The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations/The identification of the Jats

From Jatland Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
The full text of this book has been converted into Wiki format by Laxman Burdak.
Back to Index of the Book
The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations

Hukum Singh Panwar (Pauria)

Manthan Publications, Rohtak. ISBN 81-85235-22-8

Chapter X:The identification of the Jats
Their footprints on the stony track of time,
Their names in steppes and streams, in moors and hills,
Their great exploits in multifarious tongues
Lie strewn abroad, and crave the light of day.
The columns of their conquests and the triumphs,
Of their intrepid march lie deep interred
In Womb of Woeful time, in the Mount and Hill,
Awaiting pick and spade to delve them out
(O.P. Mohan)

Identification of people

Identification of a people, if not an impossible problem, is surely a task fraught with difficulties, sometimes insurmountable. Each such identification is likely to be challenged, striking some as odious, others as improbable. Unending controversies ensue, making confusion worse confounded. This is especially true of jats many of whom still suffer from a crisis of identity. The riddle of their origins has racked the brain, not only of native but also of foreign scholars for about a century, but with little success in pin-pointing the tribes and peoples to whom they can be said to have belonged. Almost all anthropologists by now have veered to the view that Jats have descended from the Aryans who constitute a very big stock of humanity. The question arises now is: were all the Aryans Jats and all Jats Aryans? Are Aryans and Jats identical?

Language as a tool

The giants of philology employed only language as a tool in identifying peoples. This technique was countered by the ethnologists, who, held that language, being changeable, provides no conclusive proof of a race which is, more or less, permanent. Apropos of the inadequacy of this tool, the two Drs. Westphals1 have aptly remarked, "Comparative philology, which had its day in the last century, has been applied alone to reconstruct the history of the peoples; ethnological investigations and arguments were often framed on very flimsy grounds. The discussions about the origin of the Jats are an example of this. Simply by reason of their tribal name the Jats were identified with the Scythian Getae, the Goths and the inhabitants of Jutland, a part of Denmark. Once the identification has been made, there can always be

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 296

found some single parallels in customs and institutions which can be used to support the hypothesis. Starting With such assumptions, the supposed history of the Jats was written for a period of about 2000 years".


These two learned scholars have out-right rejected comparative philology though it has not entirely lost its efficacy and validity and is still used as one of the primary, (if not the main) tools in classifying, (if not in identifying), various races, nor have they drawn attention to the great advances that have been made today in the field of relevant sciences which have placed numerous methods and tools at the disposal of the investigators of the origins of the ethnic history of various races.

Multi-pronged approach of identification

We, in our investigations, have tried to avoid any over-simplified approach. We have not depended merely on a few affinities and parallels of some customs and institutions for identifying the Jats. Instead, keeping in view the "gestalt" approach to the problem, our treatment of it is multi-pronged and eclectic. We have tried to press into service the latest literary, linguistic, numismatic, epigraphical, ethnographical, anthropological, anthropometric, dermatoglyphic, somatometrical, serological, geological, geographic , historical and archaeological evidence from native as well as foreign sources, which were either not available to the earlier writers on the Jats or were inadvertently left out by them. In rejecting or modifying their opinions and surmises, their arguments and conclusions, we have adopted this much wider approach which has, at times, led us to statements that may be dubbed as provocative and sensational.

Sakadwipa and Sakasthan

One such starting formulation of ours is likely to shock those who have been drilled to believe that Sakas (Scythians) are not only different, but were antagonistic peoples - the Sakas (Scythians, being all that Aryans were not. We, on the contrary hold that the Ailas and Iksvakus (former's sub-section) lived side by side in the sub-Sivalik zone of the Sapta-Sindhu, where Saka trees (teak in English and Sagawan in Hindi) were grown in abundance in ancient times. The Rechna Doab in which Sakala (Sialkot) was situated was known as Sakaladwipa. The region as well as its inhabitants, derived their names from Saka, which, as some eminent anthropologists and geographers rightly hold, conveys only a geographical sense and not a racial one. The so-calico Skythia or Scythia of the Greeks, which is represented as Sakadwipa in the

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 297

ancient Indian literature, is now proved to be a misnomer: it actually stands for Sakasthan of Central Asia, and not for Sakadwipa. Sakadwipa and Sakasthan are distinct, separate entities in site of similarity in sound, Sakadwipa was the landmass in the South and South east of the Meru (Pamir), the climate of which was suitable for the growth of teak; and the Sakasthan comprises the countries of adoption by the Sakas as their second home in central Asia after their exile or emigration to those countries in pre-historic times from Sapta Sindhu (cf, S.M. Ali, 1973, app., pp. 205ff). Ali has aptly vivified the distinction between the two terms.

Saka the origin of different races

The next important discovery consequent upon our identification of the Jats is that the different races, viz., the Getae, Thyssagetae, Massagetae, Allans, Asii, Ioatii, Zanthii or Xanthii, Dahae, Parnis or Panis, Parthians, Yueh-Chihs, Ephthalites and Kushanas, etc. (who have so far been considered as separate and unrelated races by historians) are actually the offshoots of the three major sections of the Sakas, who were not a distinct race from the Aryans.

The only feature where they differ in their taxonomy was their bachycephaly, a feature they they developed by residing in higher altitudes for thousands of years after their banishment or migrations from Sapta Sindhu. Their history, according to our inquiry, goes as far back as 8566 B.C. and their spread as far away as Scandinavia in Europe, and (via Alaskan Isthmus to Canada, U.S.A., Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Peru in south America besides Burma, Cambodia and Thailand in the east.

There is, no gainsaying the fact that as a result of their segregation from the original stock and their amalgamation in the social milieu of foreign countries of their adoption, their culture and civilization underwent changes to such an extent that sometimes we fail to recognise and identify them except by the similarities of some of their names and their taxonomy, bequeathed to them by their common ancestors. Their mutation and segregation from the main stock plus their probable in-breeding have obviously resulted in their distinct serological make up. Their physical features, except the skin colour, remained, more or less, the same as they inherited from their emigrant forefathers. Wherever an Englishman or a German happens to see a Jat or vice versa, they are amazed by the closeness of their physical features and resemblance, But the most important fact worthy of note

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 296

is that, despite all vicissitudes in their life, many of them even now retain their family or tribal names and surnames (gotra ) in addition to some customs and traditions which have gone a long way in helping us in the identifications.

The authors of the famous Gothic art and culture in Europe were none else but the Gots or Goths, the descendents of the Saka or Sacae-Getae, who are identified with the Jats or Goths by many scholars. These are, interestingly, the grounds that led Karl Marx1a to identify "the-ancient Germans with the Jats and the ancient Greeks with the Brahmins". We shall concentrate in this chapter on the identification of the Saka Jats . The preceding chapter also contains some results of our inquiry. The reader may come across sporadic instances in other chapters as well, especially in the last but one.

After the Sakas (Scythians) left their motherland (Saptaa-Sindhu) for north-western countries, the main sources of information about them are the Roman and Byzantine poets and writers, the inscriptions of Danus and Xerxes, 2 the Russian3 and Chinese4"" scholars and the Greek historians5 from 7th century B.C. to 2nd century A.D. So far as tapping these sources is concerned, their respective languages offer an insuperable difficulty for us to directly benefit from them. Ultimately, the scholar is, compelled to throw himself at the mercy of translations and draw upon second-hand information.

The progenitor race of the Jats was known as Saka:

Be that Jas it may, pro tempore, we learn from the above sources that the progenitor race of the Jats was known as-

In fact, E.K.Minns14 citing Herodotus informs us that the whole nation of the Sakas, was known as Scoloti or Skoloto after their king's surname. He may be Jata, whom the Indian mythology identifies as one of the sons of Brahma, who led many Indians to the Shveta-Dvipa for the Darshan of Visnu. The traditional Yaatraas (short or extended) in Kashmir and Ladakh, especially to holy shrines, are still called "Jat

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 299

Yaatraas".

It may not be impertinent to point out that the filial tribes of the Jats have, for generations, been using Saka or Sakai (Saga or Sagai) as a term to denote their mutual kith and kinship. These terms, one feels, might have been inherited by the Jats from their Saka ancestry: these terms are strongly reminiscent of this ancestry of theirs.

Origin of Jat is Jata

Of special interest is the fact that the Arab invaders knew all the Hindus of north-western India as Jats (Zat or Zatt or Zut), in the early medieval period; the Greek writers of the first millennium B.C. as well as the contemporaneous Iranians called them Sakas, or Getae, Massagetae and Thysagetae in the remote past. It should be obvious that inhabitants of the country are, better known to their next-door neighbours than to distant neighbours. The Saka fugitives were similarly known as "foreign Yueh Chih", which, as we have mentioned elsewhere, (Ch.IX) means Jat or Gut (g=j) in the archaic Chinese whereas the Mongols and the Turks remembered them as Jata or Jatah or Jit or Get.

Another significant and interesting fact is that the Iranian terms (?) 15 (jata and massa or Maha jata) as well as the Chinese Gut (?) literally convey the sense of the Paninian phrase jata jhata saghate (जट झट संघाते) from which the Indian scholars derive the name Jatt or Jat. All the three sources agree that the term Jat (जाट) means "to gather together", or "to unite" or "to confederate". The Indian writers think that there is no earlier provenance than Panini's Ashtadhyayi in which mention of Jata (जट) can be found. This short sighted view arises from the fact that the ancestors of these communities were dubbed as Pisach and this was accentuated by many accounts in the Mahabharata and other subsequent texts. This has led many to accept these descriptions blindly and have blocked any real investigation in their nature and origin. It is a great pity that even Dr. Sudhakar Chattopadhyay, the learned scholar, who claims to have consulted all the extant sources in his elaborate study of all the Saka branches, dried his pen when he came to Saka Goths (Jats). Surely, the writers, especially the orthodox ones, still fight shy of challenging such biased nomenclature in this caste-ridden country. The 'sacred' Mahabharata has laid down that whosoever deals with the people of the Sapta Sindhu (Vahika-desh), will have to undergo

Note - (?) has some arabi script

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 300

purification several times. This Brahmanical interdict seems to operate even in this scientific age. It seems many a scholar has failed to free themselves from the taboos enforced ages ago.

It is said that there is no smoke without fire. Jata, as the name of a people, did exist in the period anterior to Panini, for Panini has acknowledged that all the roots, mentioned by him in the dhatupatha of his Ashtadhyayi, have come down from the earlier grammarians. His predecessor, Yaska, in his Nirukta describes many ambiguous terms like Jatya Atnaro (जाट्य आटनारो) , which undoubtedly means "in the Jata nomads" or "like the jata nomads." He apprises us further that such terms have descended from antiquity through Sakatayana. Evidently, this appellation must have been used by the grammarians and their scholiasts, prior to Panini, to denote the Saka nomads, whom we regard as the progenitors of the Jats, who used to wear locks and roam about in groups.

After their expulsion from India (without the benefit of the Brahman,) the Sakas descended on the Central Asian and the Middle eastern countries. They strained every nerve to make good the loss of their territorial possessions and prestige. They had to deal with various other peoples and took over their lands by conquest. In such encounters, especially when their accounts are lost in the mist of time, it is pretty difficult to tell exactly what exactly happened and to what possible extent the nomadic Saka conquerors actually replaced the defeated. The broad picture, however, is clear-namely that enslavement and evictions did result in large scale migrations.

In addition to these, "there were alliances, betrayals, marriages, concubinage, servitude, collaboration, slow processes of law and swift processes of force". In short, indistinguishable co-mingling as well as internecine wars must have occurred. Once in a blue moon we come across some "detailed accounts of who combined with whom to drive out whom" but such accounts, being local, fail to throw light on what happened in other areas. Notwithstanding these snags, we can guess from whatever meager evidence we have at our hand that the orthodox Indian writers presented these events in such a way that white was painted black and vice versa, denigrating the defeated Aryans tribes as Pisachas and by other opprobrious terms. These "devils", however, were not as black as they were painted by their victorious adversaries.

