84 TJie Ethnology of India. 



horseman. These latter again have come to be divided under the 

 operation of the rules of inheritance. But this system, it will be 

 observed, is only adopted abroad for purposes of foreign domination. 



Beyond the caste system common to them with moot Indo-Greimans, 

 the Jats have very little of the ceremonial strictness of Hindu caste. 

 In Punjabee Regiments, they mess freely like Europeans, and have their 

 comfortable two or three meals a day. 



The Jats sometimes claim to have been originally Rajpoots, and it 

 is so stated in some of the written accounts ; but that is only one of 

 the many stories of the kind prompted by a desire to stand high in 

 the Hindu scale, and its futility is illustrated by a counter-story 

 told by some of the Mahommedan Jats, viz. that they are descended 

 from one of the companions of the prophet. That the Jats and 

 Rajpoots and their congeners are branches of one great stock, I have 

 no doubt. It may be possible that the Rajpoots are Jats who have 

 advanced farther into Hindustan, have there more intermingled with 

 Hindu races, have become more high and strict Hindus, and achieved 

 earlier power and glory. But that the Jats are Rajpoots who have 

 receded from a higher Hindu position, is a theory for which there is 

 not the least support, and which is contradicted by every feature in 

 the present position of the now rapidly progressing Jats. 



The suggestion that Rajpoots may be Jats more highly developed 

 in a Hindu point of view, would make the latter the earliest and most 

 primitive, though at the same time perhaps the purest of the race ; 

 just as I have supposed the Bramins of Cashmere and the Frontier 

 hills to be Hindus of an earlier stage of Braminical development. 

 But I am more inclined to suppose the Jats to be later immigrants 

 from Central or Western Asia. The character of the northern hills 

 is such that immigration from thence could only gradually filtrate 

 into the plains ; but by the passes of the Bolan, great immigrations 

 are possible. Looking at the area of Jat occupation, it is just that 

 which we might suppose to be covered by the steady flow of a large 

 flood of population issuing from the Bolan, about Lat. 28° or 30°, as 

 from a funnel, and thence spreading over the plains and pushing 

 away before it other populations. The Rajpoots, again, when I come 

 to treat of them, will be found to be ranged in a kind of horse shoe 

 form round the outer edge of the Jat area, the mass of them occu^ 



