History of the Maratha nation

05-01-2006, 03:15 PM

i do not know many facts about the history of the Marathis - so i am starting this thread.

I'll set the ball rolling with some choice quotes from the wikipedia page on marathis (parts of which, coloured red, got me very interested). Please add more things you know of.

"The MarÄthÄs" is a collective term referring to an Indo Aryan group of Hindu, Marathi-speaking castes of warriors and peasants hailing mostly from the present-day state of Maharashtra, who created a substantial empire, covering a major part of India, in the late 17th and 18th centuries AD.

The "Marathas" were known by that name since their native tongue was almost invariably Marathi; however, not all those whose native tongue is Marathi are Marathas. The term "Maratha" refers only to those marathi-speaking people who also belong to certain specific Hindu castes: for one available listing, refer to Maratha Clan System. Thus, the terms "Marathi people" and "Maratha people" are not interchangeable and should not be confused for each other.

However the word (Marathi) itself indicates that these people were charioters ( ma_ratha).Needless to mention that marathas were well known for their cavalry since antiquity..

The Marathas are believed to be of mixed origins. Historians, researchers and scholars are divided over the origins of Marathas. Some put their origins as Scythians, while some put their origins as Aryans. Still, others point out that their origins are mixed and the clan is mostly a mixed stock of Scythians and Indo-Aryans. However, it is believed that there are a few minority Marathas who are of stocks as varied as Dravidians, Caucasians and Hunnics.

Some of the Maratha clans are descendants of the local dynasties. There is a kunbi or kurmi kshatriyas group apart from 96 royal clans of marathas. Linguistically, they belong to exclusively Indo-Aryan linguistic group.

So in nutshell, Marathas is a wide social group. It is a social cluster which compromises 96 royal clans which sprang out of 5 tribes of Rigveda, certain sections of Kunbis and in a broader sense for certain period of history almost all marathi-speaking population. Perhaps this great flexibilty in the social structure of Marathas to accommodate vast groups explains their strength as a nation.

According to some sources, every maratha must belong to one of 96 different clans (the "96 Kuli Marathas"). The list of 96 Maratha clans is different as per different historians. An authoritative listing was apparently first attempted in 1888 and a list finalised in 1956 by the Government of India. One of several available listings of the various maratha clans are available at Maratha Clan System.

from here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maratha_Clan_System

Every maratha belongs to one of the 96 specific clans. These 96 clans are believed to have originate from five main royal clans which were based on the Panch-Janya or five tribes of the Rig-vedic period. This branching means, for instance, that out of 96 clans, at least 18 clans are septs of the same Yadu clan. This is similar to the branching of the Gotra system from the original seven Saptarshi Gotras to the hundred or more Gotras that exist today.

Marathas are descendents of all 56 Royal houses of India. According to Arya (Hindu) religion, In India or Bharat there are 56 sub-nations. At the time of the civil war of Mahabharata all the Indian nations were badly affected.The Maratha Clan System closely linked with Mahabharat heroes.

Origin of Clan system

Apart from Marathas, a well defined clan system is found among Rajputs,Scots,Germanic Tribes and Iranians.These all groups belong to Indo-European speaking population.The cognate of clan is Kul or cul, cognate of shatriya is shah(Iranian),Shah-nav(Maratha),satrap(european).There exists a lot of similarity between names and social customs of these clans during ancient time e.g.Royal symbol of each clan, worship of Fig tree,code of valour and art of fortification.It seems that before compilation of Rigveda,these clans scattered in different directions from their homeland.Generally these all clans have got a long history of chivalry and have enriched their respective countries.It is a matter of research for the sociologists that these clans if even change their religion ,did not change their clan system.

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in the wiki webpage, notice how most of the 96 clans have an "original seat/kingdom" somewhere north of maharashtra. so why did they make this southward exodus?? did the marathis really get the clan system from the scythians/sakas. do marathis have scythian blood?? the other people in india who also have a clan system are the rajputs - who also carry saka blood. just who are the people who are not marathi despite their native tongue being marathi?? are marathi's exclusively ksatriyas since they get their name from ma_rathi ?? the paragraph in blue is all crap - scythians ARE aryans in any case. As as aside, which are the 56 nations of bharat??

Bharatvarsh · 05-01-2006, 05:02 PM

This idea of everyone carrying saka blood is utter nonsense, used by European authors like Colonel Todd and others to claim everything good India from "phoren". Jats and Rajputs almost always marry within their jatis, then how is it that they look nothing like scythians, they should have retained their original features if they always married like that, on the other hand the Ahoms retained most of their original features, so we know that they arrived late into Assam. Yashwant had made a post before exposing the fallacy of this arguement of claiming that many Rajputs have scythian/hun blood, I am reproducing it here:

QUOTEMr. Yashwant Malaiya's writings

Were Parmaras a branch of the Rashtrakuta clan?