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 301

Similarity of customs of Jats with Sakas

The accounts of the Sakas (Scythians), given by the Greek writers do not seem to be jaundiced, while most of the "Brahmanic" accounts definitely are. The testimony of Herodotus, "the Father of History", reinforced as it is by his eye-witness accounts of the Scythians, is, far more significant and reliable than the biased accounts of our own. According to him, "they were the most manly and law-abiding of the Thracian tribes. If they could combine under one ruler, they would be the most powerful nation on earth. They were the most powerful warlike people. By arms they earned their livelihood (Ayudhajivi). Plundered booty was the only respectable source of their income16. This account closely and faithfully compares with the account of Ayudhajivi ganas of Panini's time, They are said to be the ancestors of the Jats, who, according to Sir Denzil Ibbetson, "are basically a peaceful and peace-loving soul, who want to be left alone". "Whosoever invaded them (Saca or Scythian Getae) could not escape destruction. They observed the customs of taking oaths on blood pricked from arm by a sharp dagger and of drinking blood of the first enemy, killed in battle, in his skull" (compare Harshvardhana's oath to avenge the murder of his elder brother).

"The wives of the Sauromatae (Sarmatians or Saurot or Saurawat or Sahrawat Jats), one of the tribes of the Scythians, accompanied their husbands in hunting and war. Their girl could not marry unless she had killed an enemy. Whether on foot or on horses, the Massagetae (Maha Jats) of the Scythian stock, used arches, spears, bills or long-handled axes"17. The Dahae (Dahiyas), a great and vigorous tribe of the Massagetae, with its subsections in the Parnis or Panis (Pauniyas or Punia or Paunia or Pannu Jats) and the Parthians (Bhartians) are paid glowing tributes by Prof. Ghirshman. He writes that "Dahae, a great group of the Scythian nomads, were the best horsemen and warriors, for whom, according to ancient writer, to die fighting was supreme happiness, and death from natural causes ignominious and shameful18. Tomyris, as the named suggests, a leader of the Tomar (Scythian) tribe of the Jats and the Empress of the Dahae (Dahiyas), took up the gauntlet of the Iranian Emperor, Cyrus (Kuru), (who had treacherously killed her son), and not only gave a crushing defeat to the Iranians but also beheaded Cyrus in a fierce battle.

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 302

In addition to appreciating their bravery, Herodotus also points out their customs which bear a striking resemblance with those of the Jats, who were always on the move, seeking new adventures.The Scythians, like Jats managed their self-preservation better than others. They did not have fortified towns but preferred to live in waggons"19 which could, as the exigency of circumstances demanded, take them from place to place (Jatya Atnaro) (जाटय आटनारो). These Scythians, like nomadic Jats "despised work, considered an idle man as the highest type of man; and looked down upon agriculture as the lowest"20 occupation (perhaps because it leads to lethargy, sedentariness, immobility and breeds stay-at-home habit, which are contrary to the tenets and traits of nomadism). They were "accustomed to fighting back and forth on horse back with bows and arrows"21. This reminds us of the cavalry, the 'Task Force' of the two Jat rulers, Maharaja Suraj Mal of Bharatpur and Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Lahore. They (Scythians) had unique "respect for Sooth-sayers, worshiped the sun, sacrificed horses to it, cattle very less but pig never"22. "They did not make statues, raise altars or build temples to any god except Ares23". They were highly unorthodox, "temple plunderers" and worshipers of the forces of nature. They were at the same time, "extremely xenophobious"24 and neither tolerated any foreign interference in their way of life nor did they ever desire any one of them to adopt and indulge in the foreign styles of life. Skylas, who had developed fondness for Greek ways of life and for Bacchic orgies in the city of Olbia, was beheaded by his half-brother. They, fervently guarded and followed their own customs and manners (compare with the unorthodox Jats).

"Every Massagetae had a wife, "but proclivity for "promiscuity was there. If a man wanted a particular woman, he would go and hang his quiver on her waggon and enjoyed her without any fear"25. A slightly modified practice was followed by certain Jat tribes (Bisnois) in Rajasthan in the past. Hewitt has this to say: "As to customs common to Jats and Massagetae, Sir H. Elliot records that the Jats are accused by their neighbours of having a community of wives, an accusation which is shown by the Holi origies at Kosi to be probably true, and this system of transition, through the communal marriage of all men and women in the same village, from the matriarchal custom of intercourse between men and women of different villages, to that of husbands and wives

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 303

living together for life, like Ashura sons of the palm tree, in the same house, is according to Herodotus, one of the national customs of the Massagetae"26.

The same trend is now inbred in the customs peculiar to the Jats. He would marry as often as he could physically and financially afford, "and he may marry any woman of any caste or class and from any part of the world"27. But if a woman has once become his wife he zealously guards her from other men as a prized gift. "But rarely, if ever, would he acquiesce in a Jat female marrying outside the Jat tribes."28 In such matters, the Jats, to all intents and purposes, are, as the Scythians were, caste endogamous and gotra exogamous. Polygamy, karewa, widow-remarriage, Sati29, bhaichara, and tribal unity to face common danger are the customs and practices, epitomised in the customary laws applicable to the Jats, which they have inherited from their Scythian ancestors.

Sardar Har Iqbal Singh Sara30, a Sikh Jat, at present a citizen of Canada, has thrown a flood of light on the comparative study of the customs and traditions, rites and rituals, manners and etiquettes, dress and ornaments, plays and pastimes of the Scythians and their descendents. Some of these have been virtually retained by the Jats and can be noticed in the day to day life of their society. Even long span of time and space separating them and mixing up with others, have not effaced and obliterated them. Among the customs peculiar to Scythians are those of drinking milk, butter-milk, yoghurt and sour-milk (Kumis in Scythian and Lhassi in Hindi) eating ghee-boora with their meals by day drinking bouts with mutton, beef and horse-flesh, cooked in big cauldrons, revels and revelrouts by night, accompanied by the beat of the kettle and pot=drums, flutes. They have bequeathed some of them to the Jats. It was the Scythians who introduced and popularised milk-drinking in Asia and Europe before 4300 B.C.31.

We may add to the comprehensive details given by Mr. Sara. The Scythians had a craze for gold and gold ornaments. They also knew bronze but iron and silver were unknown to them. "Gold was used for helmets, belts, girdles, bridles, bits and cheek-pieces for horses whereas bronze was used for spearheads, arrowheads, bills and breast-plates for horses"32The ignorance of the Scythians about silver and iron, it may be observed, indicates beyond doubt that they were in the Bronze

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 304

stage of time when iron was not yet discovered. "They had a strong passion for ornamentation. They wore gold torques, amulets, diadems, pendents, necklaces, armlets, bracelets32a, finger-rings and ear-rings," all of which were also in vogue till the first quarter of the present century among the Jat rusticus. The most precious and the heaviest as well as the most coveted ornaments used to be gold pectoral (Kantha or Kaintha or Kutha or Kathla or Hansla for men and Kanthi or Hansli besides Nath or Nathl for women), and an ostentatious display exhibition of these ornaments at festive occasions was customary. "Emperor Sagar, who ruled over Sapta Sindhu after driving the Saka prisoners of war outside the country with disgrace and humiliation, amassed so much wealth that after the performance of his horse-sacrifice,he offered a palace built entirely of pure gold to the learned Brahmans"33. It is not improbable that the fabulous wealth amassed by Sagar must have been the booty and ransom extracted from the defeated enemies (Sakas, Parthas & Haihayas).

Dismounting the dying person from his bed and laying him on the ground, holding the head of the dying in the lap by the nearest relative, burial or cremation of the dead with a little gold in their mouths, "ritual of cleansing, washing their heads and bodies with soap or earth, shaving of head and face, mourning for at least 13 days followed by a feast - these were the funeral customs which the Scythians bequeathed to the Jats, who observe them even now in some modified form or the other. Their faith in the immortality of soul has become the faith of the entire Hindu world. Taking steam bath (Hamam bath in Muslims) in the morning, "taking pleasure in pot-smoking (huqqa?) and glue snuffing", were the Scythian habits that die hard with the Jats as well. Mr. Natwar Singh, ex. Minister for External affairs, Govt. of India, all erudite scholar of the Jats, has this to say of their smoking habit; "when asked, why he (Jat) was harming himself by smoking so much, a noble (of the Bharatpur House) recited a Persian verse:-

"Turfah-i-Shaghale Shaghal-i-Tambaku,
Kill zin Shagal gham faru gardad,
Ham dum astin, bai waqt-i-tanhai,
Tabai-i-badiazuniku gardad".

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 305

(Smoking tobacco is a rare pastime,
An occupation decreasing gloom,
A friend it is in time of solitudie,
It is help to a bad digestion)34.

A Scythian superstition was to beat drums, cans or other loud sounding vessels to frighten and to drive away evil spirits which were supposed to be trying to gobble up the sun during solar eclipse. Aims were given in the shape of clothes and food grains. The Jats follow these: practices to free the sun from Rahu and Ketu35. Another Scythian practice still followed, though not shown ostensibly, is that of tattooing . Further, the Scythians like their descendents, the Jats, made glorious history in all ages but had no taste for recording it for posterity: they have a rich history, but hardly any historians. We may cap this description by remarking that the stage on which all these customs were followed is, no doubt, the central Asia, Russian steppes and Thrace and the curtain is Scythian but the picture is that of the ancient Getae or the Sakas, the exiled (mirvasila) people of Patanjali35a and, equally of the Jats of today.

We hope, we have been successful in demonstrating that there is little agreement between what antiquarians have written and whatt the sharp spade of the archaeologists have delved out about Scythian migrations, between the indelible evidence of language and anthropometric measurements on this issue. C14 technique may help in confirming or denying various surmises, and in combating and correcting the bias in written records, but a balance between various approaches has to be struck. Caution is, no doubt, a commendable virtue for the baffled inquirer after truth' "but extreme distrust is far more perilous to history than extreme facility of belief". Written records may be prejudiced but the C14, too, may not always be infallible. Language, no doubt, is no absolute pointer to the nature of a people, but the ethnologist's tools, too, are likely to have their limitations.

Of all the evidence, language, notwithstanding its orthographic alterations36 in different climes and countries in accordance with their local phonemes, is of great significance for it leaves lasting footprints of its speaker-carriers on the sands of Time and soils of countries. In spite of all the vicissitudes in the history of mankind, language serves us as the most faithful guide as to who inhabited what part of world and

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 306

when, or who held sway over what particular region or a country, or where from a particular people happened to hail. The linguistic evidence cannot be underestimated, for aught we know, as noted before also, that philological terms may still hold the key to ethnic classifications as well as identifications, a point we have already made earlier.

Migrations from Indian to north western countries

We may now cite at some length from Pococke37 who has traced Indian migrations to all corners of the world solely through linguistic similarities. This extreme reliance on phonetic similarities seems to weaken his argument, but there is ample support, from other disciplines, techniques and lines of investigation, for his claims. Further, the large body of data, he has massed together cannot be brushed away lightly. When supported by other evidence, his thesis becomes incontrovertible. According to Pococke a great number of adventurous preux chevalier tribes from India migrated to Spain, Italy, Greece, Asia Minor,Persia, Colchis, Armenia and the Caucasus region, all of which provide distinct and startling evidence of Indian colonization in great profusio. We have tried (in appendix No.6) to pinpoint the Indian names and places of the origin of the migrated tribes as well as the altered forms of their names in their new settlements in other countries. The appendix indicating all this, is by no means, exhaustive. It may not be unnecessary here to point out that in some countries the presence of Indian tribes can be construed by their names, though distorted, while, in others their identity can be traced by place names in these transformed phonemic nomenclatures. All the more significant is the fact that almost all the tribes are considered Saca-Getae (Jats) or Scythians by the learned scholar38.(cf. Appendix No.6).

