GUJERAT, a town of Hindustan, in the province of Lahore, in the Seik territories, 60 miles north-north-west from the city of Lahore. Long. 73. 25. E. Lat. 32. 35. N.

Gujerat, Gajrat, or Guzerat, a very large province of Hindustan, situated principally between the twenty-first and twenty-fourth degrees of north latitude. It has been computed to be 320 miles long by about 180 broad. On the north it is bounded by the province of Ajmeer, on the south by the sea and the province of Aurungabad, to the east it has Malwah and Khandesh, and to the west portions of Moultan, Cutch, and the sea. The southwestern quarter of this province is enclosed on the southwest and north-east by the Gulfs of Cutch and Cambay, and has the form of a peninsula. A considerable portion of the province, particularly towards the eastern frontier, is hilly, and much covered with jungle. On the north-western boundary, along the bank of the river Puddar or Bunass, the country in some parts produces good pasture; in other parts it is either an arid plain, or a low salt swamp, which, where it is dried up, is barren and unproductive, from the saline nature of the soil and the water. The interior is hilly and rocky, but with spots exhibiting strong powers of vegetation where water is accessible. These are extremely fertile, especially in sugar and tobacco, and, besides, yield all sorts of grain, oats excepted; also cotton, tobacco, indigo, gum, and sugar. The country, notwithstanding its smoothness to the eye, is in many [7:11:31] parts intersected by ravines, and much broken by the heavy rains; and some of these chasms contain during the season of the rains a large volume of water, not to be crossed without the assistance of rafts or boats; and accordingly the natives, in these cases, establish temporary ferries. The climate is reckoned one of the worst in India, being intensely hot during the greater part of the year, with a heavy thickness in the atmosphere, which is extremely oppressive. A hot wind blows fiercely all the day; and when it ceases at night, it is followed by a still more close and oppressive calm. “I had certainly,” says Bishop Heber, “no conception that anywhere in India the month of March could offer such a furnace-like climate.” “It is,” he adds, “in the same latitude with Calcutta, and seems to be what Bengal would be without the glorious Ganges.”^[1. Heber, vol. iii. p. 10. ] During the hot and dry months, the surface of the country appears mostly sand or dust, and in the rainy season a thick mire. In the north-western parts, along the banks of the river Puddar, where there isgood pasturage, and in various other parts of the province, they breed excellent horses and camels; and the cattle are superior to those of any other part of India. Some of their bullocks, which are in general white, with large bumps, are sixteen hands high, and will trot in a carriage as fast, and perform as long a journey, as good horses. This province is traversed by several large rivers, namely, the Puddar, the Nerbuddah, Tuptee, Mahy, Mehindry, and Sabermatty, which, being navigable from the sea to a considerable distance up the country, afford great facilities for commerce. But there are many large tracts which experience a great scarcity of water; and the inhabitants are forced to dig wells, which are in many parts from eighty to a hundred feet deep. In some particular portions of this province not a stone is to be met with, whilst in some others nothing else is to be seen.

In so extensive a province, never completely subdued by any of its numerous invaders, a great diversity of population may be expected. The population of Gujerat is accordingly very strangely diversified by numerous sects and castes, under the various designations of Grassias, Catties, Coolies, Bheels, Mewassies, Charons, Bhatts, Dheras, and others. In some parts of the province the Grassias form a numerous class of landholders, and in others they merely possess a sort of feudal authority over certain portions of land and villages. The origin of their rights is a controverted point of Hindu history, which has never been very satisfactorily explained. The common account of their title to the land is, that they were robbers and plunderers, who inhabited the hills and jungles, and by their incursions the country was so much infested, that after the decease of the Emperor Akbar in 1605, the nabobs of Surat ceded to them certain lands in each village in lieu of all demands. But it is asserted that, encouraged by this success, they still continued their depredations; and the Zemindars, in order to purchase peace, agreed to the payment, on certain lands, of what is called toda∙, or ready money; and the lands which are liable to this payment have been continually increasing, owing to the anarchy which so long prevailed in Gujerat. The proprietors of these claims never allow them to die out; and it is seldom that they prosecute them in person, but, having retired to some secluded residence, they rally round them a band of desperate adventurers, to whom they farm out the Grassia claim, and depute them to levy it. Hence the country, prior to the war of 1817, and before it was brought under the dominion of the British, was a prey to the greatest disorders; it was ravaged by predatory hordes, who acquired new rights, and in this manner it was plundered, and the rent of the land misappropriated. These claims have been involved in such complication and obscurity, that the British officers have found it impossible to reduce them to any accurate standard of law or justice. On the rugged margins of all rivers in Gujerat, many of these Grassias reside in a kind of independence; and also all over the Gujerat peninsula, usually denominated Cattywar by the natives. Their numbers are recruited by criminals from the plains, who fly to their haunts for refuge, and are supposed to amount to one half of the population north of the Mahy river. In 1814, an attempt was made by the Bombay government to extinguish the Grassia claims by a payment from the public treasury, and thus to prevent the crimes and disorders which they occasioned.

