82 TJie Ethnology of India. 



in some degree more beautiful non-Pathan races of the northern 

 hills. Altogether then they are not excelled by any race in Asia. 



There is among them a large proportion of High-Arian feature, 

 but there is much more variety and not so universal a high-nosed 

 type as among the men of the frontier hills. Compared to northern races 

 they are dark, but in every other respect they are, take them all in all, 

 a very remarkably fine handsome people. 



They are as energetic in the arts of peace as in those of war. 

 There are no better cultivators ; hard-working and thrifty, they let 

 little land lie waste, and pay their revenue punctually. They have 

 this great advantage too that among them a woman is almost as good 

 as a man, works as well and makes herself as generally useful. They 

 are not literary, they leave that, with proper mercantile business, to the 

 Khatrees (to be afterwards noticed). But many men and some women 

 can read and write in their own rough way, and as waggoners they 

 not unfrequently carry their grain and other goods to distant markets 

 on their own account. 



They have an excessive craving after fixed ownership in the soil, 

 and are essentially agriculturists. They seldom undertake a garden- 

 ing style of cultivation, and prefer broad high lands to more cramped 

 though moister locations. Where the country is more fitted for 

 cattle, they breed them largely, and both ordinary carts and large 

 mercantile waggons are generally plentiful in the Jat countries. 

 Camels too they sometimes breed. But still, in India the Jats have 

 never anything of the pastoral, roving, Gypsy-like character. 



I have alluded to the democratic institutions of the Jats, institu- 

 tions to which we do not find allusions in the books of the Bramins. 

 Yet it is certain that such institutions prevailed in the North of 

 India as early as the time of Alexander the Great. The Greek 

 accounts are distinct on the point. They represent the institutions 

 as in fact extremely democratic, and add that the Indians ascribed 

 their free constitution to Bacchus, by whom they were led into the 

 country. I mentioned Col. Tod's testimony to the former existence 

 of Jat republics in great part of what is now Rajpootana. I know 

 of only one recognised republican State which came down to our 

 day, that of ' Phool ' or 'Maraj,' from which sprung the chiefs who 

 founded the States of Patteealah, Nabah, Jheend, &c. The old terri- 



