jat
n.n. a member of a large community from northern India and Pakistan. Historically, Jats are known as a landowning and farming community.
n. a member of a large, traditionally agricultural community from the northern Indian subcontinent, particularly the Punjab region. Jats form a significant ethnic and social group in parts of India and Pakistan.
His family is part of the Jat community.
In that village, many Jat families have farmed the same land for several generations.
The study examines the sociopolitical influence of the Jat community, analyzing their historical role as landowners and their evolving status in contemporary society.
The word comes from Hindi जाट (jāṭ), itself from Sanskrit जर्तिक (jartika). In the Rigveda and in the Karna Parva of the Mahābhārata the term denotes a low-ranking Vahika tribe skirting the margins of the Sanskrit-speaking world; Ashokan Prakrit had already clipped it to *jaṭṭa. By then the label had begun to drift, attaching itself to any number of similarly placed peoples across what is now Punjab.
Speculation has done the rest. Proposals run as far west as the Getae of the Danube, but none has persuaded the manuscripts to speak more clearly than they already have.