1 &
2 CASTE IN THE PANJAB. 7
3 he is not allowed to enter the gates, the D^kaut and Gujrati, so unfortunate
4 that other Brahmans will not accept offerings at their hands, are all Brahmans,
5 but are practically differentiated as distinct castes by their special occupations.
6 Turning to the second of Manu's.four, great cJa&£e.S,_we_tiji,d.. the Mahajan a
7 Mahajan in the hills so long as hfeiaj. iuu\;liantj but j.J\ajrath_as soon as he
8 becomes a clerk ; while the I)asaBanja,o£,the plains \yho,Jhas. taken to the
9 practice of widow marriage ^is a Bauya only by uame and occupation, not
10 being admitted to communion or intermarriage by the more orthodox classes
11 who bear the same title. The impossibility of fixing any line between Raj-
12 puts on the one hand, and Jats, Gujars, and castes of similar standing on the
13 other, is fully discussed in the subsequent parts of this chapter, in the para-
14 graphs on the Jat in general, on the Rajputs of the eastern hills, and on the
15 Thakar and Rathi. I there point out that the only possible definition of a
16 Rajput, in the Panjab at least, is he who, being the descendant of a family
17 that has enjoyed political importance, has preserved his ancestral status by
18 strict observance of the caste rules enumerated above. The extract there
19 quoted from Mr. LyalFs report sums up so admirably the state of caste
20 distinctions in the hills that I make no apology for repeating it. He
21 says : —
22 "Till lately the limits of caste do not seem to have been so immutably fixed in the hills as
23 " iu the plains. Tlie Raja was the fountain of honour, aud could do much as ho liked. I have
24 " heard old men quote iustanccs witliin their memory iu which a Raja promoted a Ciirth to be a
25 " Rathi, and a Tliakur to be a Rajput, for service done or money given ; and at the prescut day
26 " the power of admitting back into cai^te fellowship pcrona put under a ban for some grave act of
27 'defilement is a source of income to the Jagirdar Uajas.
28 " I believe that llr. Campbell, the pre-ent Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, has asserted that
29 " there is no such thing as a distinct Rajput stotk ; that in former time-;, before caste distinctions
30 " had become crystallized, any tribe or family whose amestor or head rose to royal rank became in
31 •• time Rajput.
32 " This is certainly the conclusion to which many facta point with regard to the Rajputs of
33 " these liills. Two of the old royal and now cs.-cntially Rajput families of this district, viz.,
34 " Kotlehr aud Bangahal, are said to be Brahmin by original stock, llr. Barnes says that in
35 " Kangra tlie son of a Rajput by a low-ca-te woman takcj place as a Rathi : in Seoraj and other
36 " places in the interior of the hills 1 liavo met families calling tbem-elvcs Rajputs, aud growing
37 "into general acceptance as Rajputs, in their own country at least, whose only claim to the title
38 " was that their father or grandfather was the offspring of a Kanetni by a foreign Brahmin. On
39 " the border line in the Himalayas, between Thibet and India proper, any one can observe caste
40 " growing before hii eyes ; the noblo is changing into a Rajput, the priest into a Ijrahmin,
41 " the peasant into a Jat ; and so on down to tlie bottom of the scale. The same process was,
42 " I believe, more or less in force in Kaiigra^ proper down to a period not very remote from
43 "to-day."
44 And Kangra is of all parts of the Panjab the place in which the proudest
45 and most ancient Riijput blood is to be found. As Captain Cunningham
46 s&js iii his Ilisforj/ of t/ie SiMs : "It may be assumed as certain that, had
47 " the conquering ilughals and Pathivns been without a vivid belief and an
48 " organised priesthood, they would have adopted Vedism and become enrolled
49 '' among the Kshatriya or Rtijput races." In SLrsa we have instances of clans
50 who were a few generations ago accounted Jat being now generally classed as
51 Rajputs, having meanwhile pi-actised greater exclusivencss in matrimonial
52 matters, and having abandoned widow marriage ; while the reverse process is
53 no less common. So the Cliauhaus of Dehli are no longer recognized as
54 Rajputs since they have begun to marry their widows. I'jnally, we have the
55 whole traditions of the Panjab tribes of the Jat and Gujai- status to the effect ;
56 that they are descended from Rajputs who married below them, ceased to
57 seclude their women, or began to practise widow marriage j and the fact that