Jat: Origin
This article is an extract from PANJAB CASTES SIR DENZIL CHARLES JELF IBBETSON, K.C. S.I. Being a reprint of the chapter on Lahore : Printed by the Superintendent, Government Printing, Punjab, 1916. |
Origin
Perhaps no question connected with the ethnology of the Panjab peoples has been so much discussed as the orignn of the Jat race. It is not my intention here to reproduce any of the arguments adduced. They will be found in detail in the Arehaological Survey Reports, Vol. II, pages 51 to 61 ; in Tod's Rajasthan, Vol. I, pages 52 to 75 and 96 to 101 (Madras Reprint, 1880) ; in Elphinstone's History of India, pages 250 to 253; and in Elliot's Races of the N. W. P., Vol. I, pages 130 to 187. Suffice it to say that both General Cunningham and Major Tod agree in considering the Jats to be of Indo-Scythian stock. The former identifies them with the Zanthii of Strabo nnd the Jatii of Pliny and Ptolemy ; and holds that they probably entered the Panjab from their home on the Oxus very shortly after the Meds or Mands , who also were Indo-Scythians, and who moved into the Panjab about a century before Christ. The Jats seem to have first occupied the Indus valley as far down as Sindh, whither the Meds followed them about the beginning of the present tcra. But before the earhest Mahomedan inva sion the Jats had spread into the Panjab proper, where they were firmly established in the beginning of the 11th century. By the time of Babar the Jats of the Salt-range Tract had been subdued by the Gakkhars, Awans, and Janjuas, while as early as the 7th century the Jats and Meds of Sindh were ruled over by a Brahman dynasty. Major Tod classes the Jats as one of the great Rajput tribes, and extends his idttntification with the Getse to both races ; but here General Cunningham differs, holding the Rajputs to belong to the original Aryan stock, and the Jats to belong to a later wave of immigrants from the North-west, probably of Scythian race.
It may be tbat the original Rajput and the original Jat entered India at different periods in its history, though to my mind the term Rajput is an occupational rather than an ethnological expression. But if they do originally represent two separate waves of immigration, it is at least exceedingly pro bable, both from their almost identical physique and facial character and from the close communion which has always existed between them, that they belong to one and the same ethnic stock ; while whether this be so or not, it is almost certain that they have been for many centuries and still are so intermingled and so blended into one people that It Is practically impossible to distinguish them as separate wholes. It is indeed more than probable that the process of fusion has not ended here, and that the people who thus in the main resulted from the blending of the Jat and the Rajput, If these two ever were distinct, is by no means free from foreign elements. We have seen how the Pathan people have assimilated Saiyads, Turks, and Mughals, and how it was sufficient for a Jat tribe to retain Its political independence and organisation in order to be admitted into the Biloch nation ; we know how a character for sanctity and social exclusiveness combined will in a few generations make a Quresh or a Saiyad ; and it is almost certain that the joint Jat-Rajput stock contains not a few tribes of aboriginal descent, though It Is probably in the main Aryo Scythian, if Scythian be not Aryan. The Man, Her, and Bhular Jats (section 435) are known as asl or original Jats because they claim no Rajput ancestry, but are supposed to be descended from the hair [jat] of the aboriginal god Siva; the Jats of the south-eastern districts divide themselves into two sections, Shivgotri or of the family of Siva, and Kasahgotri who claim connec tion with the Rajputs ; and the names of the ancestor Bar of the Shivgotris and of his son Barbara are the very words which the ancient Brahmans give us as the marks of the barbarian aborigines. Many of the Jat tribes of the Panjab have customs which apparently point to non-Aryan origin, and a rich and almost virgin field for investigation Is here open to the ethnologist.