Pococke39 believes that the major migrations took place from India as a result of internecine wars and religious persecutions in which the Buddhists had been the main victims. To these may be added the Parasurama-Haihayas (Scythians) wars, Sagar's war against Haiihayas and their allies (Sakas, Parthas,Pahlavas etc) the Dasarajna Wars, the Rama-Ravana Yudha, the Mahabharata war. Pococke lays special stress on the virulent religious strife for a long time between the Brahmins and the Buddhists for supremacy, leading to Brahmanic victory and the gigantic expulsion of the Buddhists. Pococke claims40 that this was the most crucial event which compelled migrations and

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 307

banishment of the vanquished to the north-western countries. The Saga of the Kurus and Pandus, though ostensibly political was in reality, as Pococke41 contends, a struggle between the Brahminical and the Buddhistic parties. Profound night clouds this portion on Indian history. What Pococke regards as clear is that the emigrants coasted along the shores of Mekran, traversed the mouth of Persian Gulf. Adhering to the sea-board of Oman, Hadramant and Yemen (the Eastern Arabia), they sailed up the Red Sea, and ascending the mighty stream - the Nile - that fertilizes a land of wonders, founded the kingdoms of Egypt, Nubia, Abyssinia42 and Ethiopia. Fhilostratus, Julius Africanus, Eusebius and Syncellus, the Greek writers43 assert that the Ethiopians were originally an Indian race, emigrated from the river Indus and settled in the vicinity of Egypt. This assertion cannot be dismissed lightly. We may add to these surmises, some concrete evidence that has come to light since Pococke wrote. These details may be summed up as thus:

"Mohanjodaro sold its seals at Ur and Kish. The humped bull of tile Guts of the Indus valley was developed as winged sentinel of Assyrian palaces at Nineveh. It is represented as human-headed & bearded emblem of bull-god of prosperity on the columns of Apadan. The Indus bull created the Apis bull of the Egyptians. The Indus metric system standardised the weights and measures of Mesopotamia and further west. The cheque and banking system of the Panis (Phoenicians) of the Sapta Sindhu and their coins struck and minted at Carthage, Sodom and Tyre, after migrations there, became models for the currency and banking in the west. All these are the solid proofs, now universally accepted, of the migrations to and occupations of those countries by Indians in the hoary past (B.S.Upadhayaya, 1973: 2).

So great was the influence which the Indo-Aryans exercised on the fortunes of the Egyptian race that passing them over in silence would be an unpardonable lapse. The ancient name of the country, Misra44, (still known as El Misra all over the Near East), owes its derivation to the mixture of the two races (since the word misra means "mixture"). Similarly Egypt, her modern name, first of all used by Panis (Phoenicians) & Greeks, and the Nile, her life-line, ,owe their origins to Sanskrit names Agupta (impure) & Nila (blue) respectively. Some additional and stronger evidence, we are sure, would convince the unbiased. This

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 308

evidence comes from ancient Egyptian civilization. The Egyptians themselves always believed and looked towards the East, especially the land of Punth or Pankth, (identified with Pakthiya of Rig Vedic period or the modern Pakhtoonistan) as the original homeland of their god as well as their own, where from they came to Egypt via the Red Sea. The Vedic god Surya was known as Horus, Asura Indra as Osiris, Ushas as Isis, Saka (Prajapati or Indra) as RA, Siva as Seb, Uma as Ima, etc. in Egypt.

Interestingly, an ancient Egyptian Town, Saqqara, named after Sakra (Indra), reminds us of Sakkar in Sindh (details infra). Their superstitions, are equally significant in their similarity to Indian beliefs. They believed that the lower world was peopled with demons & torturers, that could be crossed only on a boat in company with a cow; that the earth is borne aloft by a Serpent. All this is supported by the discovery of lingas on the banks of the Nile, indicating phallic worship, by their legendary motifs of falcon (garuda) and Serpent (Naga), by the fact that the lotus was sacred to them. Further, details are: their sacredotal stone-symbols, their etiquette of paying respects to age by bowing and touching the knees, the naming of their first great king of united Egypt as Menes or Manus or Manu, their belief that the king was the surrogate of the deity, and was head of the church and the state; their caste-system, their sacrifice of the bull and veneration for the cow. Their ethnography and anthropometric measurements, too, bear so striking a resemblance to those of Vedic Indians. The correspondence between ancient Egyptians and ancient Indian culture in these respects is so remarkable that Heeren45, an early Egyptologist could not help strongly believing and concluding that the dominant Egyptian strata came from India. According to Kalyanaramana46, the carriers of this one way cultural traffic were the Vedic Panis, whom we identified (infra) with Parnis of the Parthians from the Dahae-Scythians, now found in Puni, Punnu or Punia Jats.

So vast were the Indian settlements in Europe and Asia and so firmly rooted were the very names of their kingdoms, the nomenclatures of Indian tribes, nay, their religious systems of the oldest forms of society, that, in our firm view, the maps of many Asian, European and Latin American countries may be read as the chart of Indian emigrants to those continents. In a sense, the primitive history of Persia, Asia

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 309

Minor Greece, Italy, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mexico, Argentina and Peru is the history of primitive India. India is, virtually, the heart that beats In the breast of all these lands. To vary a metaphor we have already used earlier, that though the stage is provided by North Africa, Europe and America and the curtain by the cultures of these regions, the picture is of ancient India. "Cities and politics may have been swept from the earth, dynasties of unrivaled grandeur and splendour may have passed away leaving scanty memorials, possibly none, to record their renown, but it is not so with history ineffaceably written on the venerable forms of mountains, seas an rivers.47

These compose a language so vast and so enduring, that compared with them, the Qutab Minar and the Vijay stambh, "must be considered as dwarfed toys of agglutinated sand which must crumble to atoms before the structure of this language shall be destroyed." Undoubtedly, this language of 'Geography' attests the first and the most conclusive proof that vestiges of the oldest Saka tribes of India lie scattered in the names of mountains and rivers they traversed in different countries of Asia, Europe and America. All we have done is to assemble and present evidence interpreted by Pococke, the doyen of the antiquarians of the 19th century in the hope that the findings from this source will escape any suspicion of partitionship in the mind of the reader. We also hope the when this evidence from an Independent source is combined with the facts marshalled by us earlier about Indan Saka (Sacae or Scythians) tribes and their tribal names and their similarity to the name of Indian Jat tribes (Appendix, 6), the claims made by us about Jat migrations and their formative influence on cultures of various continents will be accepted as authentic and conclusive, since not merely Pococke but several occidental scholars have acknowledged this debt.

As a result of their divisions as well as their mixing up with local people, they were, initially and for a long time later, considered as. a conglomeration of anthropologically heterogeneous types in the countries of their adoption and by subsequent generations all over the world. Actually, Leeuw48 was vociferous in suggesting that these tribes, popularly known to Indians as Sakas, were neither ethnologically, nor linguistically, nor culturally, a unit. However, in the light of overwhelming evidence, painstakingly assembled by orientalists and

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 310

archaeologists, such opinions regarding the Sakas had to be reviewed and revised. Even Leeuw, had to modify his prior stand radically admitting that they were a great people, who were mixed and assimilated by subjugation and counter-subjugation and to whom the name Saka (Scythian) is applied, and they "consist of numerous tribes, like Wusun, Sai, Yueh-Chih, Tukhara, Asii or Asiani49, etc."

A host of modern writers50 have come to include the Kushanas, Parthians, Parnis, Dahae, Cumuri, Suevis, Ephthalites or White Huns; Medes, Mannai etc. popularly known as Getae, Thysagetae and Masssagetae (Massaka51) under a single category-the Sakas. Further, they acknowledge their common racial affinity and identity. Indian and Iranian literary sources know them as Sakas as well and also refer to them by their respective tribal names. For example the Naksh-i-Rustam inscription of Darius 52, mentions their three broad divisions or groups, viz. Sakatigarkhauda (the Sakas wearing, pointed caps), Sakahaumavarka (Saka preparers of Hauma or Soma), Sakataradarya (Sakas living beyond the Caspian sea and Euxina). Herodotus53 describes five tribes of the Sakas, viz. Auchate, Catiari, Traspes, Paralate and Royal Scythians. Nearly three centuries after Herodotus, Strabo54gives the name of yet another group of the Scythians as Sacaraucae or Sakarokoi or Sacarauli.

As we have already noted, they were all Nordics. Their earliest branches were, as described by Kephart54a, Suevis (Sioux) Kimmerians, Getae, Massagetae and Sacae, who gave their name to and lived for a long time in Jete or Gete or Jit in the South of lake Balkhas (Bal + Khasa). We are firmly of the view that they were none else but the exiled people of Sapta Sindhu after their defeat by Diodasa and Sudasa. They are respectively identified as Sivas or Sivis or Sibis, Chumuris or later Chamak or Kinnra Jats or later Goths or Gots, Maha Jats, & Sakas. The formed their confederacy when they fought against the Bharatas. It appears that some of them retained their original names when they departed, otherwise all of them were Jats. These very names are still traceable among the Jats.

Several factors pose snags, sometimes insurmountable, before a student of the history of Jats. Among these are: lack of documentation of the early ethnic history of the Sapta-Sindhu and the Semirechiye (where the Saka tribes once roamed and lived), dearth of

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 311


corresponding Indian names for the Central Asian names of the Saka tribes that have undergone alterations often beyond recognition, paucity of research in the field of humanities and to crown all, the difficulty to understand the multiplicity of languages, archaic and classical, in which historical documents are available. We have made an humble effort to overcome the hurdles and to facilitate understanding of the Scythian tribes who, we have every reason of believe, have formed the ethnogenesis of the Jats. In order to avoid the tedium of repetition, I beseech the patient reader to refer to foot note No. 36 at the end of this chapter as well as the one on the 'Variants of the Name Jat' in a later chapter of this book.

We may supplement our claims by citing a few more ancient and modern occidental authorities in favour of our claims. We may begin by adding that the major groups, of Sakas, as described by various writers, were recognised, by the majority, to be closely related with each other.

The Auchatai of Herodotus were Osseti or Allan known to the Russian writers as As55 who seem to be none else than Asii55a of the later Greek scholars and the Asikas or Assakas or Asmakas of the Asikas or Assakas or Asmakas or the ancient Indian sources56. As the name suggests, the Catiari were Khatri of Panini (IV. 2.95) or Kathaians of Diodorus Siculus (xci) or Xandii or Xanthii of Strabo57 or Khatri in the Prakrit languages of Panjab and Sindh or Chhattri in Jatu dialect. Cunnigham58 regards the Royal Scythians and the Paralatae of Herodotus to be one and the same people. Cunningham further identifies them with Arrian's Abarisaras or Parisadai or the Boerisades and Parisades of the Pontic and Thracian Scyths or the Abhisaras of the sanskrit texts. He59 further connects them with the Aparni or Abars (Avars), a tribe of the Dahae, (whom Strabo identifies as Xanthii (a nasalised form of Iatii or Jatii) ,

Similarly to Wessendonk60 and Tarn61, the Sacaraucae of Strabo and the Sakahaumavarka of the Nakshi-i-Rustam inscription of Darius, were one and the same, Pompei Trogi62 and Justin63 consider the Sacaraucae and the Asiani as the Royal Scythians for they headed the Tokhari (Tusar, Tukhar Jats) confederation as the latter's Kings, Richard Frye64, Herzfeld65 and Tarn66 assert that the Haumavarga (the hauma revering ones), one of the three sections of the Sakas, enumerated in the Achaemepian inscriptions, were also called

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 312

Amyrgiol or Amyrgian67. We gather from the above that Paralatai, Sacaraucai or Sacarauli, Asiani, Sakahaumavarka and Amyrgian, were different names of the same people. Further identifications reveal that the Sakahaumavarka were the Virkas68 and the Sakatigarkhauda were obviously the Yueh Chih or Kushanas or Rsikas69 (Rathikas or Rathis) or the Rig Vedic Visanins who are identified with Saka Tigarkhauda by us in preceding pages.

Formation of confederacies

As a matter of fact, the Saka warrior tribes lived independently of each other in their newly acquired territories in Asia and Europe. In emergencies or as the exigencies of defence and social or political reforms arose, they used to form their local and regional unions, federations and confederacies. The Greeks 70 knew them as Gens, Phratrae (Biradri) and Basilia (Tribe), whereas Panini71 knew them as Vrata, Gana and Samgha. Similarly the Scandinavians 72 (Skand-nabhi) knew them as local Thing; Regional or Provincial Thing and central or Al Thing (assembly), the meeting of which, if required, used to be held on a raised platform (Chabutra) 73 on a Thursday, the sacred day of Thor their god. Justin 74 Strabo 75 Trever 76, Ghirshmann 77, Gaven Hambbly78, S. Konow79, S.P. Tolstoy80, Gankovsky81, Mac Govern82, and Enoky83 refer to the important federations and confederacies or unions of the Saka tribes.

