The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations/Prologue
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Manthan Publications, Rohtak. ISBN 81-85235-22-8
ProloguePage XI
"Jat" is an awe-inspiring name in the ethnology of the Indian Sub-Continent. The Jats have, ever since time immemorial, been playing a significant role in the ethnogenesis of her northwestern part. "They, without any caste distinction, female seclusion and with democratic tendencies, erect moral stature and unprejudiced mind, are more in sympathy with the modern age than the aristocratic Rajputs who have not yet discarded the medieval traits of their character, still cherishing the notion of class distinction and contempt for productive labour. If sufficiently enlightened, they may carry back the Indian society to its Vedic purity, inspiring new vigour into it, for a more glorious destiny" (K.R. Qanungo).
Assessments of Jat character widely vary. On the one hand, Jats
have been characterized as possessing an unrivaled naivete combined, paradoxically, with spontaneous repartee and deep sense of homour suited to all moods and occasions. They may be described by stating Chesterton's description of the tent-house of the nomads in his "The Everlasting Man" and grafting it with a rural adage, thus:
- "Decency is the curtain of a Jat family, liberty is the wall of his village, equality is the pillar of his society, fraternity is its vigilant guardian, property is but his family farm, honour is but his tribal totem (peacock), and the chief sacrifice is to the national flag".
In sharp contrast with such adulatory descriptions may be reproduced that of William Crooke who presents a Jat to be
- "as bovine and stolid as his bull and buffalo".
The Jat, huqqa and buffalo are said to have been traditionally inseparable. If he may invest as much in the education of his issues as he does in his buffalo, they would surely be next to none in their achievements. To Crooke, the Jat may retort: "Even dust has a flavour if one can relish it, a fragrance if one can smell it and a quality if one can sense it".
Some others find "no kindness in a Jat as no weevil in a stone", and further think that "when a Jat runs wild it takes God to hold him" . Risley (1915: 305-33) has given innumerable such proverbs about all communities including the Jat. These, with a few exceptions, are all derogatory. They are "humoured" as much as English jokes about the Scots, the Irish and the French or as "Sardar jokes" in northern India. Such assignments, when taken seriously, cause a lot of had blood. But they are in fact, good-humoured exchanges, and are often taken as
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such. Of such nature, obviously, is a gibe against Brahmans cited by Risley; "There are three blood-suckers in this world-the bug, the flea and the Brahman". The person who cracks this joke will bow his head before the Brahman in all humility, and a good natured Brahman may cite this joke against, himself. Such twitting is a part of daily life, and the Jats arouse quite a big chunk (If such good-humoured raillery.
Some facts about the Jat are, however, indisputable. These are neatly summed up by S. Khushwant Singh, a journalist of repute. "Every Jat Village was a small republic made of people of kindred blood who were as conscious of absolute equality between themselves as they were or their superiority over men of other castes who earned their livelihood as weavers, potters, cobblers and scavengers. The relationship of a Jat village with the State was that of a semi-autonomous Unit paying a fixed sum of money. Few governments tried to assert authority, and those Which did, soon discovered that sending out armed militia against fortified Villages was not very profitable. The Jats' spirit of freedom and equality refused to submit to Brahmanical Hinduism and in its turn drew the censure of the privileged Brahman of the Gangetic plains ... The upper caste Hindus' denigration of the Jat did not in the least lower the Jat in his own eyes". The Jat strongly asserts that "Gold does not change its colour for fear of flames", and "embers are, after all embers even though covered with ash".
S. Khushwant Singh further adds "He (the Jat) assumed some-what 'condescending attitude towards the Brahman, whom he considers little better than a soothsayer or a beggar, or the Kshatriya, who disdained earning an honest living and was proud of being a mercenary. The Jat was born a worker and a warrior. He tilled his land with his sword girded round his waist. He fought more battles for the defence of his motherland than the Kshatriya, for unlike Kshatriya the Jat seldom fled from his village when the invaders came. And if the Jat was maltreated or if his Wife was molested by the conqueror on his way to Hindustan, he settled his score by looting the invader's caravans ... His brand of patriotism was at once hostile to foreigners and benign, even Contemptuous towards his own countrymen whose fate depended so much on his courage and fortitude", (History Of the Sikhs, Vol. 1, pp. l5f). In fact, the Jats have always "sacrificed their day for our to-day and their to-day for our tomorrow."
