Note 91 — G

Gûjar, Gujar.91—An important agricultural and pastoral tribe found principally in the Western Districts. They take their name from the Sanskrit Gurjara, the original name of the country now called Gujarât. The current derivation from gâû-charâna “to pasture cattle” cannot be accepted; as a curiosity of folk etymology it may be added that some derive it from the fact that the tribe once took to feeding their cattle on carrots (gâjar). The traditions of the tribe give little information as to their origin or history. By one legend current in the Panjâb they claim descent from a certain Nand Mihr, who is perhaps Nanda, the foster father of Krishna, who was raised to distinction because he slaked the thirst of Alexander the Great with a draught of buffalo milk. They are identified by General Cunningham92 with the Kushan or Yuchi or Tochari, a tribe of Eastern Tartars. “About a century before Christ their Chief conquered Kâbul and the Peshâwar country; while his son, Vima Kadphises, so well known to the numismatologist, extended his sway over the whole of the Upper Panjâb and the banks of the Jumna as far down as Mathura and the Vindhyas, and his successor, the no less familiar King Kanishka, the first Indo-Scythian Buddhist prince, annexed Kashmîr to the kingdom of the Tochari. These Tochari or Kushan are the Kaspeiræi of Ptolemy; and in the middle of the second century of our era, Kaspeira, Kasyapura or Multân was one of their chief cities. Probably about the beginning of the third century after Christ, the attack of the White Huns recalled the last king of the united Yuchi to the West, and he left his son in charge of an independent Province, whose capital was fixed at Peshâwar; and from that time the Yuchi of Kâbul are known as the Great Yuchi, and those of the Panjâb as the Kator or Little Yuchi. Before the end of the third century a portion of the Gûjars had begun to move southward down the Indus, and were shortly afterwards separated from their northern brethren by another Indo-Scythian wave from the North. In the middle of the fifth century there was a Gûjar kingdom in South-Western Râjputâna, whence they were driven by the Balas into Gujarât of the Bombay Presidency; and about the end of the ninth century, Ala Khân, the Gûjar King of Jammu, ceded the present Gûjardesa, corresponding very nearly with the Gujarât District, to the King of Kashmîr. The town of Gujarât is said to have been built or restored by Ala Khân Gûjar in the time of Akbar.”