The Ethnology of India. 81 



In Upper Scinde, up the course of the Indus, and in the south-west- 

 ern Punjab, they are now for the most part Mahommedans, and in that 

 character seem to be somewhat inferior to their unconverted and 

 perhaps purer brethren ; the more so as they have been long subject 

 to foreign rule. The language spoken along the line of the Indus 

 and throughout Upper Scinde is there known as the " Jatee Gul" or 

 Jat language, but is in fact identical with that which we call 

 Punjabee. The Punjabee may, in fact, properly be called the Jat 

 language ; to the Jats the dialect seems especially to belong, and by 

 them chiefly it is spoken. Advancing eastwards into the Punjab and 

 Rajpootana, we find Hindu and Mahommedan Jats much mixed ; it 

 often happens that one-half of a village or one branch of a family is 

 Mahommedan, and the other Hindu. Further east, Mahommedan Jats 

 become rarer and rarer, and both about Lahore and all that part of 

 the Punjab and along the line of the Upper Sutlej and Jumna the 

 great mass remain unconverted. In the Punjab they all take the 

 name of ' Sing,' and dress somewhat differently from ordinary Hindu 

 Jats, but for the most part they only become formally Sikhs, when 

 they take service, and that change makes little difference in their 

 laws and social relations. The Jats of Dehli, Bhurtpore, &c. are 

 a very fine race. They still bear the old Hindu names of ' Mull' and 

 such like, and are not all ' Sings.' In Rajpootana the Jats are pro- 

 bably a good deal intermixed by contact with Meenas, &c, and they 

 have now been long subject to an alien rule. One does not there 

 hear much of them otherwise than as quiet and submissive cultivators. 



The Jat Sings of the Punjab and the Upper Sutlej may probably 

 be taken as the best representative type of the race. They are a 

 remarkably five variety of man — tall, large, well-featured, with very 

 plentiful and long beards, fiue teeth, and a very pleasant open expres- 

 sion of countenance. I am told that in the Punjab Regiments, which 

 select from several of the finest races in the world, the Sikhs are upon 

 the whole the largest men, although they are not so stout-limbed or 

 in certain respects quite so robust as the Affghan Pathans. Perhaps 

 the larger population to choose from may have something to do 

 with the superior size, but I should say that on an average they are 

 taller than Pathans, with the upper part of the body especially well 

 developed. In pluck and Military qualities they excel the fairer and 



