Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s2.4
Indische Paläographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s2.4
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c48.s2.4.1
Reverting to the castes of upper India, the Rājput has been dealt with in a former paragraph sufficiently for the purposes of this review. An important point in connection with the subject immediately in hand is the close connection between the Rājput and the Jāṭ, who ranks next to him both in numbers and position throughout the Panjāb plains, Rājputāna, and the upper Ganges and Jamnā valleys. It has been conjectured by some that the difference between the two communities is social, not racial, the Rājput being a Jāṭ leader who, after being successful in the field or on his estate, bound himself and his family to the strict observance of Brāhmanic rules and thus attained the pinnacle of orthodox repute, whilst the rest of his tribe remained Jāṭ in name and in their traditions and practice. In the circumstances of the two castes in the Panjāb in the present day there is much to support this view. Others hold that the Jāṭ belongs to a later wave of immigration than the Rājput, and entered the Panjāb from the west, by way of Sindh and the Indus, whilst the Rajputs were still in Rājputāna and its eastern neighbourhood. However this may be, the northern stock has now been fused, and though the Jāṭ no longer becomes a Rājput, the same tribe is found Rājput in one village and Jāṭ in the next. In the Jamnā tracts this is not the case.
c48.s2.4.2
Whether because the Jāṭ arrived there direct from Sindh and remained at a distance from the seat of the predominant body of his tribe, or whether by reason of admixture with inferior Rājput blood, his physique and social position are lower. The Jāṭ par excellence is the peasantry of the Sikh tracts, where the tradition of political supremacy is still green, and the Jāṭ has nothing to gain in public estimation from either Brāhman, Rājput or Paṭhān. Along the Jamnā, he has succumbed to the prevailing influences, and looks up to the Rājput, whilst in the west, he does the same to the leaders of Muslim society, and his name has been there bestowed upon any cultivator of that religion, whatever his caste. Like the Rājput and other great communities in the north-west, the Jāṭ places religious considerations beneath tribal in his domestic arrangements, so it appears from the Census that one third of the population bearing this name are Muslim, one fifth Sikh, and just under half, Brāhmanist. As stated above, the Jāṭ is in the first place a cultivator, and the women of his family share to the full his enthusiasm in the pursuit of the family calling. The Sikh Jāṭ is also a born soldier, not merely a combatant, but a disciplinarian, and equally efficient on the snow-clad ridges of Afghānistān and the steamy plains of Tïentsin.
c48.s2.4.3
Next to the Jāṭ in rank, and probably akin in origin, comes the Gūjar, a caste as to whose descent there has been much controversy between the pro-Āryan and the pro-Scythian. The caste is now generally affiliated to the Gurjara, a tribe which was settled in the neighbourhood of the Caspian, and entered India either in company with or at the same time as, the Yetha or White Huna, of whom they are said to have been a branch. They spread very widely over the west and north-west, and one body of Gurjara obtained a dominant footing in the western province which is now called after them. Their connection with it, however, after the downfall of their dynasties, was dissipated into innumerable channels of castes, where it is recognisable only in customs and in the titles of some of the sub-castes. The greater portion of the Gūjar settled in the Panjāb and along the Jamnā, with a considerable colony in Oudh. In the first named tract, again, they have left their name behind them in several places, but it is only in the submontane portion that they can now be called a dominant tribe. In the plains they follow their traditional occupation of cattle-breeding, combined, it may be, with cultivation, in which they are not so expert. Their unrestrained devotion to the horned beast is such that in some parts of India their title is derived from the Sanskritic term for Cowthief. Even though philology may not support this derivation, it has the authority of their almost universal reputation.
c48.s2.4.4
They are not now found south of the Vindhya, where those returned as Gūjar are traders from Gujarāt, who, as stated above, retain traditions of a cognate origin. It is held, indeed; that a Gurjara element underlies all the chief cultivating classes of Gujarāt above those traceable to a distinctly Kōl origin. Returning to the Panjāb, the south of the Salt range tract is the present home of the Avān, who have been there for at least 600 years. They are said to have come up from Mārvāḍ or upper Sindh, and to have belonged to one of the numerous Scythic bands which gave the Jāṭ and other castes to the country further east. Though the Avān are nearly all Muslim, they retain Brāhmanic names in their genealogies, and use Brāhmans as their family priests. They have not spread beyond the north-west corner of the Panjāb, where they share with the Janjhuā Rājput and the Khōkhar the predominant position among the peasantry. The Khōkhar, however, though equally of the faith of Islām, have maintained more fully the tradition of Rājput origin, and return themselves in considerable numbers as a clan of that great caste. Others, again, claim to be Jāṭ. The Gakkhaṛ in the north of the Salt Range plateau are similarly situated to the Avān in the south.
c48.s2.4.5
There seems to be little doubt but that the three tribes are all of allied Scythic origin, and became Rājput during the Brāhmanic revival, Jāṭ when the Sikhs rose to power, and claimants to Mughal blood now that the influence of Islām reigns supreme in this region. Among the tribes belonging traditionally to this part of India may be counted the Kāṭhī, though in the present day they are found under this title only in the western peninsula to which they have given their name, and even there in but small numbers. In the Panjāb they consider themselves a subclan of the Panvār Rājput, and are thus merged in the general mass of that order. In Kāṭhiāwāḍ they preserve the tradition of migration from Bīkaner and Mūltān, the latter being the very tract in which they were found by Alexander as a foreign nomadic body, successfully resisting the expeditions sent against them by neighbouring Āryan potentates. It is conjectured, therefore, that these, too, are Scythic tribes connected with the rulers of Taxila at that period, and were driven into exile through Sindh into Kach by the Muslim invasions. They are now principally cultivators, but keep green the remembrance of their original occupation of cowherds by breeding horses and cattle. They also retain their ancestral sun-worship, and a rude representation of that luminary is affixed to all their formal documents.
c48.s2.4.6
It is not improbable that they are of the same stock as the Ahīr or Abhīra, the great cattle-breeders of upper India, though their position is now higher than that of the latter. In Sindh, two Rājput tribes of agriculturists, the Sūmrō and the Sammō, successively occupied the dominant position on the lower Indus from about 750 A. D. to the middle of the 16th century, and now belong to Islām. Their respective numbers are by no means accurately represented in the Census return owing to the wide-spread practice in this province of giving the general title of Sindhī as the name of the tribe or caste, thus placing nearly a quarter of a million of the inhabitants beyond the possibility of identification.