78 Tlie Ethnology of India. 



known as a somewhat pastoral and light-fingered tribe ; and Burton 

 in his ' Scinde' speaks of a tribe of Beloochis bearing the name ; also 

 says that it is the name of a wandering tribe found about Candahar, 

 Herat, Meshed, &c., and that in all the Western parts of Central Asia, 

 the term is used as synonymous with thief and scoundrel. These 

 gentry may be offshoots of our Jats thrown by circumstances on the 

 resources of their mother-wit, or they may be some other tribe ; but 

 at any rate they are in no way a type of the great agricultural nation 

 whose habitat I am about to describe, and about whose oneness and 

 complete ethnological nationality there can be, I think, no doubt 

 whatever. 



In all the east of Beloochistan, about the routes by which the most 

 open and constant communications between India and the countries 

 to the west are maintained, in the Provinces marked in the maps as 

 1 Sewestan' and ' Cutch Granclava,' Jats form a large, probably the largest 

 portion of the agricultural population, and claim to be the original 

 owners of the soil. In fact the Beloochis are there but a later wave 

 .and upper stratum. The Persian Tajiks are the original agricultural 

 class of all the west of Affghanistan and Beloochistan ; then there is 

 a tribe apparently somewhat mixed, called ' Dehwars/ found about 

 Candahar and thereabouts. The Jats are not found in Affghanistan, 

 but in Beloochistan they succeed the Tajiks and Dehwars, as we go 

 east by the Bolan and routes thereabouts. Here then they are not 

 confined to the plains, but occupy the hilly country. 



Descending into the plains, we find the Jats spread to the right and 

 left along the Indus and its tributaries, occupying upper Scinde on 

 one side and the Punjab on the other. But it is particularly to be 

 remarked that in the Punjab they are not found in any numbers 

 above the Salt Range, and they are wholly unknown in the Hima- 

 laya. In fact, to the north they are altogether excluded from the 

 hilly country, a circumstance which seems to me conclusively to show 

 that they did not enter India by that extreme northern route. The 

 hills to the north seem on the contrary to be a barrier by which the 

 flood of Jats was checked. 



In all Upper Scinde the Jats are still the prevailing population, and 

 their language is the language of the country. It is moreover matter 

 of history that they were once the aristocracy of that land, though 



