Perhaps it may be in India that Moghuls, of one variety or another, are more numerously represented than elsewhere at the present day. In the course of the operations connected with the compilation of the census of the Punjab, in 1881, Mr. Denzil Ibbetson found large numbers of people claiming the name of Moghul, many of whom, though perhaps descended from the tribesmen who entered India at the time of Baber or Humayun, can scarcely owe their origin to the Moghuls of Moghulistan—the true Moghul Ulus of Mirza Haidar. Such as they are, however, they are chiefly to be found in the neighbourhood of Delhi, in the Rawal Pindi division, and on the routes that cross the northern frontiers of the province. In these localities they are divided into numerous sub-tribes, but of real Moghuls among them, only those calling themselves Chaghatai and Barlás seem to be numerously represented. For the former, Mr. Ibbetson gives 23,593 as the total number, and of the latter 12,137.[1] But how far they have retained the characteristics of their race, or whether, in their changed condition, they would be recognised as the blood relations of the present Mongols of Mongolia, or even of the Hazáras of Afghanistan, there is nothing to show. Sill, something of the Mongoloid type must remain, it would seem, to support their individuality as a tribe.
On the frontiers of India, apparently, as in Eastern Turkistan, the descendants of the Moghuls do not bear a good name; but with the people of a tribe that has fallen from a position of supremacy, and one that at no time has had any very high qualities to recommend it, this is perhaps not surprising. The national character of a community would naturally degenerate with the loss of political and military power, and in the absence of a consciousness among its members, that they belonged to a ruling caste. The more remarkable circumstance is that the race, when transplanted to a foreign country as populous as India, should have endured at all, and that it should still show any signs of individuality. The fact that Moghuls of any variety should yet remain as a people, is one more piece of evidence which may be added to those mentioned in Section IV. above, that many hundreds of years are needed to eradicate the Mongol type, or to blot out its racial affinities, even when overlaid by the superior numbers of an alien nation.
- ↑ Punjab Census Report, 1881, i., p. 277.
