Salatarae
| Author: Laxman Burdak, IFS (R). |
Salatarae were a Bactrian tribe,[1] who lived in the district of Paropamisis near the Hindu Kush ranges of northern Afghanistan during antiquity.[2] They were active through Persian and Hellenistic times.
Variants
Jat Gotras Namesake
- Salotria = Salatarae = Saraparæ (Pliny.vi.18)
History
The Salatarae [Σαλατάραιv] were mentioned by Ptolemy,[3] who says only that they lived along the bank of the Oxus river and based on the context of the text they appear to have been nomadic.
Sir William Smith felt the Salatarae may the same people as the Saraparae mentioned by Pliny,[4][5] though this remains conjecture.
Current assessment is that they were ethnically an Iranian tribe dwelling on the northern bank of the Oxus River, that is outside Persian and Seleucid control. Their neighbors appear to have been the Zariaspa and Chomatri tribes.
Mention by Pliny
Pliny[6] mentions 'Nations situated around the Hyrcanian Sea'....the Derbices also,18 through the middle of whose territory the river Oxus19 runs, after rising in Lake Oxus,20 the Syrmatæ, the Oxydracæ, the Heniochi, the Bateni, the Saraparæ, and the Bactri, whose chief city is Zariaspe, which afterwards received the name of Bactra, from the river21 there. This last nation lies at the back of Mount Paropanisus,22 over against the sources of the river Indus, and is bounded by the river Ochus.23
18 This was a tribe, apparently of Scythian origin, settled in Margiana, on the left bank of the Oxus. Strabo says that they worshipped the earth, and forbore to sacrifice or slay any female; but that they put to death their fellow-creatures as soon as they had passed their seventieth year, it being the privilege of the next of kin to eat the flesh of the deceased person. The aged women, however, they used to strangle, and then consign them to the earth.
19 The modern Jihoun or Amou. It now flows into the Sea of Aral, but the ancients universally speak of it as running into the Caspian; and there are still existing distinct traces of a channel extending in a southwesterly direction from the sea of Aral to the Caspian, by which at least a portion, and probably the whole of the waters of the Oxus found their way. into the Caspian; and not improbably the Sea of Aral itself was connected with the Caspian by this channel.
20 Most probably under this name he means the Sea of Aral.
21 The Bactrus. This river is supposed to be represented by the modern Dakash. Hardouin says that Ptolemy, B. vi. c. 11, calls this river the Zariaspis, or Zariaspes. See the Note at the end of c, 17, p. 30.
22 Now known as the Hindoo-Koosh; a part of the great mountain-chain which runs from west to east through the centre of the southern portion of the highlands of Central Asia, and so divides the part of the continent which slopes down to the Indian Ocean from the great central table-land of Tartary and Thibet. The native term, Hindoo-Koosh, is only a form of the ancient name "Indicus Caucasus," which was sometimes given to this chain. The ancient name was derived probably from the Persian word paru,a "mountain."
23 Flowing from the north side of the Paropanisus. According to Pliny and Ptolemy, this river flowed through Bactria into the Oxus; but according to Strabo, through Iyrcania into the Caspian Sea. Some suppose it to have been only another name for the Oxus. Ansart suggests that it may have been the river now known as the Bash.
References
- ↑ Philippus CLUVERIUS, Introductionis in universam geographiam (Leonard Lichfield, 1657) page 26.
- ↑ An Universal History, from the Earliest Account of Time, Volume 5 (T. Osborne, 1747) page 58-59.
- ↑ Ptolemy vi.11.6
- ↑ Pliny vi16.18.
- ↑ Sir William Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography: Iabadius-Zymethus [J. Murray, 1873] page 881
- ↑ Natural History by Pliny Book VI/Chapter 18