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Similarly, as early as 1934 another eminent writer and Editor, Pt. Indra Vidyavachaspati, quoted in the introduction of "The Jat Itihas", holds: "The Jat race has two great virtues; they can neither bow down for long under the hegemony of another nor do they tolerate the slavery of social and religious orthodoxy. They lived for 700 years under Muslim rule, but as rebels and thorns in their side. This is the sign of a warrior race. A vice is also attached with the Jat. They have a fractiousness, which, if it turns Wild, results in mutual enmity . The would have, by dint of their virtues,been the sole rulers of India, but for this vice" (Dr. Ranjit Singh, Jat Itihas, vol. 1, 1990, Rohtak, p.Prakashkiya). History rears ample testimony that this weakness of theirs has been exploited, more often than not, by vested interests. Herodotus, the "Father of History", interestingly, holds quite similar views about the Scythians (Sakas), widely believed to be the ancestors of the Jats. If this is to be relied upon, we have every reason to believe that the Scythians bequeathed not only the physical features but their thoughts also to the Jats, for the dead ancestors of a race" are said to "ever dominate the invisible domain of the mind of its successive generations".
The three-lettered word, "Jat" is, to Grahl Matthew, (an Australian Veteran of the World War II and later, in 1979, a Technical Adviser to the Seed Farm, Hissar, Haryana), a euphonic embodiment of "justice, action and truth". If the Jat lives, he lives to defy injustice against himself and others; when he dies, he dies, in defiance of death. As the saying goes, "People believe him dead only after thirteen days of mourning are over". The Jat is the pioneer of the 'Green Revolution'. On his produce, wax fat the birds and beasts, ants and insects, reptiles and mammals , bipeds and quadrupeds, carnivores and herbivores. With his tongue in the cheek, he dismisses them all as leeches, created by the same God, who has created him. He is likely to follow up this remark with a half-condescending, half-realistic question: "Where else can they go for food?" for he seldom grumbles if he has to go without food himself while sharing it with all these creatures. He takes all this sharing philosophically, finding solace in the thought that it is a candle's task to burn itself out for the pleasure of others; it is its nature to burn, and, in the process, to provide illumination in the tavern of this world.
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Heredity and, more than that, his occupational environs, coupled with the bracing climate of his cradle, anneal and fashion him to tackle the same odds in days of peace which, as a soldier, he is required to brave on the battle-field. In his daily life he faces, day in and day out, the poisonous creatures, deadly wild animals, scorching and freezing vagaries of weather, occasional flash floods and devastating droughts, hail and storm, intruders and invaders, and, last but not least, the cunning designs of his "well-wishers", who "smile and smile" with their insatiable eye on his produce. These tribulations are far more hazardous than the tribulation of an open battle against a declared enemy and so he faces both with a stoicism that may shame Marcus Aurelius.
The Late Field Martial K.M. Cariappa, (may his soul rest in peace in heaven), once very aptly observed, "The mother, the soldier and God are invariably on our lips and even worshipped at the time of war". Just see, how nicely a soldier-poet puts it.
When war is rife and danger nigh,
God and the soldier, is all the cry.
When war is over and wrongs are righted,
God is forgot, and the soldier is slighted.
W.F. Mitchell.
The Jat is the brave soldier the sweat of whose brow and the dust on whose body are nauseous and pungent to the nostrils of others in times of peace, but most fragrant and welcome in war. He is forgotten and neglected in peace, but sedulously wooed, praised and prized during danger. He survives not on the mercy of others, but by his reputation, the "perfume of his heroic deeds". He has habitually undergone, more often than not, such traumatic experiences, and yet without any lament.