The chief characteristic of these institutions was that they were sporadic casual, ad hoc and not permanent. They assembled only in the event of an emergency. In The formation of the confederacies the constituent member tribes maintained their respective names and status of equality irrespective of their numerical strength. However, the most powerful tribe, with its patriarch, dominated the confederacy. The corresponding names of these institutions in the Hindu Jat belt in India are village Panchayat, Tribal or Khaap (Kshetra or Ksatrap) Panchayat and the Sarva khaap Panchayat where as in the Sikh-Jat Belt it goes by the name Misl, in Pakistan Aurak and the Pathans call it Jirga. Dr. M.C. Pradhan84 has done commendable work on the Khaap Panchayats of the Jats of Western Uttar Pradesh.

Forming confederacies, especially to meet internal as well as external dangers, is a very old tribal practice, yet we do not know much about its origins; profound darkness engulfs the history of this practice. A glimmer of their origins may be caught from some sources. The

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 313

Puranas, Ashtadhyayi, the two Epics, the Brahmanas and above all, the Rigveda makes extensive mention of the existence and the role of the tribal unions and confederacies from time to time84a but their dates, have so far not established. This awaits the advent of some clairvoyants85 and computers 86, before anything definite can be asserted, The Rigveda, the oldest extant source at our disposal, furnishes, some valuable information about a few confederacies which fought in the Dasrajna wars on the banks of the Parusni87 and the Jamuna88 in the fifty second-& -third generations, but it is mysteriously silent about the earlier ones.

We need to remind the reader of some observations made earlier in order to link them up with the topic being discussed, The earliest confederacy that has come to our notice, was that of the Sakas, Parthas, Pahlavas, Kambojas, Haihayas etc., who were defeated by Sagar about twelve generations before Sudas, one of the heroes of the Dasrajna battles. The vanquished tribes, were compelled to leave the country (Sapta Sindhu) for north-western lands, which resulted in upheavals in central Asia in about 8000 B.C. and again in 4300 B.C. as pointed out by Calvin Kephart89The volkerwandenung of the Central Asian nomads and the latter date nearly coincide with the time of emperor Sagar (4437 B.C.)90. Consequently, the Saka tribes, viz. the Meds, Parthians, Dahae, Massagetae, Tokharis, (who, according to Buddha Prakash were Jats and other tribal groups, who became famous as the eastern representatives of the Nordic race91, ultimately acquired all the territory comprising western India, Afghansitan, Sogdiana, Bactriana, northern Iran, southern shores of the Caspian sea and the Caucasian mountains. The other Saka tribes, viz Suebians (Sivis or Sivas or Siboi), Kimmerians (Chumuris Chamrae or Chamak), Getae or Goth, Alans (Ailas or Asii or Asikas) and Sarmatians (Sairimas), who were known as western representatives of the Nordic race, were pushed by the easterners (probably Mongols), to Europe.

The Sakas in observance of their old practice of Rig Vedic times, also were traditionally polygamous92. Precisely speaking, the kings of the Rajanyas (Rajayanas), (who, as their customs (S.B. Chaudhuri, 1955: 121) warrant, may be Royal Scythians, were allowed (CHI, Vol.1, 1955: 116) four wives at a time. This is, seemingly, confirmed by V.M.Apte, (the Vedic Age, 1955: 394). The Jat rulers of North Western

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 314

India mostly followed this custom upto 1947. The Sakas (Scythians) of Sapta Sindhu introduced this custom wherever they held sway. whether Lords or Laymen, the Rajayanas, the supposed forefathers of the Rajputs, are an important tribe of Jats in Haryana. Polyandry93, too, was not unknown to them. A wealthy Scythian could take several wives at a time. Upon his death, one of his brothers, usually the younger one, would assume them as his own. (Compare widow marriage mentioned in the R V, X. 18.7.8. & X. 40.2) We also learn from Herodotus94 that the Massagetae had even a custom of holding their wives in common. Some of them might have taken to this practice under foreign influence: exceptions always prove the rule. These practices were considered by the orthodox tentamount to laxity of sexual morals.

It is a great pity that the critics, without building a proper appreciation for the time-honoured customs of the Sakas, were out to denounce them under one pretext or the other, as promiscuous. Widow-marriage or having more wives than one has become a conspicuity with their descendents, the Jats, and this custom of theirs was given recognition to by the tribunals pursuant to the Panjab Customary law95 . Guarded marriages and protection of husbands by their wives in odds were also the Scythian practices the Jats inherited from them.95a Among the various practices which the Scythians popularised in the areas of their influence and Inherited by Jats from them, the most important, consisting the worship of their ancestors and cremation of the wife or wives of a man (dead or alive) decked in her wedding dress and symbols.

Thus, the Jat families and tribes, like those of their Saka ancestors, "tended to grow very large and sprawl into intricate and over-lapping clans, knit together not only by common beliefs, but also by complex entanglements of blood and kinships. "Csequently, it has become proverbial with the Jats that the 'beehive' pattern of their kiths and kins is very much identical with the root-pattern of a low-spreading grass, called 'doob or doobh' (Cynodon dactylon) in Hindi and Khabbal in Panjabi96.

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 315


"Behold you azure dome, the sapphire sky,
Rear in unpillared might its canopy;
The vast pavillion, gemmed with worlds of light,
Whose circling glories boast a boundless flight;
And as they roll, survey man's chequered state
And scan the destinies of mortal fate97."

Having left the Sapta Sindhu in the night of time, the Scythians, (Sakai or Sakas), (or, more precisely, Sacae-Getae or Jats), formed a very important and effective unit among the predatory etnic tribes of central Asia Europe & even Latin America. From the Mesopotamian, Achemenid and Greek records it is quit evident that they established themselves as a powerful force and "controlled the passage of human airs generally from (8000 B.C.) and particularly from 2nd millennium B.C. to the 2nd cent B.C. In course of this long period of history these nomads were always restive, hopped and skirmished, buffeted, scurried and unsettled civilizations, proving a scourge (perhaps out of revenge, firmly seated in the back-recesses of their brain, for their expulsion from their motherland) to all the nations between the borders of China on the east and the ravines of the Danube on the West. Once they were located around the Altai, next in the steppes of Russia, again along the coasts of the Caspian sea and last para-Sugdam, beyond Sogdiana, the vast plains bordering the Jaxartes, the Syr Darya"98.

The Saka Tigarkhauda (Sakas with pointed helmets) lived beyond Sugud (Sogdiana, modern Bukhara region) as neighbours of the Bactrians and pitched their Tepes (tents) in a settled way along and across Jaxartes ( Jakhar or Jakshar or Yakshus) around which is today the country of Turkistan. The Haumavarka Sakas were settled in Drangiana in the valley of Helmund, later known as Sakastan (Sijistan, Seistan), and the Taradarya Sakas inhabited the steppes of Russia, to the north of the Black Sea99. Some of their more adventurous tribes penetrated as far as the, Baltic and Scandinavian countries, and were own as Goth, Got or Guthons.

Interestingly, the truth that, the Sakas, besides being known as such, were known as Getae, Thyssagetae, Messagetae in Asia and Europe, remained evergreen in their memory, whereas in place of origin, i.e. Sapta Sindhu, Saka as their name, became with the passage of time, extinct from their mind:

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 316

Sakas return to India

"Time is the root of all created beings,
And uncreate; of pleasure and of pain.
Time doth create Existence, Time destroys,
Time shatters all, and all again renews.
Time watches while all sleep. Unvanquished Time"100.

They refreshed this name in the Indian psyche on their return to their cradle. After a long span of time, it was in the 9th, 7th and 2nd centuries B.C. that powerful hordes of the Scythians, known as Yueh-Chih (Gat or Gut or Gutian in archaic Chinese) uprooted the Sakas from the Jaxartes and they moved to Seistan in the South-West101. It was in Seistan that the Sakas received an invitation from an Indian Jain Patnarch, Acharya Kalak to invade India, for he wanted to avenge himself on Gardabhilla, the king of Ujjayini, who had seduced his sister, a pretty nun102. With the Yueh-chih on their heels and fresh encounters with their Parthian kins from north eastern Iran, the Sakas, sensing their stay in Seistan becoming hazardous, readily accepted the invitation of Kalaka.

In seizing this opportunity, they, in fact, killed two birds with one stone i.e a good riddance from their enemies and a "rewarding asylum in India". Lo, the betrayal of the national cause merely for a fig became the menace of the Nation. Waves after waves of the Sakas moved towards the Indian border and at once conquered Saurashtra and Gujrat, Malwa and Ujjain, Kafiristan and Gandhara103. What an irony of fate! The fear of the anathemas of one type of priest- that of emperor Sagar drove the Sakas to the West, and the invitation of another type of priest - a Jain one encouraged them to stage- a "come bacK-"campaign" as invaders.

More than the invitation of the Jain patriarch, we would like to believe, it was the yearning for their ancient land among the Sakas that drove them back to India. The nostalgia, perhaps, lay dormant in their unconscious mind, and was violently stirred up by the lure for their kith and kin, viz. the Yueh-chih and Parthians. This guess of ours, however, is only a passing fancy - in actual fact, the multi-directional movements of the Sakas started in the beginning of the first millennium B.C., which were actuated by tribal upsurges touching off vast Vollkerwanderung104, accelerated by devastating drought in Central Asia105.

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 317

Buddha Prakash106 has them invade India in the 9th century B.C. but he neither substantiates his assertion with authoritative evidence nor informs us what further happened to them.

Sapta Sindhu - The Original home of Sakas

The Russian archaeologists discovered innumerable graves of the Saka Kings and chieftains in the Kuban, north of the Caucasus (7th-6th century B.C.), in the Crimea, in south Russia, in the Taman peninsula, in the Dnieper Valley as far up as Kiev, as well as in the Don, Donetz and Volga basins as far westwards as the Urals, in the Dunube basin as far west as Hungary and in what used to be East Prussia and is now Western Poland (6th-5th century B.C.)107. Excavations of the Royal Scythian tombs by M.P. Gryazhnov, S.I. Rudenko and others at Pazyryk and other sites in the Western Altai and nearer to lake Baikal (6th-4th century B.C. contemporary of Herodotus's Royal Scythians of South Russia) were most interesting and informative108.

However, the Saka invasions of India supposed to have occurred in the 9th and 2nd centuries B.C. from the north-west as well as the concentration of their graves from the Caucasus to lake Baikal between 7th and 4th centuries B.C. are bound to create an impression, as the archaeologists themselves believe, and would have us believe also, that the region under review was their original home. We have in the foregoing pages convincingly exposed the fallacy of such assumptions of the Russian and other archaeologists.

It is a great pity that the champions of the Eurasian home of the Sakas have not paid any heed to the evidence of the Saka megaliths discovered in the Vidarbha area of Maharashtra. According to Dr. S.B.Deo109 , Captain Meadows Taylor excavated the megaliths in the Deccan in 1862 and the monuments were ascribed to the Celtic or Scythic ancestry. The distribution of cairns, cromlecks and kistvaens, suggest that they belong to the period between 1105 B.C. and 615 B.C. - and so do the circular huts and carpentry work, stony circular graves containing couple skeletons, sturdy upto 5'-4" and 5'-6" with decayed cusps, ornaments and trappings of horse remains at Takalghat, Khapa and Naikund in Vidarbha. More specifically, they relate to 8th and 7th centuries B.C. Similar megaliths, as confirmed by Wheeler110, were discovered by A.B.E.Frera, the Commissioner of Sindh, Karachi area

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 318

and Baluchistan. "They are generally known as Kaffirs' graves, - term which implies the tradition that they are of pre-Muslim origin", and they are still awaiting exploration.

