2. Sir George Campbell’s account of the Khatris.
“Trade is their main occupation; but in fact they have broader and more distinguishing features. Besides monopolising the trade of the Punjab and the greater part of Afghānistān, and doing a good deal beyond those limits, they are in the Punjab the chief civil administrators, and have almost all literate work in their hands. So far as the Sikhs have a priesthood, they are, moreover, the priests or gurus of the Sikhs. Both Nānak and Govind were, and the Sodis and Bedis of the present day are, Khatris. Thus then they are in fact in the Punjab, so far as a more energetic race will permit them, all that Mahratta Brāhmins are in the Mahratta country, besides engrossing the trade which the Mahratta Brāhmins have not. They are not usually military in their character, but are quite capable of using the sword when necessary. Diwān Sāwan Mal, Governor of Multan, and his notorious successor Mūlraj, and very many of Ranjīt Singh’s chief functionaries were Khatris.
“Even under Mahomedan rulers in the west they have risen to high administrative posts. There is a record of a Khatri Diwān of Badakshān or Kurdāz; and, I believe, of a Khatri Governor of Peshāwar under the Afghans. The Emperor Akbar’s famous minister, Todarmal, was a Khatri; and a relative of that man of undoubted energy, the great commissariat contractor of Agra, Joti Pershād, lately informed me that he also is a Khatri. Altogether, there can be no doubt that these Khatris are one of the most acute, energetic and remarkable races in India, though in fact, except locally in the Punjab, they are not much known to Europeans. The Khatris are staunch Hindus, and it is somewhat singular that, while giving a religion and priests to the Sikhs, they themselves are comparatively seldom Sikhs. The Khatris are a very fine, fair, handsome race, and, as may be gathered from what I have already said, they are very generally educated.
“There is a large subordinate class of Khatris, somewhat lower, but of equal mercantile energy, called Rors or Roras. The proper Khatris of higher grade will often deny all connection with them, or at least only admit that they have some sort of bastard kindred with Khatris, but I think there can be no doubt that they are ethnologically the same, and they are certainly mixed up with Khatris in their avocations. I shall treat the whole kindred as generically Khatris.
“Speaking of the Khatris then thus broadly, they have, as I have said, the whole trade of the Punjab and of most of Afghānistān. No village can get on without the Khatri who keeps the accounts, does the banking business, and buys and sells the grain. They seem, too, to get on with the people better than most traders and usurers of this kind. In Afghānistān, among a rough and alien people, the Khatris are as a rule confined to the position of humble dealers, shopkeepers and moneylenders; but in that capacity the Pathāns seem to look on them as a kind of valuable animal, and a Pathān will steal another man’s Khatri, not only for the sake of ransom, as is frequently done on the frontier of Peshāwar and Hazāra, but also as he might steal a milch-cow, or as Jews might, I dare say, be carried off in the Middle Ages with a view to render them profitable.
“I do not know the exact limits of Khatri occupation to the West, but certainly in all Eastern Afghānistān they seem to be just as much a part of the established community as they are in the Punjab. They find their way far into Central Asia, but the further they get the more depressed and humiliating is their position. In Turkistan, Vambéry speaks of them with great contempt, as yellow-faced Hindus of a cowardly and sneaking character. Under Turcoman rule they could hardly be otherwise. They are the only Hindus known in Central Asia. In the Punjab they are so numerous that they cannot all be rich and mercantile; and many of them hold land, cultivate, take service, and follow various avocations.”