[1]. [Manu, Laws, x. 44, which does not name the Khasas.] There is a race in the desert, now Muhammadan, and called Khosas. Elphinstone mentions the Khasa-Khel. Kashgar is ‘the region of the Khasas,’ the Casia Regia of Ptolemy [?]. [The Khosas are a Muhammadan tribe, driven from Sind in A.D. 1786, who lived beside the Rann of Cutch, and levied blackmail on their neighbours. They are believed to be a branch of the Rind, and it is improbable that they can be connected with the Khasas of Manu (Laws, x. 22).]
[2]. We can scarcely refuse our assent to the belief that the Kathi or Katti tribe, here mentioned, is the remnant of the nation which so manfully opposed Alexander. It was then located about Multan, at this period occupied by the Langahas. The colony attacked by the Bhatti was near the Aravalli, in all probability a predatory band from the region they peopled and gave their name to, Kathiawar, in the Surashtra peninsula. [The Kāthis were probably a nomadic Central Asian tribe, driven down the valley of the Indus by the tide of early Muhammadan invasions. Their appearance in Jaisalmer at the end of the twelfth century A.D. probably marks a stage in their southerly progress. Thence they seem to have moved into Mālwa, thence to Cutch, and finally to Kāthiāwār (BG, ix. Part i. 252 ff., viii. 128).]
[3]. Mr. Elphinstone enumerates the Jadon as a subdivision of the Yusufzais, one of the great Afghan tribes, who were originally located about Kabul and Ghazni. I could not resist surmising the probability of the term Jadon, applied to a subdivision of the Afghan race, originating from the Hindu-Scythic Jadon, or Yadu; whence the boasted descent of the Afghans from Saul, king of the Jews (Yahudis). The customs of the Afghans would support this hypothesis: “The Afghans (says the Emperor Babur, p. 159), when reduced to extremities in war, come into the presence of their enemy with grass between their teeth, being as much as to say, ‘I am your ox.’” This custom is entirely Rajput, and ever recurring in inscriptions recording victories. They have their bards or poets in like manner, of whom Mr. Elphinstone gives an interesting account. In features, also, they resemble the Northern Rajputs, who have generally aquiline noses, or, as Mr. Elphinstone expresses it in the account of his journey through the desert, “Jewish features”; though this might tempt one to adopt the converse of my deduction, and say that these Yadus of Gajni were, with the Afghans, also of Yahudi origin: from the lost tribes of Israel. [The Jadūn, as Rose writes their name, are not Yūsufzais, but live S. of them, and have no connexion with the Rājput Jādons (Glossary, ii. 272 f., iii. 254).]
[4]. See Mr. Elphinstone’s map for the position of the Jadon branch of the Yusufzais at the foot of the Siwalik hills.
[5]. [“If this is correct, the date of the foundation of Jaisalmer must be wrong, for Mān Singh’s father is known to have been alive in 1249. Moreover the Deora sept did not exist, as it took the name from Mān Singh’s son Deoraj” (Erskine iii. A. 11).]
[6]. In this single passage we have revealed the tribe (got), race (kula), capital, and proper name of the prince of Dhat. The Sodha tribe, as before stated, is an important branch of the Pramara (Puar) race, and with the Umras and Sumras gave dynasties to the valley of Sind from the most remote period. The Sodhas, I have already observed, were probably the Sogdoi of Alexander, occupying Upper Sind when the Macedonian descended that stream. The Sumra dynasty is mentioned by Ferishta from ancient authorities, but the Muhammadan historians knew nothing, and cared nothing, about Rajput tribes. It is from such documents as these, scattered throughout the annals of these principalities, and from the ancient Hindu epic poems, that I have concentrated the “Sketches of the Rajput Tribes,” introductory to the first volume, which, however slight they appear, cost more research than the rest of the book. I write this note chiefly for the information of the patriarch of oriental lore on the Continent, the learned and ingenious De Sacy. If this mentor ask, “Where are now the Sodhas?” I reply, the ex-prince of Umarkot, with whose ancestors Humayun took refuge—in whose capital in the desert the great Akbar was born—and who could on the spur of the moment oppose four thousand horse to invasion, has only one single town, that of Chor, left to him. The Rathors, who, in the time of Armsi Rana and Rawal Chachak, were hardly known in Marudes, have their flag waving on the battlements of the ‘immortal castle’ (Amarkuta), and the Amirs of Sind have incorporated the greater part of Dhat with their State of Haidarabad. [Umarkot is not the ‘immortal castle,’ but the fort of Umar, chief of the Sūmra tribe (IGI, xxiv. 118).]
[7]. To those interested in the migration of these tribes, it must be gratifying to see these annals thus synchronically corroborating each other. About two centuries before this, in the reign of Dusaj, when the Bhatti capital was at Lodorva, an attack was made on the land of Kher, then occupied by the Guhilots, who were, as related in the Annals of Marwar, dispossessed by the Rathors. None but an inquirer into these annals of the desert tribes can conceive the satisfaction arising from such confirmation.
[8]. This tribe is unknown to Central India. [They are a branch of the Parihārs.]
[9]. [Alāu-d-dīn.]