Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 3.djvu/94

Rh which involved a second attack upon the place in the year 1826, when, after a memorable siege, the fort was carried by storm, and the prestige attached to it for ever broken. Its defences were destroyed, and the young Rajah, then a minor, was taken under the protection of the Government of India. Since then the cu'cumstances of the Bhurtpoor state have been very prosperous, and the Eajah evinced decided loyalty during the rebellion. His tribe have given up their warlike habits, and are now peaceful and very industrious farmers.

In the Asiatic Journal for May, 1827, Colonel Tod, author of the celebrated work on Rajpootana and the Rajpoots generally, maintains that the Jâts are of the same stock as the Getæ. and Massagetæ of ancient classical writers. He assigns to them the same origin as the Jutts of Jutland, in Denmark, who were the invaders of England, and traces them to the stock of the original Aryan or Scytliian conquerors and colonists of India. Nor is this, perhaps, improbable, as the Jâts exhibit, as a race, no affinity with the aboriginal inhabitants, whose characteristics and present condition differ very inconsiderably from their original status. Few of these tribes, comparatively speaking, have adopted settled habits or occupation, or evinced a disposition to enter within the pale of the Hindoo religion or its civilization. The Jâts, however, since they were first known, and in their earliest settlement on the banks of the Indus, have always, by remote tradition, been Hindoos, and have those settled habits which belong especially to owners and cultivators of land. In this respect they correspond with the descriptions, in the Vedas and the code of Manoo or Menu, of the fourth classes of Aryan society, who were termed Sudras, and they still correspond, more remarkably perhaps than any other class of India, "with their original condition. By some authorities, however, and even by their own traditions, the Jâts are considered to have been descended from the Rajpoots—as an inferior caste, perhaps illegitimate. But this does not seem so consistent with their clanish attachment and eminently peaceful profession as laborious and skilful agriculturists, as the independent Aryan descent which Colonel Tod claims for them.

Perhaps the first authentic information in Indian history with regard to the Jâts is to be derived from Ferishta, who states that in his retreat from India, the army of Mahmood of Ghuzni suffered severely from the attacks of the Jât soldiers. They were in frequent revolt against the subsequent Emperors of Delhi, and contrived to maintain their independence by their brave and resolute resistance to Imperial oppression and misgovernment. There are many Jâts in the Punjab, and the Sikhs, for the most part, are descendants of Jât families who were converted by the great Sikh reformer Gooroo Nanuk. It is by no means improbable that the Jâts of the Punjab and Central India were the original opposers of Alexander the Great; and against the Mahomedan invasions of the country the Jâts were ever foremost in its defence.