A relation between
the Indian Jats and
the Nordic and
European Goths?
An old book about races mention the relation between the Jats of India and the Scandinavian Goths: "The Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times in India, Southwestern Asia, and Southern Europe" by James Francis Katherinus Hewitt (1894). Here is a cut and paste from this book from page 480 to 483.
"480.
The two most numerous of the agricultural castes in the Muttra district, are the Jats, numbering 117,265 persons, and the Chaniars, 99,110. The crops grown consist almost entirely of autumn crops, Joar {Holcus sorghum), Bajra (Holcus spicatus) and cotton, and winter crops wheat, gram (Cicer arietinum) and barley — barley being the crop which is most grown, while rice crops are unknown. Hence we see clearly that the people who first cleared the land of forest were the race who grew millets, cultivated, according to the Song of Lingal, by the Gonds who were saved from the Flood and the hostility of the alligator Mug-ral, by the tortoise, and were followed by the first growers of barley, who were, as I have shown in Essay III., immigrants who had come to India from Asia Minor. Of the two most numerous agricultural tribes descended from these early immigrants, the Chamars, who are hereditary slayers
481.
of cattle and dealers in leather, are undoubtedly the descendants of a race of cattle herdsmen, who under Kushite rule, when the artisans were divided into septs practising special trades, became tanners and sellers of leather goods. The Jats, on the other hand, are pure agriculturists, who boast that they can produce better crops from their lands than any other race of hereditary farmers. Their chiefs still hold extensive estates in the district, and it must have been they who originally cleared, not only the lands of Muttra, but also those of all the other districts west of the Ganges, in which the Jats hold a similar position as leaders of the agricultural tribes to that held by the Kurmis in Oude to the east of the Ganges, in Bengal, Central India, and Bombay, where Jats are unknown. The Jats must, therefore, be the race known in the Mahabharata and Rigveda as the Srinjaya or sons of the sickle (srini), the Panchala rulers of the Gangetic Doab, who conquered India under the Pandavas, and they must also have belonged to the tribes who formed in India the confederacy of the sons of the tortoise, for they trace their descent to the land of Ghuzni and Kandahar , watered by the mother-river of the Kushika race, the sacred Haetumant, or Helmend. Their name connects them with the Getæ of Thrace, and thence with the Guttones, said by Pytheas to live on the southern shores of the Baltic , the Guttones placed by Ptolemy and Tacitus on the Vistula in the country of the Lithuanians , and the Goths of Grothland in Sweden . This Scandinavian descent is confirmed by their system of land- tenures, for the chief tenure of the Muttra district is that called Bhayachara, in which the members of the village brotherhood each hold as their family property a separate and defined area among the village lands, according to the custom of the Bratsvos of the Balkan Provinces and the Hof-Bauers of North- west
482.
Germany, which I have already described in Essay II., and not the mere right to an allotted portion of the village lands held in common by the rice-growing matriarchal village communities. The Getæ of the Balkans are said by Herodotus to be the bravest and most just of the Thracians , who worshipped one god, called Zalmoxis, or Grebeleizen, the thunder and lightning-god, to whom they send a messenger every five years, the mission being accomplished by throwing him on three spears and thus sacrificing him. These Thracian Getæ must, as a Northern race of individual proprietors, have held their lands on the tenure existing in the Jat villages, and these Indian Jats, or Getæ, have not degenerated from the military prowess of their forefathers, for those Jats, who have become Sikhs in the Punjab, are known as some of the best and most reliable Indian soldiers . Further evidence both of the early history and origin of the race of Jats, or Getæ, is given by the customs and geographical position of another tribe of the same stock, called the Massagetæ, or great (massa) Getæ. Herodotus describes them as living on the western shores of the Caspian Sea in the lands watered by the Araxes and its tributary, the Kur. Thus their home is the same as that of the ancient Iberians, whose mother-mountain is Ararat, whence the Araxes rises, which stands almost halfway between the Caspian and Black Seas, and the names of the former sea and of the river Kur, preserve the roots kus and kur, the two forms of the name of the father of the tortoise race. It was here, in the land of Georgia, that the reverence for the rain- god as the father of life originated, and it was here, as I have shown in discussing the myth of St. George, that the festival to the plough-god, the Naga, held in the month of April-May, the original form of the Palilia of Italy, and Maifeuer of Germany was first instituted, and it is this festival which is still observed by the Jats of Muttra and the Gonds of Central India as the Akht-uj" (End of quote). It is indeed interesting to see how this author as many of the same generation particularly during the late 1800-eds completely turned the facts, as if the very sparsely populated Scandinavia could have been the cradle of people in Europe, Caucasus and India. Additionally many authors of this time- period often had a "one cradle" theory of the Goths. It is more likely that the Goths came to e.g. different parts of Europe and Caucasus from Asia, than the other way around. The origin of the Goths and the Jats were unlikely in Scandinavia.
