Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v2.c29.t1: The Conquest of the Jats

Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v2.c29.t1

Language: English

The Conquest of the Jats

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Bika now approximated to the settlements of the Jats or Getae, who had for ages been established in these arid abodes; and as the lands they held form a considerable portion of the State of Bikaner, it may not be uninteresting to give a sketch of the condition of this singular people prior to the son of Jodha establishing the feudal system of Rajwara amongst their pastoral commonwealths.

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Of this celebrated and widely spread race we have already given a succinct account.² It appears to have been the most numerous as well as the most conspicuous of the tribes of ancient Asia, from the days of Tomyris and Cyrus to those of the present Jat prince of Lahore, whose successor, if he be endued with similar energy, may, on the reflux of population, find himself seated in their original haunts of Central Asia, to which they have already considerably advanced.³ In the fourth century we find a Yuti or Jat kingdom established in the Panjab;⁴ but how much earlier this people colonized those regions we are ignorant. At every step made by Muhammadan power in India it encountered the Jats. On their memorable defence of the passage of the Indus against Mahmud, and on the war of extirpation waged against them by Timur, both in their primeval seats in Mawaru-l-nahr,⁵ as well as east of the Sutlej, we have already enlarged; while Babur, in his Commentaries, informs us that, in all his irruptions into India, he was assailed by multitudes of Jats⁶ during his progress through the Panjab, the peasantry of which region, now proselytes to Islam, are chiefly of this tribe ; as well as the [180] military retainers, who, as sectarian followers of Nanak, merge the name of Jat, or Jāt, into that of Sikh or ‘ disciple.’¹

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² Vol. I. p. 127, History of the Rajput Tribes—*Article*, Jats or Getae.

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³ Ranjit has long been in possession of Peshawar, and entertained views on Kabul, the disorganized condition of which kingdom affords him a favourable opportunity of realizing them.

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⁴ See Inscription, p. 914.

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⁵ [The land beyond the Oxus.]

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⁶ “On Friday the 14th (Dec. 29, A.D. 1525), of the first Rabi, we arrived at Sialkot. Every time that I have entered Hindustan, the Jats and Gujars have regularly poured down in prodigious numbers from their hills and

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¹ “ It is worthy of remark,” says Colonel Pitman (who accompanied Mr. Elphinstone to Kabul), “ that in the two first Doabehs (return of the embassy) we saw very few Sikhs, the Jat cultivators of the soil being in general Moosulmauns, and in complete subjugation to the Sikhs.”

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In short, whether as Yuti, Getae, Jats, Juts, or Jāts, this race far surpassed in numbers, three centuries ago, any other tribe or race in India ; and it is a fact that they now constitute a vast majority of the peasantry of western Rajwara, and perhaps of northern India.

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At what period these Jats established themselves in the Indian desert, we are, as has been already observed, entirely ignorant ; but even at the time of the Rathor invasion of these communities their habits confirmed the tradition of their Scythic origin. They led chiefly a pastoral life, were guided, but not governed by the elders, and with the exception of adoration to the ‘ universal mother ’ (Bhavani), incarnate in the person of a youthful Jatni, they were utter aliens to the Hindu theocracy. In fact, the doctrines of the great Islamite saint, Shaikh Farid,² appear to have overturned the pagan rites brought from the Jaxartes ; and without any settled ideas on religion, the Jats of the desert jumbled all their tenets together. They considered themselves, in short, as a distinct class, and, as a Punia Jat informed me, “ their watan was far beyond the Five Rivers.” Even in the name of one of the six communities (the Asaich), on whose submission Bika founded his new State, we have nearly the Asi, the chief of the four tribes from the Oxus and Jaxartes, who overturned the Greek kingdom of Bactria.³

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² [Shaikh Farid, known as Shakkarganj, ‘ sugar-store,’ on account of his supposed miraculous power of transmuting dust or salt into sugar, was disciple of the famous Saint, Kutbu-d-dīn Bakhtyār Kākī. His life is supposed to have extended from A.D. 1173 to 1265. His tomb at Ajūdhan in the Montgomery District is a scene of pilgrimage.]

