1 126 PANJAB CASTES.
2 The Itbwal (No. 7).— The Jthwal or Uthwal seem to be found chiefly in Amhala, Ludhianah,
3 Jalandhar, and the adjoining torriturv of Patiala. But uule>s two distinct names have been
4 confused, they liave a curiously large colony in Dehli, which appears to be completely separated
5 from that of Ambala. They are said to be descended from a Siirajbansi Rajput calleil Mabdraj
6 who received the nickname of Unthwal from his love for camel-riding !
7 439. The Jats of the south-eastern districts. — The last group of Jat tribes
8 that I have- to discuss is that which occiijiies the Jamna districts, Jind,
9 Rohtak, and Ilissar. Thej call themselves Jat not Jat, and are the same
10 people in every respect as the Jat of the Janma-Ganges dodb and the lower
11 Jamna valley, differing however in little save religion from the great Sikh Jat
12 tribes of the Miihva ; though perhaps the latter, inhabiting as they do the
13 wide unirrigated plains of the central States, are of slightly finer physique
14 than their neighbours of the damper riverain. The eastern Jats ai-e almost
15 without exception Hindu, the few among them who arc Musalman being-
16 known as Mula or " unfortunate," and dating their conversion almost without
17 exception fi-om an ancestor who was taken as a hostage to Dehli and there
18 forcibly circumcised. Indeed these men were not unfi-equeutly received back
19 into caste on their return from captivity, and their descendants are in this
20 case Hindus, though still known as ^lula. Their traditions show them to
21 have come up either from Bikaner and Rajputana, or northwards along the
22 Jamna valley, and very few of them appear to have come from the Panjab to
23 the Jamna. The Jiits of Gitrgaon indeed still look upon the Eilja of Bhartpur
24 as their natural leader, and the fall of Bhartpm- made stich an impression on
25 their minds that old men stil! refer to it as 1 he fera from which they date
26 events.
27 The Jat of these parts is, if anything, even a better cultivator than the
28 Sikh Jat ; and that, chiefly because his women assist him so largely in the
29 field, performing all sorts of agricultm-al labotir whether light or heavy, except
30 ploughing for which they have not sufEi lent strength, and sowing which is
31 under all circumstances a prerogative strictly confined to the made sex.
32 Directly we leave the soitth-eastern districts and pass into the Sikh tract,
33 women cease to perform tlie harder kinds of field-work, even among the Jats ;
34 while in the Musalman districts they do not work at all in the fields. So
35 essentially is the Jat a husbandman, and so especially is he t/ie httsbandman
36 of these pai-ts, that when asked his caste he will quite as often reply zamfnddr [P. £3
37 as Jat, the two names being in that sense used as synonymous. The social
38 standing of the Jat is that which the Gujar, Ahir, and Ror enjoy ; in fact
39 these four castes eat and smoke together. They stand at the head of the castes
40 who prai-tise i(-<z<e2(;i3 or widow-mamage, a good deal below the Rajput, bitt
41 far above the castes who grow vegetables, such as Arain and Mali. If the
42 social scale is regulated by the rules of the Hindu religion they come below
43 Banyas, who are admittedly better Hindus. But the manly Jat despises
44 the money-grubbing Banya, and all other castes and tribes agree with him.
45 In the extreme south-eastern corner of the Panjab the Jats who have
46 come in from the north and west, from Rajputana and the Panjab, are known
47 as Dhe, to distincfui-h them from the original Jat tribes of tlie neighboui-hood
48 who are collectively called Ilele, the two sections abstaining from intermarriage
49 and having in some respects different ctistoms. In Sii-sa again, that meeting
50 place of races, where the Bagri Jat from the Bikaner prairies, the Sikh Jat
51 from the ^Jalwa, and the Musalman Jat from the Satluj valley, meet the Jat
52 of Hissar, the last are distinguished as Dese and the Musalman Jats as
53 Pachhade or western ; but these terms appear to be unknown to the people in