Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 4.djvu/108

GOOJURS. whether this has had any permanent effect upon the class in general, who would be ready to resort to plunder on any favourable occasion, and no local report details any satisfactory proofs of general amendment. Their agriculture does not improve in character, nor do they betake themselves to other occupations than those followed by their forefathers.

In many respects the Goojurs resemble the Jats. They are indeed a handsome tribe, and both men and women are remarkable for powerful figures and fair complexions. The women in particular are remarkably good looking, and have a bold free carriage and demeanour not usually seen among Hindoos born in Northern India, and are in these respects superior to the Jats. The two tribes can eat together, and use a common hookah, take water from each other, and the like; but they do not intermarry. While the Jats are honest, frank, and trustworthy in all respects, the Goojurs are lawless, mulish, revengeful, and wrong-headed, professing no loyalty to any one. Thus, by the relative character of the tribe, one has reached the dignity of an independent state for the largest proportion of its members—which is a subject of never failing pride—while the other has remained in its original condition, distracted by small feuds, man against man, and village against village, thus preventing any cohesion for a common purpose.

In addition to their agricultural pursuits, the Goojurs are herdsmen like the Alieers, but not shepherds. They breed and rear cattle very successfully, supplying their districts with sheep and pack buUocks, and the cantonments and cities of the North West with animals for slaughter. They also make and sell ghee in large (quantities, and these are perhaps their most successful pursuits. They are divided into several clans, Kasees, Nagrees, Bhuttees, &c., and in some districts they are very numerous. Shekawuttee, Goorgaon, and Buwanoo, near Hardwar, contain large proportions of them. In their social customs they differ very little from other Hindoo castes of the same rank; they are Sudras, though they affect a higher station, on account of their presumed descent from Rajpoots. If they ever had, which is doubtful, any particular tribal customs, they have disappeared. They employ Brahmins for their religious ceremonies, that is marriage, naming of children, purification, and the like, and they burn their dead. Their widows are allowed to remarry, if they please, by the Danecha rite; but this marriage, though it does not affect the legitimacy of children, is only of a second rank; and women who have had children rarely if ever remarry. In this respect, as indeed in most others, they resemble the Jats and Alieers. Like the Jats they eat all flesh, except that of cows or bullocks, and are particularly fond of wild hog. They drink spirits also, and smoke tobacco and ganja, or hemp leaves, and their women use opium as well for themselves as their children. The Goojurs are by no means so thrifty or so rich as the Jats, which may be accounted for by their differences in character, nor are they by any means so industrious. They live in a poorer class of dwellings, and