Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 3.djvu/250

 RAJPOOT CULTIVATORS. (169)

HESE peasants are residents of Jumnootri, or the source of the Jumna, and belong by caste to a Rajpoot race known as the Russia clan. They are Hindoos, and worship Ram and Buwarie especially. They feed on anything they can get except ox flesh, but chiefly on goats, which they eat after sacrifice. Both the subjects are, as will be seen, young men; both have very dark eyes and complexion. They are dressed in the usual duty-white blanket vestment of their class and black trowsers. The Hill Rajpoot tribes are very nmnerous; the Jullunder Doab alone has upwards of twenty. Their pretensions to the appellation is, however, very doubtful, though every tribe asserts its descent from one or other of the original four Agni Kools, or fire brethren. Those alone are really Rajpoots who are themselves members of a royal class, or are connected with one by marriage. Such receive the title of Meean, and are saluted by inferiors with the cry, Jey Deva! or Victory to God! Their honour is stained by driving the plough, giving their daughters to an inferior, or taking one much lower in rank for their sons, taking money for their daughters, or allowing their women to appear in public. It is among these classes that infanticide has most prevailed.

The class represented, however, has no such exalted pretensions. They are farmers and labourers, in comfortable cu'cumstances, but by no means wealthy. Those that can afford to do so, seclude their women, but the practice is not universal. They are, for the most part, entirely ignorant and uneducated, and employ Brahmins as Gurus, or spiritual teachers, and in the performance of all domestic ceremonies; professing great reverence for, and belief in, their ministrations. There is a great difference between the types of features of the lower Rajpoot tribes and the higher; the latter is unmistakeably Aryan, while the lower, as shown in the representation, is nearly allied to the aboriginal. Like most hill men the Rajpoots are fond of adorning themselves with sprigs of wild flowers, and among the profusion by which they are surrounded they have no lack of choice; their women too wear flowers in their hair, or in garlands about their heads and necks. The hill Rajpoots are not inferior to those of the plains in bravery, but they seldom take service, and subsist by farming and hunting, of which they are passionately fond. As a class they are somewhat unruly, but not difficult to manage, and are not given to crime of a serious character.