Jats

Jats, a widespread aboriginal people of North-West India, Afghanistan, Baluchistan, and Persia, a.bout whose relations the most contradictory views have been advanced by ethnologists. The word Jat has been connected with the Getce, whom Grimm and others suppose to have been Goths, and the most, prevalent opinion at present is that the Jats really were Aryans, though of a different branch from the Hindus, and possibly Teutons. The fact remains that they are at present of distinctly Aryan type and speech, the Jatki language being a neo-Sanskritic dialect allied to the Panjabi, and spoken by about 1,800,000 in the Indus basin alone. Jat tribes are found scattered all over Baluchistan, some settled peasantry, some nomad camel-breeders, others even itinerant like the Gipsies, but all now Mohammedans. In Zachi they cannot be distinguished from the aborigines, and seem allied to the Jataks and to the Jattakis of the Jatak Hills, Brahuik Range. In the Panjab they are mostly Sikhs, that is, members of Nanek's sect, and in Rajputana, where they form the substratum of the population, they are Hindus chiefly of the Vaishnava sect. If the Sikhs be taken as a typical branch of the family, then the Jats must be pronounced one of the finest races physically in the world. [Sikhs.] But the type varies greatly, and some of the peasantry are of low stature, with small eyes, prominent cheek bones, and very dark complexion.