though Sevajee and some of his chiefs were Koonbees, 
it appears that these people came almost exclusively from a compara- 
tively small district near Sattara, a hilly region where, as I judge, the 
Koonbees are very much mixed with numerous aboriginal and semi- 
aboriginal tribes of Mhars and others, and where, losing with the 
intermixture many of theif agricultural virtues, they acquired more of 
the qualities of predatory soldiers. It is notorious that Sevajee 
relied principally on his ‘ Mawallees’ of the Western Ghats, who were 
apparently little better than non-descript predatory tribes. In their 
best days, it does not appear that the Marattas were ever Koonbees 
to the same extent and in the same sense that the Sikhs were Jats. 
In fact the Maratta confederacy was more a political than a personal 
union. Many of the oldest chieis were not Koonbees. Hollkar was of 
the shepherd, and the Guickwar was of the cow-herd caste. All these 
