Bhāts
Jeffrey G. Snodgrass states that "'Bhat' is a generic term for 'bard', applied to a range of mythographers including those employed by village nobles".
She suggests that the elite bards who worked for the dominating social groups, including the Rajputs, were composed of the genealogist Bhats and eulogist Charans.
[5] Piliavsky notes that the bards were in "high demand" among the people who were from diverse social backgrounds (e.g., leatherworkers, hill dwellers, big landowners) and wanted to achieve "upward social mobility" in order to attain the "Rajput status" as they were depend on the bards for their pedigrees' "production and maintenance".
She claims that to attain the Rajput status, a person also required "a pedigree, complete with sacred (purānic, or "epic") lineage, divine origins, and a patron deity".
[7] Some scholars like Anastasia Piliavsky, Dirk H. A. Kolff, and Harald Tambs-Lyche claims that the bards played a key role in securing political legitimacy of the ruling elites.
They suggest, From the early medieval period, and increasingly with the elaboration of the Rajput "great tradition" from the sixteenth century onward, genealogy emerged as the cornerstone of good social standing and political legitimacy in Western and Central India (Kolff 1990: 72, 110).
[..] From the sixteenth century onward, "every royal clan depended on a line of bards for its recognition" (Tambs-Lyche 1997: 61), and by the mid-seventeenth, when the Rajput model became entrenched as the benchmark of social status and political legitimacy, "genealogical orthodoxy" was firmly established as an essential aspect of respectable standing (Kolff 1990: 73).
He is of the view that the claims of descent from the ancient Kshatriyas by the Rajputs helped them in advancing their feudatory states' interests in the British Raj.
[10] In Rajasthan's feudatory states, the Bhats, Charans and "Jain monks of the monastic lineage" played an important part in the royal affairs which included enthronement and legitimation.
Hira Singh notes that these three groups and Brahmins competed with each other in proffering "alternative narratives of major historical events relating to the kings and kingdoms".
According to Hira Singh, the enthronement and legitimation in the feudatory states of Rajasthan were directed by the "political, economic, and administrative contingencies" and were not "rooted in religion".
[1] Snodgrass observed that the low-status Bhats receive monetarily help from the people from Bhambi caste who give food and gifts to them.
[1] He points out that in order to benefit from the "new economic and political opportunities", they are leaving the villages and are casting off their numerous long-term ties with the Bhambhis.
[15] According to William Hewat McLeod, the Bhatra Sikhs have an "extremely small" population and they are from some villages of the Gurdaspur and Sialkot districts of the Punjab region.