Though their West Asian contacts are suggested by Taylor but the contacts should not be interpreted to mean the tbe owners of the graves came from West or Central Asia. Moreover, the date of the Eurasian Scythian graves spans from 7th century B.C. to 2nd century B.C.111 whereas that of Vidarbha megaliths is from 1105 B.C. to 615 B.C. In other words it means that the Sakas were In India earlier by about 500 ears than in Eurasia. In view of this unimpeachable evidence, it is totally untenable to hold that the original home of the Scythian was the Eurasian Steppes and that they came from there to India. To us such observations smack of pro-European bias bred by their imperialist mentality that dies hard.

Where from, then, could the Sakas have possibly come to Vidarbha area? The answer to this question should, by now, being obvious, but we would like to link it up more specifically with what we have established earlier. The Sakas, let us remind our readers were the descendents of Narishyanta of Vaisali. They were defeated by Sagar. The vanquished Sakas had to seek shelter in the east as well as in the west, and gave the name of their ancestral city to their new settlements in Burma and Russia. That way, it should not be improbable that a section of theirs managed to live in the jungles of Vidarabha, Maharashtra, Sindh, etc., where their megaliths have been discovered. The fact that according to many scholars112 Vaisala was the ancient name of Ujjain, leaves no room for doubt and positively confirms our contention. Sometimes the identification of a people or a tribe and their location in a country hangs from a tenous thread of evidence, but in case of the Sakas in the area under review, their megaliths and Vaisala, as the ancient name of Ujjain indisputably strengthens our identification. Vaisali as the name of a river in south of Gwalior in the Madhya Pradesh may also be a vestige of the Sakas of ancient Vaisali.en

Of all the countries of the world the Sapta Sindhu has primarily had the greatest interest for the Sakas, for, from it sprang the Saka civilization and culture which spread to Asia and Europe. They had been swinging like a pendulum between the east and the west. The last oscillation of the pendulum, the weight of which was felt as well

en - The Gohad fort, built by Bamraulia Jats in Bhind district of Madhya Pradesh, was situated on the Vaisali River where it takes a circular turn. It shows further evidence of Jats and Saka connections.Laxman Burdak - Wiki Editor

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 319

borne, among others, by their original cradle, India - was in the 2nd century B.C. The Sakas did not remain inevitably nameless in other lands, and yet their antiquity not only became a matter of doubt but also an enigma to many. There is clear evidence and positive proofs, that in India they were known only as Sakas while in the western countries they were known as Getae or Jata or Jat (in addition to being known as Sakas).

It may well be asked why Sakas gathered so many appellations? We can only make a few guesses in response. First, perhaps there was Saka Chief of the name of Jata112a who led them to the Oxus valley where they were called Getae after him. Interestingly Indian mythology offers Jata, as the name of one of the sons of Brahma, who took many other Indians for the darshan of Lord Vishnu in the White Island (Svetadvipa) i.e. the Oxus region. Who knows, "what was legend yesterday may become history today, and what is history today may become legend tomorrow". Shorn of mythology, this legend perhaps points to the Saka emigration to the northern lands which ultimately came to be known as Gete after the name of their chief (just as our country Bharat owes its name to Emperor Bharata113). This is supported by Calvin Kephart's repeated assertions that the root of which, according to Greek and German historians, is Getae which they applied to the Nordics, the progeny of the Saka Getae.

Secondly, we know it now for certain that a union or a confederacy according to historians and linguists, is called Jata Jhata Samghata (जट झट संघात) in Sanskrit as the semantic and semasiological connotations of the phrase warrant. The Sakas, were physically as well as numerically the mightiest members of Jata (Sangha) of the warrior tribes who fought against Sagar. By virtue of its membership, the Sakas were also known as Jat or Jatha, but it is extremely surprising why the other constituent tribes were not called Jata (Jutt) like the Sakas. Evidently; the Yadavas, Kambojas etc., who are not even now named as Jutt or Jat, must have, in order to avoid the so-called notorious term Jatt, smeared by the orthodox with opprobrious epithets, as well as to maintain their eponymous tribal identity, preferred to retain their original (ancestral) names to distinguish themselves from the Saka Jata (Getae). Moreover, since the Saka tribes had to deal with new forces (Mongol & Turks) in their acquired home firstly in Central Asia and then in Europe, they

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 320

formed, as noted earlier, their own confederacies (Jata Sangha) to meet the external and internal dangers. Consequently they not only popularised the term in their new home but were also themselves marked permanently as Jata or Getae or Goth or Got.

Our discussion of the Scythian (Saka) origin of the Jats will remain incomplete unless we locate the Saka tribes in the Jats of the Indian Sub-continent. The Sakas, consequent upon the Volkerwanderung of the Central Asian tribes, are said to have returned to India from Gete in 8000 B.C., 4300B.C., then in 2300 B.C., again in 1700B.C., 900 B.C. and lastly in 2nd century B.C. While the earlier movements can be proved only on the basis of circumstantial evidence, the Saka invasion of India in 2nd century B.C. and assimilation of their tribes in the social milieu of north-western India can be proved by more solid evidence and therefore enjoys greater historical recognition, pushing the earlier migrations into the background.

With their secular and unorthodox approach to social and religious matters, the Jats, more than any other Indian community, have ever been "the great refuge of the victims of high cast Hindu social tyranny" as well as of the foreign invaders. This was the price they paid when they "uplifted the depressed and untouchables to a more respectable status, transforming all recruits to a homogeneous Aryan mould both in physique and sentiment" 114. So far as the amalgamation of the Scythic tribes (including the Parthians, who too, were the ancient Jats), with their Indian counterparts is concerned, it needs only to be remarked that blood is always thicker than water. So much so, that Har Iqbal Singh Sara goes even to the extent of identifying all the (Sikh) Jats with the Scythians.

However, it may be said that the number of the Hindu, Sikh and Muslim Jat tribes in the Indian sub-continent exceeds 3000 (infra, ch.IX). Whether all of them are Scythians, is anybody's guess. A perusal of the ancient history of central Asian and European countries shows that a good number of the Scythian Getae (Jata) from Sapta Sindhu either settled in the Eurasian Steppes or migrated to as far away as Scandinavia and the New World or returned to India also. There is every reason to believe that earlier Saka returns from Gete and infiltrations especially from 4300 B.C. to 900 B.C. must have considerably contributed to the ethnogenesis of the Jats in the sub-continent. It must

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 321

be admitted, however, that we have solid incontrovertible information only regarding the Scythian entrants from Sakastan in the 2nd century B.C.

The Scythians "moved in wave after wave towards the Indian border, their main families counting ninety-six and amply reinforced by their numerous camp followers"115. The dust had hardly setlled down on the Scythian heels and heads when the Kushanas, Yueh-Chih and the Ephthalites (White Huns)-the major kith and kin, according to us, of the Scythians followed in the foot-steps of the latter. Despite various vicissitudes in their life they also finally settled down in India to mix up with the multitude and further bred and carried on the Aryan (Nordic) race of the Jats and Khatris in north western part of the Indian sub-continent. Be that as it may, we should not forget that acceptance of the Scythic origin of the Jats, which we unequivocally support, leaves little room to suspect that all the Jats are Scythians, whom the ancient Indian literature mistakenly knows merely as Ailas and Ikshvakus.

Our conviction that Scythic tribes can be pin pointed among the Jats may not necessarily be an exercise in futility. In the absence of an ethnic history of the Jats and the lapse of two millennial after the Scythians' last return to India it may seem to be as difficult to locate for sure the Scythic element in the Jats as it is to separate water from milk; neverthless a few writers have used the "social lactometer" to give us fairly dependabie data, which we would like to lace before the patient reader.

We begin with Cunningham (ASRI, Vol.II, 1863-64, pp. 1-82) who made an interesting study on the identification of those famous peoples of north-western India whose names have become familiar to the whole world through the expedition of Alexander the Great. He described the various tribes which have settled in the Panjab from the earliest times to the Muslim conquest and attempted to trace the downward course of each separate tribe until it joins the great stream of modern history. We may repeat that next to Tod, he is the scholar who contributed immensely to the Scythic origin of the Jats by identifying them and reasonably so, with the Zanthii (or Xanthii or Xandi in Greek) of Strabo and the Iatii of Pliny and Ptolemy. The derivation of Jat by Cunningham from the Greek and Roman forms is logical but plausible. He suggests that in its original native form, the Greek name

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 322

of Xanthii or Xandi (and the Roman name of Zanthii) could have been Janth or by dropping the nasal, Jath (Jath or Jat, for, absence of J in the Greek alphabets is substituted by G or I). The ethnicity of certain Jat tribes was a matter of controversy: this was set at rest by Cunningham's opinion in favour of their also being Scythian.

The tribes in dispute in this respect are the Tak or Takka or Tank or Tonk or Tankur or Takor (or Tagar or Taggar). These are the descendents probably of Takshaka of Taxasila (possibly a descendent ruler of Visala in the Saka dynasty of Nrishyant, the Aiksvaka); Karkotakas and Kadrus or Kadars or in Pali Prakrita Kadasa; Mag or Meg or Megh or Makh (Makhar or Makkar); Sati or Satia, Dund, Sadan or Sadana; Janjuhas, descendents of Raja Mall, the founder of the old fort of Mallot, from the Anavas; A wans or Anuwans also from Anavas; Hudi (or Hada or Hooda or Huda or Uddai or Uddhika); Gakars or Gakhars (or Gargars or Gagar), the Gurgaridae of Dionysius from the Ta-Yueh-Chih, a major branch of the Sakas; Sivis of Sobii of Quintus Curtius or Sibae of Strabo or Sobae of Dionysius (or Chibar or Chhibar of the Panjabis or the Sivas of the Rigveda, Sivi or Shivaran or Sibia Jats). If the Sivis are Scythians, their descendents would automatically be Scythians. They are also Abar or Avars or the Aparni of Strabo, a branch of the Dahae Scythians; Sabal (or Sabar or Sabarwal), Pali or Palusii of Diodorus or Palaei or Apethaei of Pliny or Parii of Strabo or Paralatae of Herodotus, an important branch of the Dahae or (Dai or Dahi or Dahia of (Camb. His. of Iran, Vol. 3, Pt.I, p. 75; Ibid., vol. 3, Pt. 2, ;p. 686, 691,767, 769, 851); or the Dasas of Sanskrit texts or Dahiyas in the Jats.

Connected with the Gakhars by the common ties of physical appearance and peculiar customs are the Kathi (or Khatri or Khatri) of Sangla in Central Panjab, the indisputable descendents of Kathaei, who along with Balar, according to Tod, are not Rajputs. They are like Gakhars, a tall, handsome race, of war-like and predatory habits, who do not marry into any other tribe. They claim descent from Balas. rulers of Thatta- Multan and the Balas may be malla or Malli or Malii or Maloi of Alexander's historians, as B & Mare interchangeable. The Sopeithes or Sophites (Sobati) and Kathaei were actually the same. According to Curtius and Diodourus, the Sophites far exceeded all his subjects in

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 323

beauty, and was upwards of six English feet. According to Abul Fazal, many of the Kathis are exceedingly beautiful (Burnes; Travels to Bukhara, 11,112; Cunningham, 1869: 16 & Ain-i-Akbari, II, 70).

Investigations show that the Sobii, Sophites, Kathai & Malli, being cognate tribes, were intimately connected with each other and also with the Gakhars and Taxili (Takasali or the Takkas or Takshakas). Daci (Daki in Jatu dialect) and Dacia of Roman history or Dasyu of Sanskrit or Dasae of Stephen us Byzantinus are Dahae or Tahae of the Chinese, a tribe of the eastern Scythians, the Massagetae. Meds or Medi or Mand or Mind or Mandrueni or Mandueni or Mers or Moedi of Strabo (enemies of Jats) still found in the Rechna and Sindh-Sagar Doabas, were the first Indo-Scythian conquerors of the Punjab from Mandrus river to the South of the Oxus or they were Thracian Getae. The Mogas or Mogars, founder of Moga or Moog-nagar on the east bank of the Jhelam, were the Parthians, descendents of Prithu, an important section of the Sakas. Interestingly, Arjuna, the Pandava hero in the Mahabharata war, is addressed by Krishna, his charioteer friend, as Partha. Prithudaka (modern Pehowa) in the Kurukshetra region was, according to O.P. Bharadvaja (1986: 197f), the original home of Prithus or Parthas. The ancient Parthia must have owed its name to the Parthian emigrants from the eastern part of Sapta Sindhu.

