The Ethnology of India. 83 



tory of the Phoolkeean race was recognised, and treated, among the 

 Protected Sikh States, as a regular republic. But I fear that, with 

 many less creditable institutions, it has now been brought under the 

 general rule of British dominion. 



However, States apart, every Jat village is on a small scale a demo- 

 cratic republic. As respects property, there is neither that common 

 tribal right which we find among the wilder Arabs, Turcomans, and 

 New Zealanders, nor that complete joint family which figures so 

 largely in the Hindu Law of the Braminical sages. Every man has 

 his share of the cultivated land, separate and divided. It may be that 

 a father and sons cultivate in common, but entire commensality 

 seldom goes farther. The union in a joint village community is 

 rather the political union of the Commune, so well known in Europe, 

 than a common enjoyment of property. The village site, the waste 

 lands and grazing grounds, and it may be one or two other things 

 belong to the commune, and the members of the commune have in 

 these rights of common. For all the purposes of cultivation, the 

 remainder of the land is in every way separate individual property. 

 And the government of the commune is no patriarched rule, but 

 simply representative government. A Communal Council or Punchayet 

 rules by right of representation. For the rest, the laws of these people 

 are of Arian, Indo- Germanic, and to some extent of the more liberal 

 Hindu type. Marriage is a sacred and irrevocable bond, though 

 remarriage of widows is permitted ; and alliances are restricted by 

 the bonds of caste. The hereditary succession and general hereditary 

 character of everything, which usually attends this system of caste 

 and exclusive marriage, prevails among the Jats. Property is equally 

 divided among sons. Daughters get nothing but that which may be 

 given to them at the time of marriage. All the Jats are divided into 

 many Gentes and Tribes, after the universal fashion of the peoples of 

 this stock, and the usual fashion is to marry into another Gens. 



In that portion of the Protected Sikh Territories which Sikhs 

 from the Lahore country had occupied as conquerors, there was a 

 perfect feudal system. The chief of a tribe, as General, had a large 

 appanage ; smaller chiefs owed him allegiance and service for their 

 smaller domains, and under-holders under them again (all holding on 

 a permanent hereditary tenure), till we come to the tenure of a single 