The latest example of the sacrifice of the Jat is eddenced by their victory in the Battle of Dograi in 1965 during Indo- Pak war. Lieut. General S.K Sinha, Ex. Vice Chief of Army Staff, observes that 'without any advantage of numbers and without any edge in weaponry, the "3 Jat" convincingly wiped out "16 Punjab" of Pakistan. The shout of a Pakistani soldier from across the Icchogil Canal that 'only my old battalion could have done this", is, according to Brig. Desmond E. Hayde, "certainly the finest tribute to "3 Jat" by the enemy." "Had the
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history of India been written without prejudice and predilections, the heroic deeds of these brave people (Jats), who stemmed the tide of Islam for centuries, would have certainly received the recognition they so richly deserve". (R C Majumdar)
But, on the contrary, their name and their prestigious and pristine designation "Kshatriya" has long been effaced from history. Their memorials and monuments weathered away unprotected. Their heroes passed away unsung and unwept. Their sages an saints were cannonaded when alive and never canonized even after their death. Their men of merit and their leaders were discriminated against as aliens. History had generally been used to build a psychosis as if they have been the source of all evil, whereas the boot has often been on the other leg.
In peace their hand was ever on the plough, in emergencies their
finger was ever on the trigger. They were left no time to check what was recorded concerning them. If any such effort was contemplated, their illiteracy and the inaccessibility of records stood in the way. By the time they acquired competence to sift the grain from the chaff, inextricable fabrications had been so skilfully woven round their identity and history that efforts at extricating the truth from a farrago of untruth had become an almost impossible task.
Dr. Zakir Hussain, the late President of our Republic, once remarked that "the history of the Jat Regiment is the history of Indian Army, and in the same way the history of the jats is the history of India". The Jats, says K. Natwar Singh, have long memories, but little sense of history. They have a proud history, but no historian. Their record in patriotic valour is second to none". The Marathas had Grant Duff, the Rajputs James Tod, the Sikhs Cunningham but the Jats had nobody to record their annals and antiquities, achievements and exploits. This misfortune has afflicted them through the ages. Should we abandon them to cold oblivion, as they always have been, or restore them to the name and fame they so fairly deserve?
Eons dog eons, sons tread close on heels
Of fathers; mankind snakes its way
From mists of hoary past, across the plains
Of endless time, towards the very brink
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Of blank oblivions; in this vast concourse,
Trace him, the fragrance of whose glorious deeds
Still haunts the caverns and the chasms of time.
Historical publications are replete with surmises on the origin and antiquity of the Jats, but lack of unanimity is the unfortunate result. Their Gotras are in thousands, but their pedigree are blotted out. The Buddhist "disbelievers", who did not admit of caste and class, are often blamed (C.V. Vaidya, 1924, VoI.II:261f) for all this, but this does not explain the anomaly. Another misfortune, and even more lamentable, that affected the Jats down the ages, was their discordant relations with the Brahman, who has always boasted that, "as guardian of law, his renown spreads far like a drop of sesame oil in water", whereas "the name of the ignorant (Jat) shrinks and congeals like a drop of clarified butter" in it (cf. Bougie, 1971: 132). The Brahman, by virtue of his ladle and learning and the Jat, by dint of his sword and sceptre, rivalled each other for supremacy. The former never desisted from devising exploitative pia fraus afresh (cf. Maharishi Dayanandd, Satyarthaprakasha, Ch. XI - "Jatji and Popeji" later was never tired of tearing them to shreds. The long drawn out struggle resulted in the victory of the "pen and pothi of the Pandit" over the sickle and sword of the Jat in the medieval age when a new class of hereditary rulers, who entirely surrendered to the benedictions of the priest, was baptised at Mount Abu at the cost of the Jats. Both of them had no love lost for the Jats and no faith in their values.
Concerning the anomaly, it is significant that the Brahmans, "the authors of pen, press and platform" and "the masters of ladle and learning ", have been able to retain intact their own gotras and paravaras despite all political confusion. It is even more significant that the genealogies of others (especially of the Jat Kshatriyas) whose ancestors are supposed to have learnt "shastra vidya" at their feet, have been either assigned to oblivion or defaced and distorted beyond recognition. Brahman superciliousness (R. Fick, Ency. of Religion and Ethics, Vol. VI: :353-58) is at fault for this act besides partisanship in chronicles, and not Buddhism. A deliberate design seems to be at the back of the huge gaps in our ancient records.