Tusharas of Sanskirit texts and Rajatarangini, Tuhkhara or Tukhara of Mahabharata, or Ta-hus-lo of Hieun- Tsang or Tukhara or Tukharoi of Strabo or Tochari of Ptolemy with their different forms as Thogouroi in Kansu, Tokoraioi in north Imaos, Toghourio in Sogdiana & Tocharoi in Bactria; or Tagorae or Takoraici or Tagouraooi of Pliny, or Tokhari or Togari or Tojari in Central Asian Turfan and of the Ephtlalites or Thogarii of Parthians, or Thodkar or Thokar or Phodkar or Thogar of the Tibetan documents, or Tgwrk in Sogdiana, or Tacharik or Tocharaston of Armenia or Tochar of the Turks or Twchry or Twgry or Twgry of the Turkish, Manechian and Buddhist texts of central Asia or Tusar or Taggar or Tokha or Toka or Tonk in Jatu or Haryanvi, or Tokharaya in Russian, belong to the Yueh-Chih Kushanas of the Sakas (Rohi Uighur, 1965: 28f).

The Kors or Koras or Khoranas are the Yueh-Chih-Kushana tribes known as Korsou or Korsea or Khoransu or Korano. The Kajal or Kajala or Kajalai Jats and Khosla Khatris are the Kajula or Kujulaka.

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 324

325 or Kozoulo or Kuzala of the Kushan Yueh-Chih stock (Kuzula Kadphices). The Kator (or Katoar or Kataria or Kshatriya), the Kotol or Kitolo of the Chinese or Kedara or Katorman of Abu Rehan or Cidaritae or White Huns of Priscus, are none else but Yueh-Chih.

Jat clans from Sakas

The next source at our disposal is "The Political and social Movements in Ancient Panjab" written by Dr. Buddha Prakash who has meticulously sorted out the Saka tribes which were assimilated in our society. However, with a few exceptions, he does not declare them Jats whereas our experience and a perusal of the names or Gotras of the Jat tribes unerringly attest that they also are included in the Jats. According to him, the Saka Tigarkhauda are the Massagetae (Maha Jats) and the Soma or Haumavarka Sakas or the Amyrgians of the Greek writers (V.S. Aggarwal, 1963: 443,467) or the Sakaraucae of Wessendonk or the Sakarucae of Marquart are the Baltis or Ladakhis Somas of Afghanistan and the Virkas of the Panjab, the last two of whom are undoubtedly Jats.

The Srnjayas or the Parthians of the Mahabharata and of Shafer (1954: 138.) or the Sarangai of Herodotus or the Zranke of the Achaemenian Inscriptions or the Sir-re-anke of the Elamite records or the Saragoi of Arrian or the Dragiane of Strabo (in Seistan) or the descendents of Narishyanta, the progenitor of the Sakas, (are the Jats), known in the Mahabharata and the Rigveds as Srnjayas, the sons of the Sickle (Hewitt, 1972: 481) (survived by the Siringi or Singar or Singhar or Singhal or Sangar or Sanghar tribes in the Jats).

The Neuris (Nur or Nuri Jats), Salva (Salu Jats), Arjunayan or the Kathoi and Kathoi and Kathroi (Kshatriyas or Khatri Jats) are the Jun and Rajayan tribes in the Jats. The Karaskaras (Upadhyaya, 1973: 84-Guptas or Karaskara Jats) are modern Khokhars. The Thakurs or Thakaras or Thakran or Thagora or Taugara or Tokhi are from the Tukharas (Yueh-Chih) and the Soi and Sikkas, Kajal or Kuzul or Khosla, Kanka, now Kangs; Sulikas or Solgi or Solkah or Solanki or Sulki; Lampaka or Lambaka or Lamba; Kirata (or Kira or Kirah) are mostly from the Sakas of Sogdiana. The Mehra and Moga or Mogha are from the Megas (the Saka Brahmans). Chaul (or Chol or Cholak), Jaula, Tomar, Khatri, Khan or Khanua and Sahi, Wusun or Wasan or

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 325

Wassan are from the White Ephthalites or Huns. Hun or Hoon is also a tribe of the Jats and Khatris. The Her Jats are the descendents of the Heraios Kushanas from the Sakas.

According to Vishwa Mitra Mohan (1976: 84f), the Gakhar Jats are a fierce Scythian tribe spread over Sindh, eastern and western Panjab upto Khyber pass in the Frontier Province. The Khar or Kher or Kharata or Khareta and possibly the Kharb Jats are the descendents of the Saka Ksharatas mentioned in the Indian Epigraphs or the Karatai Scythians. In the end, it may be said that B.S.Dahiya has done a good job and his book is a compendium of the Jat tribes living in India and abroad. But lack of space does not allow us to repeat what he has laboured to bring before us from the misty lap of time and space.

Lastly, I must say of the Dahiyaa. They are the Dasas of the Rigveda, the descendents of Dadhichi, Dadicae of Herodotus, the Dahas of the Iranians, the Dahae of the Sakas of Transoxiana, the Dadi or Dahi of the Pactiyas (Pathans, Dehgan or Dehcan of the Tajiks and Dahya or Dahiya among the Jats (Bellew, 1982: 58, 90, III 114; & Mishra, 1971:153).

It may also be observed that S.M. Ali has removed the persistent confusion between Sakadvipa & Sakastan to the entire satisfaction of Dr. Sampurnananda, Ex. Governor of Rajasthan. Sakadvipa is, as we have already stated, the land-mass (in the south and south-east of Meru) where Teak (Saak or Saag or Saagwaan) was grown. This land mass was actually Sapta Sindhu in the past and not, as popular belief has it, Central Asia, the climate of which has ever been unsuitable for teak. The inhabitants of Sapta Sindhu were primarily known as Saka after the name of this dvipa. This is why the neighbours knew them as Sakas and the countries they occupied in central Asia as Sakastan or Scythia. It appears that, when some of their tribes in the process of their development became more cultured & stole a march on the primitives, they were known by the honourable appellation of "Arya" in ancient Indian literature as wall as subsequently as such in the known world outside India. Later on the so-called Aryans were bifurcated into Devas & Asuras, them Sakas and Aryans, then into Ailas & Aiksvakas, then Suryavanshi & Chandravanshi, then Sivagotri & Kasyapgotri, then Brahhmans, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas & Sudras; then Jats, Rajputs, Gujars, and

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 326

Khatris, lastly Swarn Hindus and Harijans etc. by vested interests from the remote past to the present day. Only God knows where and when this division will stop! : Perhaps, Time will tell.

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 327

Notes and References

1. The Jat of Pakistan, 1964, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, p. 95.

1a. Marx.Engels, The First Indian War of Independence, 1857·59, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1978, p. 33.

2. Behistun Column (No.1), Hamadan Gold and Silver Tablets, Persipolis Inscription (E), Naksh-i-Rustam Inscription (A), all inscriptions of Darius, Persepolis Inscription (H) of Xerxes; q. by D.C. Sircar, Selcet Inscs. Bearing on Ind. His. and Civil., Vol.I, Calcutta, 1942, pp. 4·11. O.M. Dalton, Treasures of the Oxus, pp. XL-VII.

3. Q.by Gankovsky, Yu, V; The People of Pakistan, Lahore, 1971. See also proceedings of Intern. Conf. of His., Archae. and CuI. of Cen. Asia in the Kushan period, Vols. I and II.

4. Cf. Sudhakar Chattopadhyaya, W.W. Tam, Leeuw, Wylie, T.T. Rice, etc.

5. Bongard-Levin, G.H. ; The Origin of Aryans, New Delhi, 1980, p. 27.

6. Waddell, op.cit., pp. 143-44.

7. Strange, G.Le; op.cit., pp. Ui2, 437.

8. Sircar, op.cit., pp. 4·11. Dalton, op.cit., pp. XL-VII.

9. CHI, Vol. I, p. 565.

10. Chattopadhyaya, S.; op.cit., p. 2. See also Remusat, Nouveau Melanges Asiatiques, Vol. I, p. 205. Annals of the 1st Hun Dynasty, ch. 96A, folio 10v.

11. Heeren, op.cit., pp. 4-6.

12. Sankrityana, Rahul; His. of C. Asia, p. 3.

13. Bagchi, P.C.; Ind. and C. Asia, Calcutta, 1955, p. 1.

14. Camb, Anc. His., Vol. III, p. 193.

15. Mueen, Mohammad; Iran (Az Aaghaaz Taa Islam (Persian), Tehran, 1957, p. 73.

16. Herodotus (Eng. Trans. by Rawlinson), V., p. 306.

17. Ibid., IV, 64-65; IV, 70. Lister, RP.; Travels of Herodotus, London, 1979, pp. 49,53,60.

18. Ghirshman, R.; Iran, Pelican Archaeology Series, 1954, p. 243.

19. Herodotus, IV, 70.

20. Lister, op.cit., p. 40.

21. Ibid., p. 49.

22. Herodotus, IV, 61-63, 67-69.

23. Ibid., IV, 59; I, 105.

24. Ibid., IV, 76-80. Lister, op.cit., p. 52.

25. Lister. op.cit., p. 61.

26. Herodotus, 1.206.

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 328

  • 27. Sara, Har Iqbal Singh; 'The Scythian Origins of the Sikh-Jat', in Pb. Past and Present, Vol, XI. Pt. II, 1977, S.No.22, p. 257.
  • 28. Ibid.
  • 29. Ibid., p. 63.
  • 30. Punjab, Past and Present, Vol, XI, Pt. II. 1977, pp. 247-69.
  • 31. Kephart, or.cit., pp. 234ff.
  • 32. Lister, op.cit., p. 61.
  • 32a. A 2000 yrs. old 14 Kg. gold bracelet, believed to be Scythian, was found in Mansehra district of N.W.F.P. in Pakistan (Tribune, Chandigarh, dt. 2.9.1987). Just imagine the size and bulk of its wearer.
  • 33. Siddhantashastree, R.' His. of Pre-Kaliyuga Ind., Delhi, 1978. p. 56.
  • 34. Singh, K. Natwar; Maharaja Surajmal, B.I. Publications, N.Delhi, n.d., pp. 43f; within brackets mine. Pot-smoking habit of the Scythians, alluded to by Herodotus, might be marijuana smoking. However, the Pathans (Pakhtoons or Pakthai) are known, like the Jats, to be very fond of smoking tobacco in an earthen hubble-bubble, also called huqqa in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Middle East.
  • 35. Pococke, E; India in Greece, Indian Reprint, 1972, p. 244. The Scandinavians also pursued the same custom.
  • 35a. Upadhyay, B.S., Feedres of Ind. CuI., 1973, PPH., New Delhi, p. 63.
  • 36. The patient reader may note the different versions of many Indian place and tribal names given by E. Pococke in his book, 'India in Greece', and which are given below:- Kabul, Kabool; Tibet, Thibet; Cashmir, Cashmire, Casmere, Cashmere, Kashmire; Ladakh, Ladac, Ladak; Atack, Attock, Attac, Atac, Uttuck; Goclapes, Goclopes, Guuclopes, Cyclopes; Panjab, Punjab, Punjaub, Paunchap; Phenicia, Phoenicia, Phoenikia, Phaenikia; as identical names (Ibid, p. Preface). Magar, Megar, Megaris, Makar, Makkar (Ibid., pp. 66f). Har, Hari, Her, Heri (Ibid., p. 70). Tal, Tall, Talan, Taulan, Taulantii, Tehlan or Tehlan, Tehran (Ibid., p. 81.). Bullini, Boolini, Booluni, Bolani, Bolan, Balani, Bal (lbid., pp. 79, 81), Ganesh, Guneus, Gangus, Gonnus, Gongus, Gangyus, Gonga, Ganga (Ibid., 90). Hai, Hiya, Hiyan, Ionian, Hiyanian, Yavnian (Ibid., 96f). Centaurs, Kentauroi, Kentaurs, Kandhaurs, Kandhar, Candhars. Gandhars (Ibid., pp. 112f). Catti, Cathei, Katthi, Kathoi, Katti (Ibid., pp. 114f). Kairan, Kairon, Cheron, Cheiron, Caironaya, Chaeroneia, Charon, Charan (Ibid., pp. 116 fn. 136). Khyber, Kyphara, Kyphaera (Ibid., p. 129). Khasas, Chasas, Chaasyapa: Kasyapa : Caspian, Coh or Koh Chasas: Cau-casus, Chasspayus: Cas-pius-Caspian, Casmir: Cashmir (Khasmir in Kashmiri), Casopas: Cassopaei : Cashmirians (Ibid., p. 134). Pandu, Pandoo, Pandoos, Pandosia, Pandion, Pandarus (Ibid., p. 141). Vijaya, Vaijaya, Aigaios, Vijipaara : Vijayapar in Kshmir and othrys in Greece, Aijaik, Aijai-or.u-on, Ajaios, Wijjayo in Pali (Ibid., p. 151). Arjona, the chief of the Aijaians: Aijyaleis. was called Pelagonia, properly Phalgoonia or Phalgoonus; Kshatriyas, Kshetriyas, Kshetriine, Kestrine, Castra (ibid., p. 152) , Des Brati, Thes-Proti, Des-Bharatians, Thes-Protians, Brootii, Brutii, Bharati, Bharatas; Deshratha, Dassaretii; Magadhan, Makadon, Macedonia (Ibid., p. 153). Atack or Atocthan: Autocthon (Ibid.. p. 154). Dreban or Darban of Bolan

