Later Mughals v1.c6.s16.9

v1.c6.s16.9

Most of the followers of the Guru belong now, as they have done ever since Govind's day, to the Jat peasantry. These Jats form the great agricultural population of Northwestern India. The region that they occupy would be enclosed by a line drawn eastwards from the river Indus so as to include part of Sind with all Marwar and Mewar in Rajputana, thence round by the Chambal and the Jamuna, taking in part of the Upper Duab of the Ganges and Jamuna as far as Muzaffarnagar, thence crossing to the Karnal border and following the Jamuna northwards so as to end at the foot of the Himalayas. Whether Sikhs or not, these Jats have a very distinct character of their own. Sturdy, industrious, quarrelsome, penurious, they form the backbone of the agricultural community throughout the above extensive region. They are marked off from the Rajput and the Brahman by their practice of widow-marriage. Nay, they are commonly accused of having practised polyandry up to quite recent times, and the number of grown-up and apparently bachelor brothers found in Jat families is certainly a curious fact. The widow of an elder brother passes almost as a matter of course into the possession of the brother next in age [as was the custom with the Vedic Aryans]. In the government of their villages they appear much more democratic than the Rajputs; they have less reverence for hereditary right, and a preference for elected headmen, [herein also resembling the Vedic Aryans]. Nor are any Brahman villages found scattered about in Jat tracts as they are in those of the Rajputs. Judging from experience in the Upper Duab, the Jats, even when orthodox Hindus, seem to be less under Brahman influence than the Rajputs. In appearance they are not perhaps so high bred as the Rajput, nor have they the sharp clear-cut features of the Brahman, but they are, at any rate in the Upper Duab, a fair, well-grown race. Except in the case of very rich men, their women work openly in the fields, and the men have never had the Brahman and Rajput repugnance to the daily drudgery of agriculture. At the time of the census of 1881 they formed two-thirds of the whole Sikh community within the Panjab, and have from the first been the most prominent part of it.