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I asked of TIME for whom those temples rose,
That prostrate by his hand in silence lie;
His lips disdained the mystery to disclose,
And borne on swifter wing, he hurried by.
The broken columns, whose? I asked of FAME,
Her kindling breath gives life to works sublime;
With downcast looks of mingled grief and shame,
She heaved the uncertain sigh, and followed TIME.
Wrapt in amazement over the mouldering pile,
I saw OBLIVION pass with giant stride;
And while his visage wore Pride's scornful smile,
"Haply thou knowest, then tell me, whose?" I cried;
"Whose these vast domes that even in rain shine?"
"I reck not whose", he said, "they are now mine".
(Byron)
"Much ingenuity has gone into guessing the origin of the Jats. The historical data is scanty, the theories multiple. Some claim foreign descent, others native, when legend ends, mythology takes over", (K. Natwar Singh). But all this, to no purpose. The wise men of yore have wrapped the riddle of their origin in an enigma so mysteriously that the more we try to solve it the more it gets confounded.
"Nahin aasaan sulajh jaai woh gutthi inke makhzan ki,
jise uljhaa diyaa hai ahal-e-hikmat ki anaayat nai".
"(It is not child's play to untie the knot of their origin, knotted by the grace of the crafty)".
Unfortunately, some of the bewildered scholars merely content themselves with the admission, tacit or avowed, that the Jats suffer most from a "crisis of identity", which it is impossible to avert. Searching the origin of the Jats is considered, by quite a few historians, to be as futile an effort as the effort, "by a blind man, to trace, in a dark room, a black cat that is not there". Some of them fight shy of facing the problem, whereas others, for no other reasons except to have just their name recognised as historians, have coined spurious theories, which have no legs to stand on, and quite often are absurdly derogatory as well. More pitiable is the plight of those who dismiss the whole affair with a shrug that says "Allah knows better".
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Numerous silly explanations were invented and many fables were concocted to trace the origin of the Jats, and that too, mostly during the 19th century which, otherwise, is claimed to be a century of enlightenment. The Jats are said to have come out of the womb of a she-wolf and even that of a snake. To some, they are born of two Rakshasas, Bahi and Hika, who were not the products of the Prajapati, Brahma. To others, they are the descendants of the aboriginal Mlecchas, Daityas, Dasas, Danavas, Pisachas and Asuras. Our inquiry, however, shows that these epithets were foisted upon them as a part of a deliberate politico-religious conspiracy to denigrate them. They are even alleged to have been born of a river or a mountain. To the orthodox Brahmans, they are the Kshatriyas raised afresh on their virgins and widows by the Brahmans after the Kshatriyas were annihilated twenty-one times by Parasurama. Still others believe them to have taken their birth from the matted locks of Lord Shiva, their chief deity.
Such ludicrous theories reflect the mischievous designs of their exponents against the Jats, who have, however, always remained unaffected and unconcerned very much like a tusker who refuses to be pestered by the efforts of ants and flies. What is extremely lamentable is that certain eminent historians, who should have easily exploded the hollowness of such absurd hypotheses, refrained from doing so. Instead of rejecting them outright they, rather, took pride in perpetuating them without question. They passed over these absurdities, lending them their tacit support by their very silence. The why and wherefore of these postulates call for a fresh appraisal. The above-mentioned sobriquets, we have tried to show in the pages that follow, were used by the orthodox Aryan tribes malign those unorthodox Aryan tribes who were living on the periphery. The Malechchha and Danava, etc. supposed or misunderstood, as the progenitors of the Jats, were, actually, those Aryans who did nt conform to the dictates of the Brahmanas or those who protested vehemently against the pia fraus cunningly devised by the priestly class to exploit and socially denigrate all others accept their own class or those groups of Aryans who bowed before them.
