Captain Postans tells us that the Jat in Sind, like all the tribes in the Sind countries, are divided into innumerable subdivisions, called Koum, and are a hard-working race, occupying themselves in rearing camels, feeding flocks, or cultivating the soil. They are invariably found in large communities, often living in temporary huts or wand, and migrate all over Sind and its confines, as shepherds, in search of pasture. Where this is not the case, they are farm servants either of the Baluchi chiefs or wealthy zamindars, who repay their labour with a modicum of the produce. The Jet in Sind are a quiet, inoffensive class. Their women are, throughout the country, noted for their beauty, and, to their credit be it also spoken, for their chastity. They work as hard as the men, and the labour of tending, driving home their flocks, milking the cattle, etc. is fairly divided. The Jat are very numerous, and form a large division of the population of Sind, though seldom found in its towns, being dispersed over the whole face of the country, particularly eastward to the desert tract which separates Sind from Cutch, known as the Runn, on which this tribe rear large flocks of camels.
In 416 of the Hijira (A.D. 1026), Mahmud marched an army against the Jat, who had har assed and insulted him when returning from his last expedition against Saurashtra. These Jat inhabited the country on the borders of Multan, along the river that runs by the mountains of Joud. When Mahmud reached Multan, finding the Jat country defended by great rivers, he built fifteen hundred boats, each armed with six iron spikes projecting from their prows, to pre vent their being boarded by the enemy, expert in this kind of warfare. In each boat he placed twenty archers, and some with fire-balls of naphtha to burn the Jat fleet. The monarch having determined on their extirpation, awaited the result at Multan. The Jat sent their wives, children, and effects to Sind-Sagur, and launched four thousand, or, as others say, eight thousand boats well armed to meet the Ghaznians. A terrible conflict ensued, but the projecting spikes sunk the Jet boats, while others were set on fire. Few escaped from this scene of terror ; and those who did met with the more severe fate of captivity. Many doubtless did escape ; and it is most probable that the Jat communities, on whose overthrow the state of Bikanir was founded, were remnants of this very warfare.
The Jat who remain of the Hindu religion are divided into clans,, and they marry into their •own, usually one wife, or, failing children, take another. Their widows can re-marry, and they can take the wife of a deceased brother if she has not had offspring. They are not strict as to the manner of cooking or eating their 'food. They are good agriculturists, honest carriers, and are a bold, independent, but not boorish race. In the Merut division, they are considered the most valuable subjects, the most industrious of all the castes, patient and long-suffering as tax payers, quiet and peaceable generally, but, like the Rajputs, easily roused to avenge a fancied wrong, or in obedience to their chieftain's cal]. Many eat animal food ; they are hardy, amenable to discipline, and make good soldiers. Though professing Hinduism, .they are remarkable for their contempt of the Brahmans.
The Jet Singh of the Panjab and Upper Sutlej may probably be taken as the best representative type of the race. Compared to northern races, they are dark ; they are tall, large, and well featured, with plentiful and long beards, fine teeth, and a very pleasant, open expression of countenance. They are larger and taller than the Afghan Pathan, with the upper part of the body especially well developed, but not so stout limbed or quite so robust. They are a fine, remarkably handsome race of men; not excelled by any race in Asia. In courage, energy, and military qualities, they excel the more beautiful non-Pathan races of the northern hills, and they arc as energetic in the peaceful arts as in that of war. They are good cultivators, hard-working, and thrifty ; they let little land lie waste, and pay their land tax punctually. Their women work as well as the men, and make themselves generally useful. They are not learned, though many men and some women can read and write. They have a great craving after fixed ownership in the soil. They are essentially agriculturists, seldom gardeners, and in Hindustan are never pastoral. They breed cattle largely, and sometimes rear camels when the country is suitable ; and in Jet countries both ordinary carts and large mercantile waggons are usually plentiful, and as waggoners they not unfrequently carry their grain and other produce to distant markets on their own account. The Jat formerly dwelt in Rajputnna in republics, such as, in the time of the Greeks, were alluded to as democratic institutions, and one recognised republican state, that of Phul or Maraj, came down to the present day, and was the last recog nised republican state in India. It was a Jet