Of all the disorderly hordes which infest this country, the most bloody and ferocious are the Coolies. The most barbarous are those in the vicinity of the Runn, the salt morass which bounds the province on the west, and communicates with the Gulf of Cutch. These are taught to despise every approach to civilization; they are of the most filthy habits, and consider it a mark of effeminacy to wear clean clothes; and the priests and other persons of note exceed the laity in dirtiness. They consider cleanliness as indicative of cowardice. That class of men named Bhatts, or Bharotts, abound more in Gujerat than in any other province of India. They cultivate the land; but the greater part of them are recorders of births and deaths, and beggars or itinerant bards, and very frequently traders. They often stand forward as security for the public revenue, and guarantee observance of agreements and rewards. They always possess, however, an intimate knowledge of the person for whom they become security, of his character and resources; and when they find that they have been deceived, and are pressed for money for which they have become security, such is their proud and obstinate character, that they sometimes sacrifice their own lives, or some aged female or child of the family, in the presence of the person for whom they have broken their word. They form, in the rude state of society which prevails in India, a sort of middle-men between the contributors and the government, every Grassia, Coolie, and Bheel, having his Bhatt, a class who are rewarded by a small per-centage on the amount of the revenues for which they have become surety, and for the security which they afford against the importunity of the inferior agents of government, their persons being regarded as sacred, and their influence over the persons of the natives very great. They were chiefly employed under the Mahratta princes, between whom and the landholders they stood as middle-men, being bound to the government for the revenue, and acting as a security to the landholders against the oppressions of the government Under the British rule this agency was entirely discontinued in 1817, being found inefficient as an instrument of control for the unruly tribes of the country. The Charons are a sect of Hindus, allied in manners and customs to the Bhatts. They are often possessed of large droves of cattle for carriage, by means of which they carry on a distant inland traffic in grain and other articles. They also often hire themselves out as protectors of travellers in the wildest parts of the country; and so faithful are they to their charge, that when a band of predatory horse appears, these persons take an oath to die by their own hands, in case those whom they have engaged to protect are plundered; and this threat is always found effectual to restrain those superstitious thieves, who hold the Charons in great veneration. There is in Gujerat, as in other [7:11:32]parts of Hindustan Proper, a race of people called Ungreas, whose profession is that of money-carriers, which they contrive to conceal in their quilted clothes. Although they are miserably poor, they maybe trusted with large sums of money to carry many miles off, merely on the responsibility of the superior, who is frequently richer than the other. They are of all castes, and in general athletic and well armed; and they are of such singular habits, that in performing distant journeys they form themselves into parties, arid fight with desperation to defend a property for which their only recompense is a mere subsistence.

The Bheels are generally described as the original inhabitants of the country, who have been driven to their present fastnesses and their miserable way of life by the invaders of their country, whether Mahommedans or Hindus. They have been in the north parts of India treated with extreme severity by the British.^[2. Heber, vol. ii. p. 496. ] But, by the influence of Sir John Malcolm, and his mild and enlightened policy, they have been reclaimed in the south from their barbarous habits, and formed into regiments, subject to such discipline as was suited to their barbarous habits. They also received grants of land, and freedom from taxes for a number of years; and they were in this manner trained to industrious habits.

The Dheras of this province are of a very degraded caste, and their employment is to carry filth of every description out of the roads and villages. They are miserably poor; they scrape bare the bones of every animal which dies within their limits, and share out the flesh, which they cook in various ways, and feed upon. They are obliged to serve travellers as carriers of their baggage to the village nearest their own. In the course of their business they are always committing petty thefts, and are much given to intoxication.

The Vaneeya, or the merchants and traffickers, form a numerous class in Gujerat. Many of them travel to remote parts of India, where they remain from one to ten years, after which they return to their wives and children. Many also finally settle in the towns of foreign countries, where their descendants continue to speak and write the Gujerattee tongue. The Jains are also a more numerous class here than in any of the contiguous provinces, and possess many handsome temples adorned with well-wrought images. Besides its native hordes or castes, Gujerat, along with Bombay, contains nearly all the Parsees, or fire-worshippers, to be found in the continent of India, the feeble remains of the once numerous sect of the Magi. In all the larger towns are to be found that remarkable race of men named the Boras, who, though Mahommedans in religion, are Jews in features, manners, and genius. They form a community amongst themselves, and are everywhere noted for their address in bargaining, minute thrift, and constant attention to lucre. The washermen are also considered as a degraded and cruel class, on account of the numerous deaths which they involuntarily occasion to the animalcula in the process of washing.

