The Ethnology of India. 95 



as well as the Koonbecs were quite illiterate, and would have done 

 little without the directing power of the Bramins. When they were 

 farther advanced, the Maratta forces seem to have been mere mercen- 

 ary armies, a congregation of every loose fortune-seeker of every race 

 and class, Mahommedans included, with a nucleus of the population of 

 Sattara and Poonah, from which the proper Maratta chiefs had sprung. 

 Take them all in all, I think that the Koonbees must be considered 

 one of the most important as well as one of the most useful and most 

 easily governed tribes in India. A great territory is in the main 

 theirs, extending from about 23° or 24° to about 16° Lat., and from the 

 western frontiers of Gnzerat to the countries watered by the Wyngunga 

 and the Middle Godavery, and the upper streams of the Nerbudda. 



Other Agricultural Tribes. 



I have traced the Jats, Rajpoots, and Koonbees as the three chief 

 territorial tribes peculiar to Northern India. I must now go back to 

 notice other landowning tribes intermixed with them. 



I shall take first the farming tribes, apt in the use of arms and of a 

 constitution similar to the Jats and Rajpoots ; these are principally 

 found in the Punjab. Second, the tribes more or less pastoral in their 

 proclivities, though now almost universally settled in agricultural 

 communities. Third, the fine-farming or gardening tribes. 



I have noticed how much the Salt Range seems to be the northern 

 limit of both Jats and Rajpoots. The people north of this range are 

 a great puzzle. They are those who seem to me the finest and hand- 

 somest in India, perhaps in the world. They are all now Mahom- 

 medans, but are wholly Indian in their language, habits, manners, 

 and constitutions. There can, I think, be no doubt of that ; the line 

 between them and their Pathan neighbours is very distinctly drawn, 

 the languages especially being totally different. Knowing the 

 Pathans so well, any relationship with them is never suggested ; a 

 Pathan is with them a Pathan, and a man of another tribe is not a 

 Pathan. But they have fanciful Mussulman genealogies, the 

 Dhoonds and Tanaolees from the Caliph Abbas, the Kurrals from 

 Alexander the Great, the Awans from Roostam and the Gukkurs 

 from some other Persian hero. 



There are a large number of petty tribes, very like one another, but 