republic, and gave the chiefs who founded the states of Patiala, Nabah, Jheendea. The old territory of the Phulkian race was recognised by the British, and treated amongst the protected Sikh States, but has recently been brought under the general rule of British dominion. Every Jet village, however, is, on a small scale, a democratic republic, every man having his own separate and divided share of the cultivated land. The union in a joint village community is rather the political union of the commune, so well known in Europe, than a common enjoyment of property. A father and son may cultivate in common, but common ality goes no further. The village site, the waste lands and grazing grounds, and, it may be, one or two other things, belong to the commune, and the members of the commune have, in these, rights in common. For all the purposes of culti vation, the remainder of the land is in every way separate individual property. The government is not patriarchal, but a representative communal council or panchayat. Re-marriage of widows is permitted. All the Jet are subdivided into many gentes and tribes, after the usual fashion of the peoples of the •Aryan or Indo-Germanic stock, and the usual fashion is to marry into another gens.' The Jat have little of the Hindu ceremonial strictness, and in Panjabi regiments they messed freely like Europeans, and had their two or three meals a day comfortably. The Jat, Rajput, and their congeners are branches of one great stock. Brahmans of Kashmir and the frontier hills are Hindus in an earlier stage of Brahmanical development. The Jat country is just such as would be occupied by a large stream of people issuing through the Bolan pass, in lat. or 30° N., and the Rajput are ranged in a semicircular form around the eastern and northern and south edge of the Jat area, the mass of them occupying the richer valley of the Ganges. Mr. (Sir G.) Campbell's conjecture is that the Bajput are an earlier wave from the same source as the Jat, who came in by the same ioute, have farther advanced, and been completely Hinduized, while the Jet have come in behind them. Panjabi is the language spoken by the Jat, but which, in Upper Sind, is called Jati Gut or tho Jat tongue ; and Mr. Masson calls it Jetki. It is an ludo Germanic tongue allied to the Sanskrit. In ita main grammatical and essential features it is not widely different from the Hindi of the Rajput and other Hindustan people.. It is one of the most Prakrit of Indian vernaculars. The Jat aro partly Hindu, partly Sikh, and partly Muhammadan. They all refer to the west of the Indus and to Ghazni as their original seats ; the Dhe or Padilla& reached India from the Panjab about the middle of the 18th century. The other section is the Ilele or Deswale. Sind Jat seem to have entered by the Bolan pass, occupied the high pastoral lands about Quetta, and thence descended into the plains, which they still occupy. The Jat is the great agricultural tribe in the Panjab, and, in Panjab parlance, Jat and dar or cultivator are synonymous. There are no Jat in Kashmir or within the hills. The Aodi tribe of Jat dwell in Panipat and Soneput. The Aolania Jat in Panipat claim to be above other Jat, by having had the title of malik or king conferred on them. The race, however, spread throughout the Panjab, down the Indus into Cutch Gandhava, and eastwards to the Junnia and Ganges, is the same, and wherever spread they retain a dialect of their own. Mr. Masson seems to imply that they are descendants of the Getm who, he says, once possessed the whole of the countries immediately east and west of the Indus. The zamindars or cultivators of the soil at Jell, as throughout Cutchi, arc Jat, who there seldom moved abroad but on bullocks, and never unless armed. A Jat might generally be seen half-naked, seated on a lean bullock, and formidably armed with matchlock and sword. Iu the Panjab they are notfound west of the Jhelum, but east of that river the Jat cultivators use waggons. The Jat has been so long settled in Cutch Gandhava as to appear the aborigines. Amongst their numerous subdivisions are the Kalora, Kokar, Hampi, Tunia, Abrah. The custom among the Jat of Curao, also written Karao, seemingly from Karana, to cause to do, is the term among the Jat, Gujar, Ahir, and other races and tribes in Western Hindustan for concubinage generally, but more especially for marriages of widows with the brother of a de ceased husband.—Aitcheson's Treaties; Campbell, Ethu. of India; Beng. As. Soc. journ. ; fount. lithe. Soc. ; Cunningham's Sikhs ; .Elphinstone's Caubul; Elliot's Supp. Glossary ; Government of India Records, No. 11; Institutes of Menu ; Kennedy on the Origin of Languages ; Masson's Journeys, ii. p. 125 ; Illasson's Kalat, p. 352 ; Memoirs of Humayun, p. 45; Pennant's Hindu stan; Postans' Sind; Selections from the Maha bharata; Elliot's Mist. of India; Thomas' Prinsep's Antiquities; Tod's Rajasthan; Vigne's Travels.