Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 4.djvu/101

 JATS. (192)

N the course of previous illustrations, Jats have occurred in Nos. 151 and 152 (ante), but those were of superior members of the tribe, and the present Photograph is of a group of the lower orders, who, nevertheless, preserve the same characteristics of fine soldierly figures, and strong, but simple, features. In the North-West Provinces there are two grand divisions of Jats: one which has become Sikhs, and is very numerous; the other, the original stock, to which the persons in the Photograph belong. The two divisions do not intermarry, except on rare occasions, and their social customs differ in many respects. The Jats, for instance, smoke tobacco; to the Sikhs it is forbidden. Blue is the national colour of the Sikhs, which to a Hindoo Jat is unlucky. The Sikhs profess to have abjured Brahminism and idolatry, and are followers of the simple doctrine of Nanuk; the Jats are still idolaters, and believe in Hindoo gods; pay some, though not much, reverence to Brahmins, and worship the Ganges very particularly. They are, for the most part, votaries of Krishna; but they follow the precepts of their spiritual directors, or gooroos, and their purohits, or family priests, in whatever religious rites they may be directed to perform. Among themselves they have no education, and have a general contempt for schooling of all kinds. There are few who can even read or write; and to the Brahmins, Khuttris, Khayets, and other educated classes, are committed all their accounts, and other transactions of mercantile and household exigency. Not, indeed, that any of them are merchants, except as regards the sale of the produce of their farms. They hold all trading and dealing in money as merchants in much contempt; and to call a Jat a "Bunnea" would be one of the greatest of insults.

All records of the Jats describe them as a fine, manly race of men, frank and true in all their relations of life and its engagements. They enter into the regular military service of our Government, and make good steady soldiers, both in the infantry and the cavalry. In the rebellion of the year 1857, the Jat population did not join in local excesses like the Goojurs, the Wattees, and other tribes; but were