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³ [He perhaps refers to the Asioi of Strabo (xi. 8. 2), who cannot be identified (Smith, EHI, 226). They have no connexion, except resemblance of name, with the Asaich.]

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wilds, in order to carry off oxen and buffaloes ” [Elliot-Dowson iv. 24]. The learned commentator draws a distinction between the Jat inhabitants of the Panjab and of India, which is not maintainable.

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The period of Rathor domination over these patriarchal communities was intermediate between Timur’s and Babur’s invasion of India. The former, who was the founder of the Chagatai dynasty, boasts of the myriads of Jat souls he “consigned to perdition” on the desert plains of India, as well as in Transoxiana; so we may conclude that successive migrations of this people from the great “storehouse of nations” went to the lands east of the Indus, and that the communities who elected Bika as their sovereign had been established therein for ages. The extent of their possessions justifies this conclusion; for nearly the whole of the territory forming the boundaries of Bikaner was possessed by the six Jat cantons, namely—

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1. Punia.
2. Godara.
3. Saharan.
4. Asaich.
5. Beniwal [or Bhanniwal].
6. Johya, or Joiya [181].

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though this last is by some termed a ramification of the Yadu-Bhatti: an affiliation by no means invalidating their claims to be considered of Jat or Yuti origin.¹

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¹ The Jats of the Agra province consider themselves illegitimate descendants of the Yadus of Bayana, and have a tradition that their watan [home] is Kandahar.

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Each canton bore the name of the community, and was subdivided into districts. Besides the six Jat cantons, there were three more simultaneously wrested from Rajput proprietors; namely, Bagor, the Kharipatta, and Mohila. The six Jat cantons constituted the central and northern, while those of the Rajputs formed the western and southern frontiers.

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*Disposition of the Cantons at that period.*

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With such rapidity were States formed in those times, that in a few years after Bika left his paternal roof at Mandor he was lord over 2670 villages, and by a title far stronger and more legitimate than that of conquest—the spontaneous election of the cantons. But although three centuries have scarcely passed since their amalgamation [182] into a sovereignty, one-half of the villages cease to exist; nor are there now 1300 forming the raj of Surat Singh, the present occupant and lineal descendant of Bika.¹

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¹ [Mahārāja Sūrat Singh reigned A.D. 1788–1828.]

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The Jats and Johyas of these regions, who extended over all the northern desert even to the Gara, led a pastoral life, their wealth consisting in their cattle, which they reared in great numbers, disposing of the superfluity, and of the ghi (butter clarified) and wool, through the medium of Sarsot (Sarasvati) Brahmans (who, in these regions, devote themselves to traffic), receiving in return grain and other conveniences or necessities of life.

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Bīda conquers the Mohil Clan.—A variety of causes conspired to facilitate the formation of the State of Bikaner, and the reduction of the ancient Scythic simplicity of the Jat communities to Rajput feudal sway; and although the success of his brother Bida over the Mohils in some degree paved the way, his bloodless conquest could never have happened but for the presence of a vice which has dissolved all the republics of the world. The jealousy of the Johyas and Godaras, the two most powerful of the six Jat cantons, was the immediate motive to the propitiation of the "son of Jodha"; besides which, the communities found the band of Bida, which had extirpated the ancient Mohils when living with them in amity, most troublesome neighbours. Further, they were desirous to place between them and the Bhattis of Jaisalmer a more powerful barrier; and last, not least, they dreaded the hot valour and "thirst for land" which characterized Bika’s retainers, now contiguous to them at Janglu. For these weighty reasons, at a meeting of the "elders" of the Godaras, it was resolved to conciliate the Rathor.

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Pandu was the patriarchal head of the Godaras; his residence was at Shaikhsar.¹ The ‘elder’ of Ronia was next in rank and estimation to Pandu, in communities where equality was as absolute as the proprietary right to the lands which each individually held: that of pasture being common.