The province of Gujerat flourished chiefly during the era of the Mogul government, and even during the most convulsed periods it carried on a much more extensive trade than ever it has done since. The principal trade is with Bombay, and the chief exports are cotton, piece goods, and grain. The imports are chiefly sugar, raw silk, pepper, cocoa nuts, cochineal, and woollens. The inhabitants are industrious, and the Surat manufactures have been long famed over India for their quality and cheapness. The principal towns in this province are Surat, Ahmedabad, Broach, Cambay, Gogo, Bhownuggur, Chumpaneer, and Junaghur. Gujerat contains populous districts, but in other parts the country is extremely desolate. Surat and the neighbouring country is thickly planted with inhabitants, and the north-western districts are equally naked and destitute of people. The country has been so much exposed to the depredations of thieves and banditti from the jungles and mountains, that, for the sake of security, the great body of the people live, not in sequestered houses, but in villages; and these villages are frequently visited by travelling companies, who exhibit puppet-shows and histrionical representations. They arc also occasionally frequented by musicians, dancing girls, singing men and women, wrestlers, expert jugglers, dancing bears, goats, and monkeys. In the remote and savage districts of the country, where there are no villages, fortifications are numerous; but in all the parts to which the British influence extends, they are fast crumbling into decay. In many parts the people are of savage and cruel manners; and amongst the tribe of Jahrejahs the practice of female infanticide prevails, and the united exertions of all the British officers and statesmen have been employed to prevent it. There is another crime peculiar to this province, known in the British courts of justice by the name of jhansa, which is the writing of threatening letters, the destroying of gardens or plantations, and the burning of stacks, in order to extort money, or to enforce a compliance with any other unjust demand. These offences were not formerly confined to the Grassias, but were resorted to in village feuds, even by the heads of villages. But since the regular administration of justice by the British, such disorderly practices have become less frequent. There is a class of persons, the Mahy Kaunta Coolies, who are so named from their residence on the Mahy river, who are thieves by profession, and also very ingenious, active, and courageous. They lurk on the highways, and intercept families and individuals proceeding to distant pilgrimages and religious fairs. They frequently visit Surat and other large cities in pursuit of their illicit occupation, though, from the increasing vigilance of the British police, their depredations are now more frequently checked. But, beyond the precincts of the British authority, in the northern and western quarters, and the centre of the Gujerat peninsula, the number of societies of armed and sanguinary thieves is scarcely credible; and it is rather surprising that even the thinly scattered population of the country should keep its ground amid the many excesses and outrages which are committed.

There are many remarkable wells and watering places in Gujerat. One near Baroda is said to have cost nine lacks of rupees. There is another at Vadwa, in the vicinity of Cambay, which, from the inscription, appears to have been erected in 1482.

The province of Gujerat was first invaded about a. d. 1025, by Mahmood of Ghizni, who subverted the throne of its native prince, named Jamund, and plundered his capital. After the establishment of the Delhi sovereignty, Gujerat was subject for many years to the Patan conquerors. In the fifteenth century it came under the dominion of a dynasty of Rajpoot princes, converted to the Mahommedan religion, who removed the seat of government to Ahmedabad; and under their rule it flourished greatly as a maritime and commercial state. This race of princes was overthrown by the Emperor Akbar in 1572; and after the death of Aurungzebe in 1707, hordes of Mahratta depredators overran the province, which in 1724 was finally separated from the Mogul empire.

Until 1818 the Mahratta Peshwa and the Guicowar possessed large tracts of country, but at present only the [7:11:33]last remains, the authority and dominions of the other having devolved to the British. The establishment of the British dominions in this country experienced very serious obstructions from the intermixture of their territories with those of the Peshwa and the Guicowar; also from the nabob of Cambay, and the unsettled tributaries of Cattywar and Mahy Kaunta; from the number of halfsubdued Grassias and Mewassies; and still more from the predatory habits which a long course of disorder had superinduced among a large proportion of the people, especially beyond the Mahy river. But by the wise and conciliating policy of the local functionaries, all these difficulties have been surmounted, and tranquillity has gradually arisen from the confusion which at first overspread the country.

The north-western frontier of the British dominions in this quarter is now formed by the great salt-water lake or morass of the Runn, to the north of which is a sandy desert. This desert tract, between the frontier of Jessel-merc, about lat. 26, and the Runn, is divided between the ameers of Sinde and the Joudpoor rajah, whose respective limits might be indicated by a line drawn from Nuggur, in Parkur, to Jesselmere. The Sinde territory, however, would cross the line near its southern extremity, Bankasir; and as the whole of Parkur belongs to Sinde, the frontier is still contested; the Joudpoor rajah claiming Amercote, and having actually levied contributions as far as Sansur and Chaucra. Parkur is partially cultivated, but the remainder is a desert of high sand hills, with scattered spots of verdure; and the villages marked in the maps as towns only contain a number of huts.