An old book about races mention the relation between the Jats of India and the Scandinavian Goths: "The Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times in India, Southwestern Asia, and Southern Europe" by James Francis Katherinus Hewitt (1894). Here is a cut and paste from this book from page 480 to 483.
"480.
The two most numerous of the agricultural castes in the Muttra district, are the Jats, numbering 117,265 persons, and the Chaniars, 99,110. The crops grown consist almost entirely of autumn crops, Joar {Holcus sorghum), Bajra (Holcus spicatus) and cotton, and winter crops wheat, gram (Cicer arietinum) and barley — barley being the crop which is most grown, while rice crops are unknown. Hence we see clearly that the people who first cleared the land of forest were the race who grew millets, cultivated, according to the Song of Lingal, by the Gonds who were saved from the Flood and the hostility of the alligator Mug-ral, by the tortoise, and were followed by the first growers of barley, who were, as I have shown in Essay III., immigrants who had come to India from Asia Minor. Of the two most numerous agricultural tribes descended from these early immigrants, the Chamars, who are hereditary slayers
481.
of cattle and dealers in leather, are undoubtedly the descendants of a race of cattle herdsmen, who under Kushite rule, when the artisans were divided into septs practising special trades, became tanners and sellers of leather goods. The Jats, on the other hand, are pure agriculturists, who boast that they can produce better crops from their lands than any other race of hereditary farmers. Their chiefs still hold extensive estates in the district, and it must have been they who originally cleared, not only the lands of Muttra, but also those of all the other districts west of the Ganges, in which the Jats hold a similar position as leaders of the agricultural tribes to that held by the Kurmis in Oude to the east of the Ganges, in Bengal, Central India, and Bombay, where Jats are unknown. The Jats must, therefore, be the race known in the Mahabharata and Rigveda as the Srinjaya or sons of the sickle (srini), the Panchala rulers of the Gangetic Doab, who conquered India under the Pandavas, and they must also have belonged to the tribes who formed in India the confederacy of the sons of the tortoise, for they trace their descent to the land of Ghuzni and Kandahar , watered by the mother-river of the Kushika race, the sacred Haetumant, or Helmend. Their name connects them with the Getæ of Thrace, and thence with the Guttones, said by Pytheas to live on the southern shores of the Baltic , the Guttones placed by Ptolemy and Tacitus on the Vistula in the country of the Lithuanians , and the Goths of Grothland in Sweden . This Scandinavian descent is confirmed by their system of land- tenures, for the chief tenure of the Muttra district is that called Bhayachara, in which the members of the village brotherhood each hold as their family property a separate and defined area among the village lands, according to the custom of the Bratsvos of the Balkan Provinces and the Hof-Bauers of North- west
482.
Germany, which I have already described in Essay II., and not the mere right to an allotted portion of the village lands held in common by the rice-growing matriarchal village communities. The Getæ of the Balkans are said by Herodotus to be the bravest and most just of the Thracians , who worshipped one god, called Zalmoxis, or Grebeleizen, the thunder and lightning-god, to whom they send a messenger every five years, the mission being accomplished by throwing him on three spears and thus sacrificing him. These Thracian Getæ must, as a Northern race of individual proprietors, have held their lands on the tenure existing in the Jat villages, and these Indian Jats, or Getæ, have not degenerated from the military prowess of their forefathers, for those Jats, who have become Sikhs in the Punjab, are known as some of the best and most reliable Indian soldiers . Further evidence both of the early history and origin of the race of Jats, or Getæ, is given by the customs and geographical position of another tribe of the same stock, called the Massagetæ, or great (massa) Getæ. Herodotus describes them as living on the western shores of the Caspian Sea in the lands watered by the Araxes and its tributary, the Kur. Thus their home is the same as that of the ancient Iberians, whose mother-mountain is Ararat, whence the Araxes rises, which stands almost halfway between the Caspian and Black Seas, and the names of the former sea and of the river Kur, preserve the roots kus and kur, the two forms of the name of the father of the tortoise race. It was here, in the land of Georgia, that the reverence for the rain- god as the father of life originated, and it was here, as I have shown in discussing the myth of St. George, that the festival to the plough-god, the Naga, held in the month of April-May, the original form of the Palilia of Italy, and Maifeuer of Germany was first instituted, and it is this festival which is still observed by the Jats of Muttra and the Gonds of Central India as the Akht-uj" (End of quote). It is indeed interesting to see how this author as many of the same generation particularly during the late 1800-eds completely turned the facts, as if the very sparsely populated Scandinavia could have been the cradle of people in Europe, Caucasus and India. Additionally many authors of this time- period often had a "one cradle" theory of the Goths. It is more likely that the Goths came to e.g. different parts of Europe and Caucasus from Asia, than the other way around. The origin of the Goths and the Jats were unlikely in Scandinavia.
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