94 The Ethnology of Itidia. 



In Hindustan the Koormees, as a lower class, are on an average 

 darker and less good looking than Bramins and Rajpoots, but still 

 they are quite Arian in their features, institutions, and manners. So 

 they are in the Maratta country ; indeed the Marattas are still known 

 to the people of the south as ' Aryas,' but they have probably towards 

 the south a larger intermixture of Aboriginal blood, and it is noto- 

 rious that the Marattas are small men compared to the northern tribes. 



The constitution of the Koonbees seems to be less democratic than 

 that of Jats and Rajpoots. In the Maratta country (and indeed in 

 the countries to the north of that also) the villages are for the most 

 part ruled by hereditary patels or headmen without much trace of 

 representation, so far as I could learn, and individual property in land 

 has been in many parts subject to many changes and vicissitudes. 



Nothing puzzled me more than this, viz. to understand whence came 

 the great Maratta Military element. In the Punjab one can easily 

 understand the sources of Sikh power ; every peasant looks fit to be a 

 soldier. But the great mass of the Maratta Koonbees look like 

 nothing of the kind, and are the quietest and most obedient of hum- 

 ble and unwarlike cultivators. On inquiry I gathered that in fact 

 throughout by far the greater part of the Maratta-speaking country, 

 all through Nagpore, Berar, and the Northern Bombay districts, the 

 agricultural Koonbees furnish very few soldiers, nor ever did furnish 

 many. Although the Koonbee element was the foundation of the 

 Maratta power, though Sevajee and some of his chiefs were Koonbees, 

 it appears that these people came almost exclusively from a compara- 

 tively small district near Sattara, a hilly region where, as I judge, the 

 Koonbees are very much mixed with numerous aboriginal and semi' 

 aboriginal tribes of Mhars and others, and where, losing with the 

 intermixture many of their agricultural virtues, they acquired more of 

 the qualities of predatory soldiers. It is notorious that Sevajee 

 relied principally on his ' Mawallees' of the Western Grhats, who were 

 apparently little better than non-descript predatory tribes. In their 

 best days, it does not appear that the Marattas were ever Koonbees 

 to the same extent and in the same sense that the Sikhs were Jats. 

 In fact the Maratta confederacy was more a political than a personal 

 union. Many of the oldest chiefs were not Koonbees. Holkar was of 

 the shepherd, and the Guickwar was of the cow-herd caste. All these 