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 329

Pass = Deepana; Agra = Agraei; Oude-dwellers = Aitalyan, or Oetalyans; Tag or Tak or Tacshak = Ahis = Ophis, Aphia, Ophiensa, Afgh in = Aphla + gana; Gorkha, Goorkha, Korkuras, Kerkus, Korados (Ibid., pp. 155-58).

Dio, Deo, Diu, Dyu, Dew, Deu, Do are but various form; of Dev (Ibid., p. 162). Arac-des, Arac or Arak-Iand = Irak; Api or Apia,n (Sons In Greece, Abis (Egyptian); Aetia-Oude = Avadh, Rameses = Ramas Chief; Inachia ancient name of Peloponnesus (Polennesia), Inachus (river), Inachia or Inachlanses (tribes) of the Sun; Inachus or Incas of Peru, their important festival, Rama-Sitva-from N.W. Ind. Attock (Ibid., pp. 163f). Aztecs = Aztecams (In Mexico) = Az-Zats or Az-Zatak, their similar festival New Fire at the beginning of March every Year; Makshika (Silver in Skt.) = Makshico = Mexico (Ibid., pp. 166f); Catabothra = Chabothra of Baeotla = Behutla = (Behu in Jatu Lan-ces-tis or Lun-ces-tis = Lancas Land = Lancaster (Ceylon); Mansa Leh = Menzaleh; i.e. Ravana lake, Rama or Rome city of the west coast of Italy and just opposite it Ravana or Ravena on her eatern coast; Gena Tagata = Gens Togata of the Tag or Tak tribe; TorooshcaS = Tushar =Tukkhar = Etruscas and Hooscas = Huviscas = Oscans in Italy, Plebs = Plebeians = Shudras and Senators = Sen-Natwars = Kshariyas; Balik·Balikh = Vahika = Balakh; Castor = Castwar, Ledu = ladakh, Syria = Surya, Egyptian Menes = Mano, Raymi = Rama-ft· 1st of Rama (Ibid., p;' 171-180), Ramoth-Gilead = Ramath-Gills in Syria, Lova and Cush = Lavites and Cushites, Abus-Sinia = Abyssinia = Abu-Sin, ancient name of Indu, Aityo-pa = Aithic-pia = Euthopia = Oude, Egyp known to the Hebrews as Misra-in mahesra-in = Mahesh = Siva, Aswan = Asva = Asva = Asi horse tribe Tomaros = Tomars, Nasumones = Nasumon = Nasa or Nassa of Pb., Sesotris = Susastra = Sa so or Sasa Warriors from Bhooctria = Bactria = armoured warriors, Hooksos Oxus = Ooksh = ox, Orkshine = Euxine, palistine or Palestine = Pali-stan from Pali (shephard), Baits and Baltic = Baltikas and Balti or Bulti or Bultisthan in the north of Kashmir (Ibid., Ch. XIV).

Canya = Kenya? = Canaa = Canaanites (traders in Palaestine, Le-Banan· Leh-Banan = Lehvan (Van or ban means tribe and Banan is plural in Persian). Leontes = Lehan-des or Lohandes, Lashem or lais = Lahasa in Tibet =Tubet = Tophet in the Holy Writ, Hermen of Jordan = Hermon, Ogz (Og) of Bashan in Palestine = Ojha of Bashan in the n. of Kashmir, Og or Oguz were the remnants of fierce and gigantic giants of Bash an Gillid = Galid (Khalid?) = Giload from Gilgi = the Gighites of Paiestllle, Carnalm = Carnas from Carna province of Kashmir, Hamman = Hammon = Ham (Sam or Shyam), Saidan = Sidan = Sidon = Sidhun = Sidh = Sidhu of Pb. In Hebrew from Khyber, Abraham = A-Brahma, Yudah (Jadda) =yad, Ioudaioi = Youdoi (Yaudheyas?), Hero of Gentiles = Haros or Hearos of Greeks = Har of Hindu,Sara = Saron in Saronica gulf from Sarwan Distt. of Afghanistan, Philistine = Bhilsthan and Phillip or Philops = Bhil-prince of Macadonia = Magadhan, Hella or Hela = Halia oHal from Hala mountains of Afghanistan (Ibid., Ch. XV). Zenthus = Sindhus (Ibid. p. 296) Ceceroo = Kekers = Kaikars = Kakkars = Gakkhrs (Ibid., p. 330). Koontius = Kynthius = Kunti = Kuntaalas (Ibid., p. 332). Amisenus = Umasena = Amzones = Amazons = Umasons-Uma, an appellation of Parvati the consort of Mahadeva Siva, Cercetius = Cartikeyan = Crtikcy, S/o Siva; Amastris = Uma-stris ordughters, Amazons-breastless females, Greek Amazons represented an Indian race (Ibid., pp. 340 ff). Greek

Pbratrief = Indian Bhartaris and Gens or Genos or Gentes = Gan for Ganas (Ibid., P .. 1l4). Athenes = Athens = Adheene (Ibid., p. 329). Thirty three forms of the na 'ne of Buddha (Ibid., p. 397).

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 330

37. Ibid., pp. 32, 47, 134.

38. Ibid., pp.38, 51ff, 63, 70, 124, 148, 159, 178, 195, 205, 229, 242, 251, 255,300.

39. For further study please cf. C. Wordsworth, D.O., 'Greece, Pictorial and Descriptive; Grote, His. of Greece; Niebuh" His. of Rome; Troyer, Ramayana; Tod, Ann; Is and Antiquities of Rajasthan; Ency. Metropolitania; Smith, Muth. Lex., vol.I Homer, Odessey, Iliad; Asiatic Researches; Mure, His. of Greek Literatura, . Vol.I; Strabo's Geographia; Wilson, skt. Les.; Kruse, Hellas; Smith, Dic. of Astiq.; Hamilton E, Ind. Gaz., Vol.I; Thoronton, Geog. of Ph.; Thirliwall, His. of Greece; Thueydide, Genesis and App. No. XX in Pococke's Ind. in Greece

40. Ibid., Chs VI-XV

41. Ibid., p. 300. Dr. Buddha Prakash describes the Epic war as the 'Saga of the Sakas'.

42. Ibid., p.43

43. Ibid., p. 205.

44. Kalyanaramana, op.cit., vol I, Ch.II.

45. Ibid., p. 74

46. Ibid., p. 74

47. Note that the Ili, Kuru or Kur rivers bear the names of Ila, Kurus, the Don, Doeiper ( tc. that of Danas or Dnavas, the Caspian and the Black sea those of the Caspi tribe of the Sakas and Lord Krishna respectively. The Cancasus and the Carpathian mountains also betray Indian names of the Khasas and the Carpatha of Dr. S.M. Ali (Geog. of the Puranas) has done commendable work in this respect. Shri O.P. Siwach, an S.D.O. (Irrigation), Rohtak, is labouring hard on such identifications. It was he who informed me that Angada of the dynasty of Sri Rama inhabited and civilized the Carpathians and founded Angadia, a city after his name in that country (Ramayana, Uttar Khand, 102. 118-119). My thanks arc due to him.

48. Leeuw, J.E. Van L.de; Scythians, pp. 44ff, 328.

49. Ibid., pp.11-46.

50. Dalton, O.M. :(Treasurers of the Oxus, p. 4, A. Stein, (Anc. Khotan, P.II, fn. 11), E Herzfeld (Iran in Anc. East, Oxford, 1941), WW. Tarn, (Greeks in Bactria and India, p. 286, 287); K.V. Trever (g.by Gankovsky, Yu, V.; People of Pakistan, p. 86, fn. 182), agree that the Tokharas or Tochari or Tusaras the Yuch-Chih and the Asi were one and the same people. Prof. Marqurat (q. by Gankovsky, Op.cit., p. 38), Bongard-Levin et al (His. of Ind., Bk. I., Eng. Trans., Moscow, 1979, p. 117), B. Ogel, Ali Sami, S. Chattopadhyaya, Prof. P.C. Bagchi and Prof. A. Dehkan-(all g. in the proceedings of the Dushanbe Conf. on the Kushanas. Cen. Asia in the Kushana Prd. Vol. II, Mosco, 1975, pp. respectively, 172, 146,67; vol. I, p. 189, 113f); hold Tochari and Ta-Hsia or Ta-Hia or Dahae' Yuch-Chih, Tokhari and Kushanas; Yuch-chih, Kushanas: Murundas or Mandas and Sakas; Tusaras and Sakas, Kushanas, Indo-Scythians, Parthians &

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 331

Aryans; were identical, linked and were one and the same people. Rahul Sankritayan (His. of C. Asia, p. 110, R. Ghirshman (Iran, Pelican Book, 1954, pp. 242, 243), J.F.M' Curdy (Die. of the Bible, Jeremiah, 5-27-81), (Jeremiah, pp. 5, 27, 13, 124), H.W.F. Saggs (Greatness that was Babylon, London, 1962, p. 124, 125, 135), Dr. T.J. Kedar (Vedasthan, Anc. Home of Indo-Aryans, pp. 50f, 94), believe that the Parthians, Dahae and Massagetae were related with each other, the Sakas, Ashgujaya or Askhkenaz or Ashkuz, Sakus were the same people; the Cimmerian, Scythian, Mannai, Gimiroi or Gimurrai, the Ashquzzi, Minn or Minni affine with each other and the Sapardai (club wielders), Madai, Meds, Madras were also related with the Sakas.

Elisaeus Vartabed (His. of Armenia, Ch. I) equates the Huns and Kushanas. Taran (op.cit., p. 286) holds that Tokhara or Togar or Tochari or Tusara was an alternative name of the Yueh-Chih. Robert Shafer (Ethnography of Anc. Ind., pp. 154-166) and Sudhakar Chattopadhyaya Racial Affinities of N. Ind. Tribes, Delhi, 1973, p. 100) inform that the Ephthalites or White Huns (the Chionites of the Persian sources), who came to India, were of Scythian origin while the Hiung or Hiung-nus were Turko-Mongoloid.

