1 JAT, RAJPUT, AND ALLIED CASTES.
2 97
3 PART III.— THE J AT, RAJPUT, AND ALLIED
4 CASTES.
5 420. General and Indroductory. — AI'stiaL-t No. 71 below* shows the dis-
6 tribution of Jats, Rajputs, and certain castes which I have taken with the
7 latter; as the line separating them is almost impossible of definition. The
8 origin and distribution of these castes is fully discussed in the following pages,
9 and there is no need here to anticipate mj remarks. Indeed the distinction
10 between Jat and Rajput is in many parts of the Province so indefinite, that
11 sepai-ate figures for these two castes can hardly be said to have any signifi-
12 cance at all.
13 The two together constitute nearly "28 per cent, of the total population of
14 the Panjab, and include the great mass of the dominant land-owning tribes in
15 the cis-Indus portion of the Province. Their political is even greater than
16 their numerical importance j while they afford to the ethnologist infinite
17 matter for inquiry and consideration. Their customs are in the main Hindu,
18 though in the Western Plains and the Salt-range Tract the restrictions upon
19 intermarriag-e have in many cases come to be based upon considerations of
20 social standing only. But even here the marriage ceremony and other social
21 customs retain the clear impress of Indian origin.
22 THE JAT (CASTE No. 1).
23 421, Th3 origin of tlie Jat. — Perhaps no question connected with fche
24 ethnology of the Panjab peoples has been so much discussed as the origin of
25 the Jat race. It is not my intention here to reproduce any of the arguments
26 adduced. They will be found in detail in the Archaeological Survey Reports,
27 Vol. II, pages 51 to 61 ; in Tod's EujastJidn, Vol. I, pages 53 to 75 and 96
28 to 101 (Madras Reprint, ISSO) ; in Elphinstone's History of India, pages 250 to
29 253 ; and in Elliot's Kaces of the N. W. P., Vol. I, pages 130 to 137. Suffice
30 it to say that both General Cunningham and Major Tod agree in considering
31 the Jats to be of Indo-Scythian stock. The former identifies them with the
32 Zanthii of Stralio and the Jatii of Pliny aud Ptolemy ; and holds that they
33 probably entered the Panjal) from their home on the Oxus very shortly after
34 the Meds or Mands, who also were Indo-Scythians, and who moved into the
35 Panjab about a century before Christ. The Jats seem to have first occupied
36 the Indus valley as far down as Sindh, whither the Meds followed them about
37 the beginning of the present iera. But before the earliest ^lahomedan inva-
38 sion the Jats had spread into the Panjab proper, w . .. ; ; ■ \ \ r^".
39 established in the beginning of the 11th century. By
40 Jats of the Salt-range Tract had been subdued by t
41 Janjuas, while as early as the 7th century the Jat-
42 ruled over by a Brahman dynasty. jSIajor Tod;
43 great Rajpiit tribes, aud extends his identification.,
44 but here General Cunningham differs, holding t%
45 original Aryan stock, and the Jats to belong |
46 from the North-west, probably of Scythian race
47 ■§
48 »
49 ■5 'a §
50 c t3 ^ .. • — ' ^ :z
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53 -4-3
54 h2