The origin of the Jats is no virgin field. Nearly a dozen of theories were expounded by the end of the 19th century. Excepting a couple of theories, the rest of them are obviously untenable. Some of the exponents and their adherents vied with each other in propagating what can be termed only as their "brain-children", bred more of fancy than
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of fact, more of fantasy than of serious investigation. A couple of these fanciful theories were so "pleasant" that they "cast a mighty spell upon several generations of scholars" as does a fairy tale. An ounce of fact was made into a ton of theory, for the facts then available on the subject could be measured in ounces. Since then a lot of material information has come to surface as a result of research in all the areas of socio-physical sciences and humanities. Earlier, linguistic and phonetic similarities were the major tools of investigating inter-racial phenomena. This now came to be greatly supplemented by a variety of discipline and the tools they placed at the disposal of the investigator. Language, which had soon been discarded as an acid test of a race by ethnologists earlier, regained some of its validity as one of the important, if not primary, tools for identifying various people in spite of its inherent weakness when used in isolation. Consequently, theories of origins of the Jats and certain cities related with them are attempted afresh. An important section of this book deals with the extant theories of the origin of the Jats. The most absurd of these are the myths of old, Angad Sharma's newly coined 19th century myth is, in addition to being absurd, nothing short of vicious. It "suffers from diarrhea of words and constipation of thoughts". Full notice of these myths has been taken: we have not dismissed all of them out of hand as patently absurd and beneath notice, for some of these have a wider perspective and implications. Some other hypotheses are found to be unique instances of the sleight-of-hand method used by their authors simply to enchant the simple-minded Jat folk. Among these is the "noll-sequitur" but flattering theory of the birth of Jats from the "Jata" of Lord Shiva. Now, since investigations in various sciences have brought about a revolution in opinion and outlook in this area, reserved earlier for fads and fiction, the frivolous theories which "cannot stand the test of scientific scrutiny", are met with mockery, and the silly conclusions are revised or rejected in accordance with the teachings of the new sciences. Among the most prominent theories was that of the Scythian origin of the Jats. This theory invoked a mixed reaction. The theory suggested a kinship among certain races of India, Asia and Europe on the basis of similarities of their regional nomenclatures. In spite of its obviously stable base, one group of critics rejected it as merely homophonic acrobatics. The other abandoned it on the ground that the
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dolichocephalic Jats, who are, by all standards, Aryans, cannot be the descendants of the brachycephalic Scythians. What was forgotten was that a scientifically solid theory is only that which is founded or a combination of anthropological, ethnographical and homophonic data, and that no theory should be dismissed without testing it On the basis of all these grounds taken together. The weakness of the assault by these two groups of its critics was that they repeated stereotyped arguments without a basis in the latest findings, which were either unavailable to them or were inadvertently missed by them. They did not take on account the fact that a name, in the absence of a required consonant in it or with double consonants of the same sound value in it or with changing sound values of its vowels, undergoes modifications according to different phonemes of the local dialects and languages, nor did they appreciate the significance of these modifications. I have devoted a whole chapter in an humble effort to elucidate this problem. They also failed to note that the Scythian owed their name to a particular region of India, known as Sakadvipa, (the Scythia of the Greeks), because of the growth of "Saka" or "Saagwaan" trees (teak-tectona grandis) in it, nor did they realize that the Scythians were none else but Nordics (Aryans]]) who had developed Brachycephaly due to their residing in higher altitudes for thousands of years. As a result, the theory suffered a temporary eclipse, but it soon revived and continues attracting adherents among the giants of historiography, who are more effective and convincingly more cogent in its defence than its earlier exponents. The whole problem has been re-examined by us, and an effort, we hope successful, has been made to harmonise the seeming contradictions in the theory that has led to head-on clashes between different schools of thought. Some historians have presented the Jats as Dravidians, but their claim stands discredited by a consensus among anthropologists, that the Jats are Aryans. The specific findings of the science of anthropometry regarding the ethno genesis of the Jats has earned the favourable cognizance of knowledgeable scholars. In that measure, the antiquity of the Jats must be regarded to be as honourable as that of the Rigvedic Aryans, and in so far their origin is concerned, their designations as the "Jyeshtha and Sreshtha" race in India and Nepal, as surmised by some writers, may not be an exaggeration. That their migrations and movements must have been closely associated with
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those of the ancient Aryans is a foregone conclusions. If the Aryans came from the north-west, so did the Jats. If the Aryans are autochthon, so must be the Jats.
