The Ethnology of India. 77 



The Jats. 



On the general scheme of tracing the Arian races from the North- 

 West, I take the Jats before the Rajpoots. These Jats are in fact by 

 far the most perfect specimen of the democratic and more properly 

 Indo- Germanic races, whom I believe to have appeared in India later 

 than the early Braminical Hindus, and who, while Hindu in much 

 of their speech, laws, and manners, have also some peculiarities and 

 institutions, and perhaps some grammatical forms of speech not to be 

 traced in the earlier Braminical writings. These tribes, now consti- 

 tuting over a great part of India an upper and dominant stratum of 

 society, have given to a great degree their own tone and colour to 

 many Provinces. In great part of Jat-land the Jats are not only 

 the upper stratum, but the great body and mass of the free people ; 

 and hence we have among them their original institutions in the 

 greatest purity, little modified by modern Braminical Laws, or by those 

 necessities of Military and Feudal organisation which so much alter 

 the institutions of a free people, when they become dominant con- 

 querors over other races greatly superior in number. 



There is some variation in the pronunciation of the word l Jat,' it 

 being sometimes (chiefly in the west country) pronounced so short that 

 it may be written ' Jut ;' sometimes (in much of the Punjab) variably 

 used, and sometimes (chiefly in the east) pronounced very long as ' Jat' 

 and even occasionally written by early English authors ' Jaut.' And 

 the present religion, dress, &c. of the race also differing in different 

 regions (they are Mussulmans in the west, Sikhs in great part of the 

 Punjab, and in some sense Hindus in the east), some people have 

 supposed Mahommedan Jats of Scinde to be radically different from 

 Hindu Jauts of Bhurtpore, and the wide extent and populousness of 

 this great race is not very generally known. In fact, however, any 

 apparent differences in the extreme of the type disappear, when we 

 trace them as one great continuous population throughout the whole 

 tract, and find that the one extreme gradually and imperceptibly merges 

 into the other. 



To prevent future doubts, I will, however, add that there may 

 possibly be small local west ern tribes of similar name, distinct from the 

 great Jat nation. It seems that on some parts of the frontier Jats are 



