Gujar.--A great historical caste who have given their name to the
Gujarat District and the town of Gujaranwala in the Punjab, the
peninsula of Gujarat or Kathiawar and the tract known as Gujargarh in
Gwalior. In the Central Provinces the Gujars numbered 56,000 persons
in 1911, of whom the great majority belonged to the Hoshangabad and
Nimar Districts. In these Provinces the caste is thus practically
confined to the Nerbudda Valley, and they appear to have come here
from Gwalior probably in the middle of the sixteenth century, to
which period the first important influx of Hindus into this area
has been ascribed. But some of the Nimar Gujars are immigrants from
Gujarat. Owing to their distinctive appearance and character and their
exploits as cattle-raiders, the origin of the Gujars has been the
subject of much discussion. General Cunningham identified them with
the Yueh-chi or Tochari, the tribe of Indo-Scythians who invaded India
in the first century of the Christian era. The king Kadphises I. and
his successors belonged to the Kushan section of the Yueh-chi tribe,
and their rule extended over north-western India down to Gujarat in the
period 45-225 A.D. Mr. V. A. Smith, however, discards this theory and
considers the Gujars or Gurjaras to have been a branch of the white
Huns who invaded India in the fifth and sixth centuries. He writes:
[117] "The earliest foreign immigration within the limits of the
historical period which can be verified is that of the Sakas in the
second century B.C.; and the next is that of the Yueh-chi and Kushans
in the first century A.D. Probably none of the existing Rajput clans
can carry back their genuine pedigrees so far. The third recorded
great irruption of foreign barbarians occurred during the fifth
century and the early part of the sixth. There are indications that
the immigration from Central Asia continued during the third century,
but, if it did, no distinct record of the event has been preserved,
and, so far as positive knowledge goes, only three certain irruptions
of foreigners on a large scale through the northern and north-western
passes can be proved to have taken place within the historical period
anterior to the Muhammadan invasions of the tenth and eleventh
centuries. The first and second, as above observed, were those of
the Sakas and Yueh-chi respectively, and the third was that of the
Hunas or white Huns. It seems to be clearly established that the Hun
group of tribes or hordes made their principal permanent settlements
in the Punjab and Rajputana. The most important element in the group
after the Huns themselves was that of the Gurjaras, whose name still
survives in the spoken form Gujar as the designation of a widely
diffused middle-class caste in north-western India. The prominent
position occupied by Gurjara kingdoms in early mediaeval times is a
recent discovery. The existence of a small Gurjara principality in
Bharoch (Broach), and of a larger state in Rajputana, has been known
to archaeologists for many years, but the recognition of the fact
that Bhoja and the other kings of the powerful Kanauj dynasty in the
ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries were Gurjaras is of very recent
date and is not yet general. Certain misreadings of epigraphic dates
obscured the true history of that dynasty, and the correct readings
have been established only within the last two or three years. It is
now definitely proved that Bhoja (circ. A.D. 840-890), his predecessors
and successors belonged to the Pratihara (Parihar) clan of the Gurjara
tribe or caste, and, consequently, that the well-known clan of Parihar
Rajputs is a branch of the Gurjara or Gujar stock." [118]