In the main body of the book we have referred to a crude attempt
that was made by some interested parties to bribe an eminent scholar: a handsome amount was his if he could falsify his research and declare that Ahirs, Jats, Gujars and Rajputs were of foreign origin. This episode illustrates the impingement of politics on scholarly pursuits, and of the efforts of vested interests to yoke scholars for political gains. We believe that this is not an isolated incident: it points to what has been happening throughout in our history, where records have been tutored to the benefit of the rulers, and the opponents of the regimes have been maligned and tarred deliberately. The powerful combination of some Aryan rulers of antiquity and those monopolists of learning, i.e., the priestly class of Brahmans, has played havoc with the history of our ancient races. The Jats have been a victim of this distortion of history.
The most pertinent questions that have not so far been satisfactorily solved are: which of the Aryan tribes were known as Jatt or Jat and why and since when were they so known? Unless we are able to search out suitable answers to these queries, the elaborate discussion of the theories may not be worthwhile. The whole of the ancient Sanskrit literature including the Rigveda brims with the names of Aryan and non-Aryan tribes, and if our calm that Jat are descendants of the Rigvedic Aryan is correct, some of these names or names slightly modified with the passage of time, must still be traceable among the Jats. This job has been made a difficult one for,as B.S.Dahiya woefully observes, "during the course of the revision of the ancient Indian literature and the revival of the orthodox Brahmanism, those tribes were made persona non grata as Jats by the new orthodox".
Be that as it may, it has now been firmly established that the Jats as an entity are older than the Marathas, Rajputs and the Gujars. Some writers find their first mention in the Jartas or Jartikas described in the Mahabharata, while others derive the name from Jata or Jhata given by Panini in the Dhaatupaatha of his Ashtadhyayi. A couple of historians of the Jats consider the name as a modification of Gyati or Jnati, in appellation of the confederacy (samgha) of the Yadavas at the time of
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Lord Krishna, An amateur enthusiast tried its origin from an allegedly unintelligible phrase, "jatya atnaro", given by Yaskacharya in his Niruktam, but left it halfway as unexplained. We scarcely come across a writer who has clinched the issue, This failure, however, has not fazed the present author, who, with his belief that "success is the multiple of labour and time", has melted his silver with the "perseverance of the saints" to unravel the mysteries shrouding the answers to these baffling questions.
Briefly put, our view is that the Jats are the descendants of the anathematised and recalcitrant Druhyus, Anus or Anavas and Purus or Pauravas or Pururavas, who are mentioned in the Rig Veda but whose ancestry is traced to Emperor Yayati in the Mahabharata. As such, they became known as "Yayatas" after their eponymous head. "Yayata" was, we believe, transformed into "Jat" by a process familiar to phoneticians :(Yayata = Jajata = Jata, 'Y' and 'J' being inter-changeable), Further, they were known as Jata or Jhatta by virtue of their confederacy as well, for these terms fulfill the inherent connotation of these Paninian terms, (jata or jhata). We are of the view, further, that the word "Jat" and the people it denotes were in existence long before Panini, since Panini certainly did coin this term himself but inherited it from earlier sanskrit grammarians, Yaska and Sakatayana, who were keen students of the Vedas, especially the Rig Veda which describes the role of various confederacies of the Yayatas in the Dasharajna wars fought on the plains of the Sapta-Sindhu. We hold, finally, that having suffered defeat after defeat at the hands of the Bharatas, many of the Yayats, along with their allies were banished or migrated under duress to the north-western countries, especially Iran and other Middle-Eastern countries where they became known Yazats or Az-zats, as the Arabs called them. Their migrations are disguised as exile in orthodox literature,
We have tried to show that these peoples were stigmatized with opprobrious epithets in the ancient Indian literature and their descendants the Jats have remained accursed till today in the eyes of the orthodox Brahmans, While the ancestors of the Jats stood their ground, the Yadus and Turvasus, in league with the descendants of Ushanas-Sukra, their maternal grand-father, managed to escape condemnation by crossing over, under covert influence of Indra and Vashistha, and by turning to them as "the sunflower turns to the sun",
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Their loyalty to the victorious Bharatas was rewarded by their being raised to pinnacles of glory by these new commanders of theirs, the Bharatas. Bougle (1971) has very aptly remarked that "in India the position and status of a person or a people has always been determined by their closeness and relation with the Brahman." The Yayatas (Jats), on the other hand, refused to compromise. As a result, they haw been bearing the burden of their "mistakes" and the "reward" of their virtues since the night of time.
