[3] Aegle marmelos.

[4] Hindu Manners, Customs, and Ceremonies, 1897 ed. p. 118.

JĀT

List of Paragraphs

1. Theories of the origin of the caste.

Jāt.[1]—The representative cultivating caste of the Punjab, corresponding to the Kurmi of Hindustān, the Kunbi of the Deccan, and the Kāpu of Telingāna. In the Central Provinces 10,000 Jāts were returned in 1911, of whom 5000 belonged to Hoshangābād and the bulk of the remainder to Narsinghpur, Saugor and Jubbulpore. The origin of the Jāt caste has been the subject of much discussion. Sir D. Ibbetson stated some of the theories as follows:[2] “Suffice it to say that both General Cunningham and Major Tod agree in considering the Jāts to be of Indo-Scythian stock. The former identifies them with the Zanthii of Strabo and the Jatii of Pliny and Ptolemy; and holds that they probably entered the Punjab from their home on the Oxus very shortly after the Meds or Mands, who also were Indo-Scythians, and who moved into the Punjab about a century before Christ.... Major Tod classes the Jāts as one of the great Rājpūt tribes, and extends his identification with the Getae to both races; but here General Cunningham differs, holding the Rājpūts to belong to the original Aryan stock, and the Jāts to a later wave of immigrants from the north-west, probably of Scythian race.” It is highly probable that the Jāts may date their settlement in the Punjab from one of the three Scythian inroads mentioned by Mr. V. A. Smith,[3] but I do not know that there is as yet considered to be adequate evidence to identify them with any particular one.

The following curious passage from the Mahābhārata would appear to refer to the Jāts:[4]