"Trade is their main occupation; but in fact they have broader and more
distinguishing features. Besides monopolising the trade of the Punjab
and the greater part of Afghanistan, and doing a good deal beyond those
limits, they are in the Punjab the chief civil administrators, and have
almost all literate work in their hands. So far as the Sikhs have a
priesthood, they are, moreover, the priests or gurus of the Sikhs. Both
Nanak and Govind were, and the Sodis and Bedis of the present day are,
Khatris. Thus then they are in fact in the Punjab, so far as a more
energetic race will permit them, all that Mahratta Brahmins are in
the Mahratta country, besides engrossing the trade which the Mahratta
Brahmins have not. They are not usually military in their character,
but are quite capable of using the sword when necessary. Diwan Sawan
Mal, Governor of Multan, and his notorious successor Mulraj, and very
many of Ranjit Singh's chief functionaries were Khatris.
"Even under Mahomedan rulers in the west they have risen to high
administrative posts. There is a record of a Khatri Diwan of Badakshan
or Kurdaz; and, I believe, of a Khatri Governor of Peshawar under the
Afghans. The Emperor Akbar's famous minister, Todarmal, was a Khatri;
and a relative of that man of undoubted energy, the great commissariat
contractor of Agra, Joti Pershad, lately informed me that he also
is a Khatri. Altogether, there can be no doubt that these Khatris
are one of the most acute, energetic and remarkable races in India,
though in fact, except locally in the Punjab, they are not much known
to Europeans. The Khatris are staunch Hindus, and it is somewhat
singular that, while giving a religion and priests to the Sikhs,
they themselves are comparatively seldom Sikhs. The Khatris are a
very fine, fair, handsome race, and, as may be gathered from what I
have already said, they are very generally educated.
"There is a large subordinate class of Khatris, somewhat lower, but of
equal mercantile energy, called Rors or Roras. The proper Khatris of
higher grade will often deny all connection with them, or at least only
admit that they have some sort of bastard kindred with Khatris, but
I think there can be no doubt that they are ethnologically the same,
and they are certainly mixed up with Khatris in their avocations. I
shall treat the whole kindred as generically Khatris.
"Speaking of the Khatris then thus broadly, they have, as I have
said, the whole trade of the Punjab and of most of Afghanistan. No
village can get on without the Khatri who keeps the accounts, does
the banking business, and buys and sells the grain. They seem, too,
to get on with the people better than most traders and usurers of this
kind. In Afghanistan, among a rough and alien people, the Khatris are
as a rule confined to the position of humble dealers, shopkeepers
and moneylenders; but in that capacity the Pathans seem to look on
them as a kind of valuable animal, and a Pathan will steal another
man's Khatri, not only for the sake of ransom, as is frequently done
on the frontier of Peshawar and Hazara, but also as he might steal a
milch-cow, or as Jews might, I dare say, be carried off in the Middle
Ages with a view to render them profitable.
"I do not know the exact limits of Khatri occupation to the West,
but certainly in all Eastern Afghanistan they seem to be just as much
a part of the established community as they are in the Punjab. They
find their way far into Central Asia, but the further they get the
more depressed and humiliating is their position. In Turkistan,
Vambéry speaks of them with great contempt, as yellow-faced Hindus
of a cowardly and sneaking character. Under Turcoman rule they
could hardly be otherwise. They are the only Hindus known in Central
Asia. In the Punjab they are so numerous that they cannot all be rich
and mercantile; and many of them hold land, cultivate, take service,
and follow various avocations."