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¹ This town is named after the Islamite saint, Shaikh Farid of Pakpattan, who has a dargah here. He was greatly esteemed by the Jats, before the Bona Dea assumed the shape of a Jatni, to whom, under the title of Kirani Mata, ‘a ray of the mother,’ all bend the head. [Her shrine is at Deshnok, about 25 miles S. of Bikaner city, and is a sanctuary (Hervey, Some Records of Crime, i. 139).]

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The elders of Shaikhsar and Ronia were deputed to enter into terms with the Rajput prince, and to invest him with supremacy over their community, on the following conditions:—

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First. To make common cause with them, against the Johyas and other cantons, with whom they were then at variance.

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Second. To guard the western frontier against the irruption of the Bhattis [183].

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Third. To hold the rights and privileges of the community inviolable.

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On the fulfilment of these conditions they relinquished to Bika and his descendants the supreme power over the Godaras; assigning to him, in perpetuity, the power to levy dhuan, or a ‘hearth tax,’ of one rupee on each house in the canton, and a land tax of two rupees on each hundred bighas of cultivated land within their limits.

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Apprehensive, however, that Bika or his descendants might encroach upon their rights, they asked what security he could offer against such a contingency? The Rajput chief replied that, in order to dissipate their fears on this head, as well as to perpetuate the remembrance of the supremacy thus voluntarily conferred, he would solemnly bind himself and his successors to receive the *tika* of inauguration from the hands of the descendants of the elders of Shaikhsar and Ronia, and that the *gaddi* should be deemed vacant until such rite was administered.

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In this simple transfer of the allegiance of this pastoral people we mark that instinctive love of liberty which accompanied the Getae in all places and all conditions of society, whether on the banks of the Oxus and the Jaxartes, or in the sandy desert of India; and although his political independence is now annihilated, he is still ready even to shed his blood if his Rajput master dare to infringe his inalienable right to his *bapota*, his paternal acres.

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Former Owners conferring Titles on their Successors.—It is seldom that so incontestable a title to supremacy can be asserted as that which the weakness and jealousies of the Godaras conferred upon Bika, and it is a pleasing incident to find almost throughout India, in the observance of certain rites, the remembrance of the original compact which transferred the sovereign power from the lords of the soil to their Rajput conquerors. Thus, in Mewar, the fact of the power conferred upon the Guhilot founder by the Bhil aborigines is commemorated by a custom brought down to the present times. (See Vol. I. p. 262.) At Amber the same is recorded in the important offices retained by the Minas, the primitive inhabitants of that land. Both Kotah and Bundi retain in their names the remembrance of the ancient lords of Haraoti; and Bika’s descendants preserve, in a twofold manner, the recollection of their bloodless conquest of the Jats. To this day the descendant of Pandu applies the unguent of royalty to the forehead of the successors of Bika; on which occasion the prince places ‘the fine of relief,’ consisting of twenty-five pieces of gold, in the hand of the Jat. Moreover, the spot which he selected for his capital was the birthright of a Jat, who would only concede it for this purpose on the condition that his name should be linked in perpetuity with its surrender. Naira, or Nera [184], was the name of the proprietor, which Bika added to his own, thus composing that of the future capital, Bikaner.¹

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¹ [This is a folk etymology. The name is derived from Hindi ner, Skt. nagara, ‘city’—the ‘city of Bika.’]

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Besides this periodical recognition of the transfer of power, on all lapses of the crown, there are annual memorials of the rights of the Godaras, acknowledged not only by the prince, but by all his Rajput vassal-kin, quartered on the lands of the Jat ; and although ‘the sons of Bika,’ now multiplied over the country, do not much respect the ancient compact, they at least recognize, in the maintenance of these formulae, the origin of their power.

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On the spring and autumnal ² festivals of the Holi and Diwali, the heirs of the patriarchs of Shaikhsar and Ronia give the tika to the prince and all his feudality. The Jat of Ronia bears the silver cup and platter which holds the ampoule of the desert, while his compeer applies it to the prince’s forehead. The Raja in return deposits a nazarana of a gold mohur, and five pieces of silver ; the chieftains, according to their rank, following his example. The gold is taken by the Shaikhsar Jat, the silver by the elder of Ronia.

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² Vide pp. 661, 695 for an account of these festivals.