Rajputs: Tribal Statistics
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. |
Rajputs: Tribal Statistics
The figures for tribes will bo given under the respective groups to which they belong. They are more than usually inaccurate, partly because a Rajput is sO difficult of definition, but still more because the Rajputs are divided into a few great tribes or royal races as they are commonly called, the Jculs of the Rajput annals, and each of these tribes again into innumerable local clans or sachi or gots. Almost every Rajput will refer himself rightly or wrongly to some one of the great kills, as well as state the local clan to which he beyond all doubt belongs ; and thus we have members of the same clan and descendants of the same ancestor returning themselves as belonging to different tribes, while multitudes of persons appear twice over in the Abstracts, first under their tribe or Jcul, and again under their clan or got.
It must be remembered that such of the figures as are shown for Rajput tribes in the Abstracts of the following pages under the head Jat, refer to people who have returned themselves as Jat by caste, and Bhatti, Chauhan, and so forth by tribe. In the great majority of cases this latter entry represents mere traditional origin, rather than that the people in question actually claim that they are Bhatti or Chauhan at the present moment. In many cases they have returned their Jat tribe as well. Abstract No. 78 below gives the numbers entered for various tribes under Jat and Rajput, respectively, and shows how extensively this sort of entry has been made.