P.C. Bagchi (Ind. and C. Asia, Cal. 1955, pp. 26f) opines that the customs of the Huns were similar to those of the Sakyas driven out from Kapilvastu by [[Virudhaka] beyond the Himalayas for waging war against him in violation of the wishes of Lord Buddha. They were called Hephthals or Hevatal from Hemaaephtla. S.P. Tolstoy (Gankovsky, op.cit., p. 90), Ghirshman (Les Chionitess Ephththalites, pp. 61-67),St. Martin (F.G. Skine and E.D. Ross, Heart of Asia, pp. 20f),Kingsmill (JRAS, Vol. X, Pt. II, 1878, p. 281), Procopius (His. of Wars, Vol. V,III, 15; Vol. IV, XXVII, 2-27, -Loeb class. Lib. Srs.), J.J. Modi ("Ear. His. of Huns", JIH. 1957), agree that the Ephthalites, Kushanas, Yueh-Chin, Mssagetae, Sakas were close kith and kin. Dr. Aitreya Rai ("Origin and Ethhnology of the Huns of Ilndia", JIH, Vol. XLIII,pt.II, 1965,pp.413-512), Aiyangar (Ind. Ant. Vol. 48, 1919, pp. 75f), think that the Uttara Kurus and the Huns were one and the same people.

51. Aggarwal, V.S.; op.cit., p.71. He equates Masaka or Massaka with Massagetai of Strabo, Chakshu = Oxus, Kumud = Komedai of Herodotus. Himavat = Heemoda or Hamadan, Sita = Yarkand river, Kumar = Komari of Herodotus, Rishika = Asioi, Tukhara = Tokarai, Gankovsky (op.cit., p.8o, fn.157) informs us that Massagetae: Mahasaka in archaic Iranian, He thus describes its etymology and origin: Mas in old Persian mean great (as Maha in Hindi and Skt.) and T is added as a plural suffix (Derajat, Gujrat etc.). Hence Mas + Saka + T = Massakat, K and g being mutually interchangeable Massakat = Massagat or Massagetai in plural in Greek. Greek language does not have the J. letter, Z or G is used in its place; hence, Zat or Zutt and Jat or Jit or Jatas or Jut, Gat, Gant, Got, Getae.

52. Memoirs of ASRI. No. 34, pp. 4ff. CII., Vol II (i), Intro. Satya Shrava, op.cit., p.I.

53. CAH, Vol. III,p.193. Lister,op.cit., p.51. ASRI, Vol.I, p. 31. Dushanbe Report, Vol.II, p. 179.

54. CHI, Vo.I, p.459. Geographika, XI. 8.2. Kephart, op.cit., pp.232, 250f.

55. Bongard-Levin, op.cit., p.23; Budha Prakash, op.cit., P.97.

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 332

55a. The original name of Hansi (Haryana) town in the heart of Jats is Asi or Asika (Imp. Gaz. of Ind., Vol. XIII, p.25).

56. Chaudhuri, S.B., op.cit., pp.49-52 70f, Budha Prakash, op.cit., p.97.

57. ASRI, Vol.lI, p.31; R.C.Majumdar, op.cit., p. 75; Budh Prakash, op.c;,t., pp. 150ff,174f.

58. ASRI, Vol. II, p.31.

59. Ibid.

60. Q. by Budha Prakash, op.cit., p.102.

61. Q. by S. Chattopadhyaya, op.cit., p.15.

62. Q. by Gankovsky, op.cit., p.8l.

63. Ibid.

64. Frye, Richard; The Heritage of Persia, p.70.

65. Chattopadhyaya, S; op.cit., p.3. ASRI, No. 34, ppA-6.

66. Greeks in Bactria and Ind., p.29l.

67. Herodotus, Eng. Trans. Rawlinson, IV, 16-29.

68. Buddha Prakash, op.cit., pp. 100f. See also Sukumar Sen, Old Persian Inscriptions, pp. 48f, fn. 92. KP. Jayaswal, JBORS, Vol. XVI, p. 258. Shafer, op.cit., pp. 76-149. Aggarwal, op.cit., pp. 443, 467. A. Stein, 'On the Ephadraa Homa and Soma Plant'. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 1931, pp. 501-14.

69. Buddha Prakash,op.cit., pp. 98ff. Cf. alsoJ. Ph. Vogel, Excavations at Mathura, ASI, 1911-12, p.126.

70. Morgan, Lewis, 1-1.; Anc. Society, Calcutta, 1958, p. 247. Ram Chandra Jain, Most Anc. Aryan Society, Varanasi, 1964, pp. 211-16.

71. Aggarwal, V.S., op.cit., pp. 436-55.

72. Ency. Brit., Vol.19, pp. 1137-40. Davidson, Dr.(Mrs.) Hilda Roderick Elis; Scandanavian Mythology, Paul Hamlyn, London, pp. 124-25. Dhings (clod or earth) are used for making chabutras in the villages of Haryana. 'Thing' may be its distortion in Scandanavia. Nardak of Haryana may be Nordic and Munak may be Munich (kh) of Germany.

73. Compare Catabothra of Boeotia in Greece and the famous Chabutra (Chaunlra in Jatu dialect) of Meham. Distt. Rohtak, Haryana, India. Thing is also the name of the Swedish Parliament and the Nepalese Parliament is called Panchayat.

74. Q. by Gankovsky, op.cit., p.8!.

75. Geog. XI. 8.2.

76. Ghirshmann, op.cit., pp. 62, 96-98, 248.

77. Q. by Gankovsky, op.cit., p.86.

78. Zentral asian in Weltgcschichte, Bd. Frankrurt, 1966, pr. 68ff. q. Nezar Mohammad, Tarikh-i-Impratori Koshania (Persian).

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 333

79. On the Nationality of the Kushanas, S.91, 100.

80. Q by Gankovsky. op.cit., p.86. f.n. 182.

81. Op.cit .. p. 90.

82. The Ear. Emps. of C. Asia, pp. 98ff.

83. Enoki, K., On the Nationality of Ephthalites (Huns), 1959, pp. 23. 39-40. The Origin of the White Huns or Ephthalites, pp. 211-38.

84. Pol. Sys of the Jats of northern Ind.

84a. Dr. J.P. Sharma has done a commendable job in this respect, his work Republics in Anc. Ind. (c 1500 U.c. - 500 B.C.), Leiden. EJ. Brill, 1968) surpasses, to my mind, all previous attempts.

85. Dr. David Zink, Eng. Deptt. of the Oxford University of England, discovered the Atlantis Civilization submerged in the Atlantic Ocean with the help of certain Clairvoyants and wrote a book on it. 'The Stones of Atlantis', W.H. Allon .. (Times of India, Sunday Magazine. April 8, 1979, review of the book under caption 'Journey into Antiquity' by Sh. M. Krishan on p. 1). London; distributed by Rupa. Delhi.

86. Prof. Y. V. Knorozuv of Russia had made a truly sensational deciphering of the Mayan writing and his team is working at present on the Indus Valley Script (Bongard-Levin and A. Vigasin. The Image of Ind., Progress Publishers. Moscow, 1985, pp. 19If).

87. RV .. VII,83,8.

88. Ibid .. VII. 2.1. 18.-19.

89. Kephart. op.cit.. p. 232.

90. Supra, Ln. 121 at the end of Chapler VIII.

91. Kepharl. o.cit .. p. 266. The learned writer suggests the migration of the Saka tribes in the reverse order, which, keeping in view their defeat and their expulsion from India by Sagar is incorrect and unconvincing.

92. Har Iqbal Singh Sara, op.cit .. p.256; RV. 1.62.11: 71.1; 104.3; 105.8; 112.19; 186.7; VI. 53,4; VII. 18.2; 26.3: X,43.1. 101.11.

93. Buddha Prakash, Op.Cit., pp. 90f

94. Herodotus. I. 216.

95. Customary Law or the Panjab by Rattigan, and by Mulla, Tupper and Mayne also on Customary law. Har Iqbal Singh Sara, op.cit., p. 257. Manu, 9, 59.70. Deshpande, Madhav M.; Peter Edwin Hook; Aryan and Non-Aryan in Ind., 1978, Michigan Papers on S. & SE, Asia, p. 43.

95a. Cf. Deshpande. et al.. op.cit., pp. 43f.

96. "Jaton Ke Sagai-sambandhi dub naal ki trah jude huye aur phaile huye hain' (Hindi). "Jattan de Saak tan Khabbal dian tirhan" (Punjabi).

97. "On Providence", Pandnameh, by Sheikh Saadi.

98. Upadhyaya. Bhagwal Saran; Feeders of Ind. Cul., PHP., N. Delhi, 1973, p. 60.

99. Ibid., p. 61. Within brackets mine.

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 334

100. Mbt. Adi Parva.

101. CHI., vol. I. Ch. XXIII. Upadhyaya, op.cit., p. 61. within brackets mine S.Chattopadhyaya. Sakas in Ind .. Santiniketan, 1955. preface. CL Yu. V. Gannkovsky, M.R. Arunova et al. His. of Afghanistan, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1985, p. 42.

102. Upadhyaya, op.cit.. pp. 61f. CHI, Vol. I, pp. 149f, 479.

103. CHI, Vol. I. Ch. XXIII. Upadhyaya, op.cit., p. 62.

104. Rice, T.T.; The Scythians, p. 43.

105. Huntington. Ellsworth; The Pulse of Asia, p. IX.

106. Prakash. Buddha; Pol. and Soc. Movements in Anc. Pb., p. 117.

107. Lister. op.cit., pp. 70f

108. Artamonov, M.I.; 'Frozen Tombs of the Scythians', in the Scientific American, May, 1965, Vol. 212, No.5, pp. 100-109.

109. South Asian Archaeology, ed. Bridget Allchin, Camb. Univ., Press, London. 1981, pp. 22lff. See also Guha, B.S.; Procdgs of Ind. See. Congo 1926, p. 307, SarkaI', S.S.; Human Skeleton Remains from Brahamagiri, Bulletin of Deptt. of Anthropology, IX, 1960, pp. 5-26. Dutta, P.C. and Gupta, P.; "Human Remains Excavated from Megaliths at Yelleswaram', Man in India. Vol. 42. No. I, 1962. pp. 19-26. Margabandhu, C.. 'Proto-Historic Cemetries in Chitral Valley (W.Pak.) & South Indian Megaliths". in JIH, 1974. pp. 311-15. Indian Archaeology-A Review, 1961-62, p.67.

110. Wheeler, R.E.M.; Five Thousand years of Pakistan, London, 1950, pp. 34ff.

111. Rice. Tamara Talbot; Scythians, London, 1961, pp. 198-200.

112. Pur. Ency . p. 819, H.H. Wilson, Vis. Pur., p.283. fn. 25. Vaisali is the name of a river in the south of Gwalior in the Madhya Pradesh (Wiki editor note - The Jat Fort of Gohad is situated on this river.)

112a. Ghurye, G.S. Two Brahmanical Institutions, 1972, bombay, p. 20

113. History bears evidence to innumerable examples of similar nature. Our country was known as Brahm-Rishi desh after Brahma. Aryavrata after Aryas. Kurukshetra after Kurus, Madradesh after Madras. Kathiawad after Kathis, Malwa after Mallavas, Yaudheywad (Johiawad) after Yaudheyas, Gondwana after Gonds.Bhilwada after Bhils, Sakastan after Sakas, Sivistan (Seistan) after Sivis. Scythia or Skythia after Scyths or Skyths, and Jete or Gete after Jata. It will not be an exaggeration if I may have the liberty to say, that the Sakastan or Scythia can be or must have been known as Jatasthan, but as ill-luck would have it. time, the unvanquished Time, has effaced it from memory, otherwise, we know the country called Gete was known as the land of the Jatah till the time of Timur (Cf. Sharif-ud-din's or Sherefeddin's His. of Timur, in French by Petis de La Croix and in English by J.Darby. 1722, Vols. I and II), q. by Kephart.

114. Qanungo. op.cit .. p. 12.

115. Upadhyaya.B.S.; Feeders of Ind. Cul.. PPH. New Delhi. 1973, pp. 61f.

The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 335

End of Chapter:The identification of the Jats
Back to Index of the Book
Retrieved from "http://www.jatland.com/w/index.php?title=The_Jats:Their_Origin,_Antiquity_and_Migrations/The_identification_of_the_Jats&oldid=392376"