Coming down to medieval times, the Jats again found themselves between the devil and the deep sea. While they were, on the one hand, pitted against the Muslim invaders from the west, they had, on the other hand, to face the "unholy alliance" between the vaisnavite brahmans and the neo-kshatriyas (Rajput imperialists) from within. The fairy of good luck of the Jats seemed to have gone to sleep after the reign of the Virkas Harshavardhana. The Priests and the de novo created rulers (the so-calle Agni-Kula Rajputs), who suffered from a euphoria of rising expectations, joined hands under the covert pretext of fighting against already declining Buddhism, to castigate the Jats for their age old values and virtues, i.e., unorthodox beliefs and pragmatic approach to religion, opposition to idolatry and secular outlook, disbelief in caste system, spirit of tolerance and accommodation, and to crown all, their adherence to the Rigvedic Aryan practice of widow marriage. The Agni-Kula rulers bartered their sceptre for the ladle of the priest. By a strange irony of fate, the very virtues of the Jat came to be still regarded as their veritable vices. Their remote ancestors initially suffered at the hands of Sagara and then at those of the Brahman ruler, Dahir (Chach), of Sindh for adherence to the same age-old values.
- Shikwaa sayyaad kaa ai bubul-e-nasshaad na kar,
- Tu griftaar huee apni sadaa ke baais.
Meaning - Curse not thy captor, O woe-begone Nightingale, Thy warble for thy captivity is solely to blame).
What is variously termed as chance, luck or fate has played its part in shaping the destinies of the forefathers of the Jats, the Anavas and the Pauravas, as of the individuals, "dispensing vicissitudes or boons alike upon the lone figure and the composite group". But the Yayatas the progeny of Anu and especially of Puru fortunately, felt amply redeemed in the fulfillment of the prophetic blessing of their father:
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"The Sun may perish and the silvery moon,
But not the line of Puru on this earth" (Mahabharata).
Something has kept these much-maligned people alive and kicking. They have been surviving all the anathemas and curses. Truly goes the saying, "crow's cursing cannot kill the kine". Iqbal's celebrated couplet applies most aptly to them, as much as to our civilization as a whole:
- "Kuchh baat hai ke hastee mit-tee nahin hamaari,
- sadiyon rahaa hai dushman daure zamaan hamaaraa". (Iqbal).
Some of my more enthusiastic friends have been goading me to write a comprehensive history of the Jats. I fully share their concern and feel that we will render ourselves unpardonable if we pass over in silence these people who have since long been exercising profound influence on the fortunes of the human race and on the Indian sub-continent in particular. a part of my attempt has been to wash off some of the dirt that has been thrown on the Jats for ages, down to Angad Sharma. It is not for me to determine how far I have attained my object: it is enough that I have ventured, for venturing, says the Gita, is all that is given to man to undertake.
To sum up: I must say in the words of Issac P. Taylor, "All that can be done is to lay impartially before the reader the evidence, such as it is, for forming an opinion". I believe I shall not incur the charge of presumption, if I counsel the reader in the natural forensic strain, to dismiss from his mind all prior reports, and to be guided solely by the testimony brought before him.
And again, the author will lie at his reader' heart and eagerly chant:
- "When a poem or daughter comes out,
- The author is troubled with doubt,
- With a doubt that his queries betray;
- Will she reach the right hands?
- Will she please as she stands
- And what win the critics say?"*
Page XXV
- Panchatantra, Eng. Tr. by Arthur W. Ryder, JAICO, 1991, Delhi, p. 71.
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