Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 5.djvu/37

 SIKH JAT OF THE SINDHOO CLAN. (233)

HE offspring of a Rajpoot father and a Soodra woman have taken the appellation of Jats, and though they do not rank as high in the scale of social caste as the real Jats, yet become connected with them by marriage, and so merge into the general mass of the tribe. In some cases they remain Hindoos, and acknowledge Brahminical doctrines and priestly control; but in others they become Sikhs, and one of the clans of the Punjab, the Sindlioo, is composed of them. Mr. Lepel Griffin's work on the Punjab chiefs gives some interesting particulars regarding the Sindhoo-Sikh-Jat clan, from which the following extracts are taken. The founder of the family was a person of the name of Sindhoo, and appears to have been of Rajpoot origin; but during the thirteenth century emigrated from Ghuzni, in Afghanistan, to the Manjha, where he settled with his family. There are other accounts of the family current among the clan, but the above is admitted to be the most authentic.

"Changa, the thirteenth in descent from Sindhoo, was an influential chowdree, and founded, some fifteen miles south-east of Lahore, the village of Padhana, where the family still resides. He was the chief of the thirty Jat chowdrees and head men, who went on a mission to the Emperor Akbur, to arrange the marriage of that monarch with a daughter of Mir Mitta Dhariwal, a zemindar of Dowla Kangra, near Wadnee, in the Ferozpoor district. The emperor first saw the girl, who was very beautiful, at the village well. She had a pitcher of water on her head, yet contrived to place her foot upon the rope of a refractory and runaway heifer, and hold it captive till its owner came up. Akbur was so delighted with this feat of strength, that he wished to marry her, but the father declined the honour without the consent of his caste. He assembled a committee of seventy-one lumburdars and chowdrees, thirty-five Jats, and thirty-six Rajpoots, to decide the question. The Rajpoots considered the marriage disgraceful; but the Jats, with Changa at their head, approved of it, and the marriage took place accordingly. Akbur rewarded the thirty-five with lands and honours, and these