1 CASTE IN THE PANJAB. 16
2 348. Effect of Islam in strengthening tlie bonds of caste. — But If the
3 adoption of Islam does not absolve the individual from the obligations common
4 to his tribe or caste, still less does its presence as such tend to weaken those
5 obligations. Indeed it seems to me exceedingly probable that where the
6 MusalniAn invasion has not, as in the Western Panjab, been so wholesale or
7 the countiy of the invaders so near as to change bodily by force of example
8 the whole tribal customs of the inhabitants^ the Mahomedan conquest of
9 Northern India has tightened and strengthened rather than relaxed the bonds
10 of caste ; and that it has done this by depriving the Hindu population of their
11 natural leaders the Eajputs, and throwing them wholly into the hands of the
12 BrShmans. The fall discussion of this question would require a far wider
13 knowledge of Indian comparative sociology than I possess. But I \\ill briefly
14 indicate some considerations which appear to me to point to the probable truth
15 of my suggestion. I have said that caste appears to have been far more loose
16 and less binding In its earlier form than as it appeared in the later develop-
17 ments of Brahminism ; and we know thnt, at least in the earlier and middle
18 stages of Hinduism, the contest between the Brahman and the Eajput for the
19 social leadership of the people was prolonged and severe (see Muir's Sanskrit
20 Texts, Vol. I). The Mahomedan invaders found in the Rdjput Princes
21 political enemies whom It was their business to subdue and to divest of
22 authority ; but the power of the Brahmans threatened no danger to their rule,
23 and tliat they left unimpaired. The Bi-ahmlnlc influence was probably never
24 so strong in the Pan jab as in many other parts of India ; but it is markedly
25 strongest in the Debli Territory, or in that portion of the Province in which,
26 lying under the very shadow' of the Mughal court, Kajput power was most
27 Impossible. Moreover, It is curious that we And the institutions and restrictions
28 of caste as such most lax, and a state of society most nearly approaching that
29 which existed in the earlier epoch of Hinduism, In two very dissimilar parts
30 of the Panjab. One is tlie Indus frontier, where Mahomedani?m reigns
31 supreme ; the other is the'Kangia hills, the most exclusively Hindu portion of
32 the Province. On the Indus we have the Saiyad and the Pir, the class of
33 Ulama or divines who take the place of the Brahman ; the Pathiin or Biloch
34 as the case may be, who correspond with the Kshatriya ; the so-called Jat,
35 who Is emphatically the " people '■" or Vaisya in the old sense of the word, and
36 includes all the great mass of liusbandmen of whatever caste they may be,
37 Awans, Jats, Bajpiits and the like, who cannot pretend to Kshatriya rank;
38 the Kir^r or trader of whatever caste, Banya, Khatri, or Arora, corresponding
39 with the later use of Vaisya ; the ai-tisan or Sudra ; and the outcast or
40 Mlechchha. The two last classes have no generic names ; but the three first
41 con-espond almost exactly with the Brahman, the Kshatriya, and the Vaisya
42 of the middle Hindu scriptui-es, nor are the boundaries of these divisions more
43 rigorously fixed than we find them in those scriptures. The other portion of
44 the Pro\-Ince In which caste restrictions are most loose and caste divisions most
45 general and indefinite is the Kangra hills ; or precisely the only part of the
46 Panjab Into which Mahomedani^m has found no entrance, in which
47 Mahomedan ideas have had no in luence, in which Hinduism has remained
48 absolutely sheltered fi-om attack from without, and in which the oldest Rajput
49 dy nasties jn India have preserved their supremacy unbroken up to within the
50 last eighty years. On the Indus we appear to have caste as It is under the '
51 Mahomedan, on the Jamna as it is under the Brahnian, and In the Himalayas
52 of Kangra as It I? under the Rajput. The state of caste relations in the
53 Kangra hills is fully described under the heads of Jats in general, Rajputs of