View source for Jats: Eastern Sub-Montane (Punjab)

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This article is an extract from <br/>

PANJAB CASTES <br/>

SIR DENZIL CHARLES JELF IBBETSON, K.C. S.I. <br/>

Being a reprint of the chapter on <br/>
The Races, Castes and Tribes of <br/>
the People in the Report on the <br/>
Census of the Panjab published <br/>
in ''' 1883 ''' by the late Sir Denzil <br/>
Ibbetson, KCSI <br/>

Lahore : <br/>

Printed  by the Superintendent, Government Printing, Punjab, <br/>

1916. <br/>
''Indpaedia is an archive. It neither agrees nor disagrees ''<br/> 
''with the contents of this article.''
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[[Category:India|J]]
[[Category:Communities|J]]

=Jats:  Eastern Sub-Montane=

The small group of Jats which I 
shall next describe he to the north of the Sikh Jats just discussed, all along 
under the foot of the hills from Ambala to Gurdaspur. There is no definite 
line of demareation between them and the Sikh Jats to the south or the Jats 
of the western sub-montanc to the west ; and perhaps the only real distinction 
is that, speaking broadly, the first are Hindus, the second Sikhs, and the 
thirdMusalmans, though of course followers of all three religions are to be 
found in almost every tribe. In character and position there is nothing to 
distinguish the tribes I am about to notice, save that they have never enjoyed 
the political importance which distinguished the Sikh Jats under the Khalsa. 

Abstract No. 76 on the opposite page gives the figures for these tribes roughly 
arranged in order from west to east. Here again there is no confusion 
between Jats and Rajputs, though the reason of the precision wuth which 
they are distinguished is exactly the opposite of that already discussed in the 
case of the western sub-montane and Sikh Jats. In the Sikh tract the 
political position of the Jat was so high that he had no wish to be called 
Rajput : under the hills the status of the Rajput is so superior that the Jat 
has no hope of being called Rajput. The only one of these tribes of which 
any considerable number have returned themselves as Jats as well as Rajputs 
is the Manj, and that only in Gurdaspur on the extreme confines of the tract. 
Then I shall consider wdth the Rajputs of the same name. In this tract the 
Settlement Reports are even more meagre than in the last ; and ray informa
tion is correspondingly imperfect, 

== The Jat tribes of the Eastern Sub-montane. The Randhawa (No. 2)==
The 
Bandhawa is a large and widely spread tribe whoso head-quarters appear to he the Amritsar and 
Gurdaspur districts, but who are also found in considerable numbers in Lahore, Jalandliar, 
Hushyarpur, and Patiala. Their founder Randhawa, a Jadu or Bhatti Rajput, lived in Bikaner 
some seven centuries ago; and Kajjal, fifth in descent from him, migrated to Batala which had 
some time before been founded by Ram Deo another Bhatti. Here the tribe increased in numbers, 
possessed itself of a very considerable tract of country, and rose to some political importance. The 
history of the Randhawa family is fully detailed at pages 200 to 218 of the Panjab Chiefs. 
A few Randhawa have shown themselves also as Bhatti in Gujranwala and as Virk in Firozpur. 

''' The Kang (No. 3)'''  — This tribe is found chiefly in the angle between the Beas and Satluj, 
though they have crossed the latter river into Ambala and Firozpur, and are apparently found 
in small numbers all along its banks and oven on the Lower Indus. Their tradition is that they 
came from Garh Ghazni. They occupied a position of some considerable political importance in 
their own tract during the early days of Sikh rule. Mr. Barkley writes of the Jalandhar Kang : — 
Most of the Sikh Sardars of the Nakodar tahsil either belong to this tribe, or were connected 
with it by marriage when they establislicd their authority there. Tara Singh Gheba {sie), who 
was their leader at the time of the conquest, was himself of this race and a native of Kang on 
the Satluj, where it is said that eighteen Sardars at one time resided ; but on the village being 
swept away by the river they dispersed themselves in the- separate jagfrs on both sides of the 
river.The Kang are said to claim descent from the Solar Rajputs of Ajudhia through their 
ancestor Jogra, father ot Kaug. 

''' The Sohal (No. 4)''' — The Sohal are said to be of Chauhan Rajput origin, their ancestor Sohal 
belonging to the family of Mahag. They appear to he to the north of the Kaug, close up under 
and even among the hills ; but they are also found along the Satluj, though in smaller numbers. 

''' The Bains (No. 5)''' — The head-quarters of the Baius appear to be in Hushyarpur and 
Jalandhar, though they have spread westwards even as far as Rawalpindi, and eastwards into 
Ambala and the adjoining Native States. They say that they are by origin Janjua Rajputa, 
and that their ancestor Bains came eastwards in the time of Firoz Shah. Bains is one of the 36 
royal famihes of Rajputs, but tod beheves that it is merely a sub-division of the Suryabansi 
section. They give their name to Baiswava, or the easternmost portion of the Ganges-.ramna 
doab. The Sardars of Alawalpur in Jalandhar are Bains, whose ancestor came from Hushyarpur 
to Jalla near Sarhind in Nabha some twelve generations ago. 

''' The Buta (No. 6)''' — The Buta are, as far as our figures go, confined to Hushyarpur. I have 
no information regarding them, and am not at all certain that they are distinct from the Bhutta 
of the Western Plaius (section '129) and the Buttar of the Sikh tract (section 430), 


''' The Ithwal (No. 7)''' — The Itlnwal or Uthwal seem to be found chiefly in Ambala, Ludhianah, 
Jalandhar, and the adjoining territory of Patiala. But unless two distinct names have been 
confused, they have a curiously large colony in Dehli, which appears to be completely separated 
from that of Ambala. They are said to be descended from a Surajbansi Rajput called Maharaj 
who received the nickname of Unthwal from his love for camel-riding !