A theory that has been taken for granted is the view that the Rajputs are descendants of Huns etc, and the "agnikunda" of Abu, represented a rite by which the Brahmins elevated them to Kshatriyas, needs critical examination.

The view was presented by Tod in his "Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan" written in 1832, and through repeated uncritical acceptance by generations of historians, it is now taken for granted.

Since the work of Tod, a great deal of archaeological evidence has become available, which clearly show that Rajputs did not originate through the "Agnikunda" ceremony, and that some of the major Rajputs clans actually originated from the Karnataka region. However the established view is part of the text-books, and earlier historians are often cited to support the theory.

Let us see how the historians have themselves added to a myth which has gradually evolved.

As an example let us consider Basham. In "The wonder that was India", 1954, he writes:

"Hunas destroyed or dispersed the older marital tribes of Rajasthan and their place was taken by newcomers, probably acclimatized invaders, from whom most of the rajput clans of the middle ages were descended. ... and the Rajputs, in later times, the kshatriays par excellence, were no doubt largeley descended from such invaders."

I noticed that in "Early India - From The Origins to AD 1300" Romilla Thapar does not question the view even though it came out in 2002. Let me identify the phases of this myth in reverse chronological order.

1. In the current phase, the view is that the Rajputs are descendants of the Huns etc, and agnikunda of Abu represented a purification ceremony.

2. The view represented by Bhavishya Purana is that FOUR rajput clans were created from the agni-kunda of Abu: Pramar (Paramar), Chapuhani (Chahaman or Chauhan), Shukla (Chalukya or Solanki) and Parihar. It says that they were created to annihilate the Buddhists during the time of Ashoka. It is not really possible to date Bhavisha Purana with any degree of certainly, but some part of it are of very late origin.

3. The view in Prathviraj Raso that Vasishtha created THREE rajput clans from the agni-kunda, Pratihar, Chalukya and Panwar (Parwar). The date of Prathviraj Raso as it is available to day, is very controversial, the language is too modern to be the composition of Chandabaradai during Pratviraj's period.

4. Going back further, we come to the Udaipur prashasti and some of the later records. The Udaipur prashasti (from Udaipur, Vidisha) which gives the geneology of the Parmars of Malava, mentions the legend that is frequently mentioned later in Parmara records. Accroding to this, Vishwamitra had taken the cow belonging to Vasishtha. Vasishtha created a warrior from the agnikund at Abu, who was named "Paramar" because he was to kill the others, to get the cow back. This undated prashasti is from the period of Parmar Udayaditya who ruled during 1070 1093. The same legend is given in Vasantgarh inscription of 1042 AD. Thus the original version of the legend applied ONLY to Parmars. It should be noted that Vasistha was the gotra of the Parmars.

5. We then come to the very origin of the Abu agnikunda legend. Padmagupta, who wrote Navasahasanka-charita in about 1005, in praise of his patron, Parmar Sindhuraj (about 995-1055), the predecessor of the famous Bhojadeva (about 1000-1055). There is no mention of the legend before Padmagupta. In fact, Parmar records prior to Sindhuraj point to another view of the origin of Parmars. I will mention about this view soon.

The Parmar copperplates and inscriptions are available in "Inscriptions of the Paramaras, Chandellas, Kachchhapaghatas and two minor Dynasties", which is part 2 of the 3-part Vol III of Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, edited in 1974 by H.V. Trivedi (published in1991).

We have seen that Padmagupta in his Navasahasanka-charita (about 1005) was the first to present the myth about creation of "Paramara", the ancestor of Paramaras, by Vasishtha through the Agnikunda at Abu. Later the legend started appearing in Paramara inscriptions started with the 1042 inscriptions at Vasantagarh.

What do the earlier Parmara records tell us?

The earliest Parmara records are the two grants of Siyaka, each inscribed on two plates, found at Harsola in Gujarat. Both of them mention the same date in 949 AD. One grants a village to a Brahmin Lallopadhayaya, the second to his son Nina
Dikshita. Much of the text is the same.

They mention Akalavarsha (with titles Prathvivallabha Shrivallabha), son of Amoghavarsha. They then mention "tasmin-kule ... jaatah vappaiya rajeti nrapah...", and mention Vairisimha and Siyaka. Simple meaning of this text would be that Vakpatiraj was born in the family of the Amoghavarsha and Akalavarsha. These are obviously Rastrakuta soverigns of Manyakheta, either Amoghavarsha I (814-878) and Krishna II (878-914), or Amoghavarsha III (934-939) and Krishna III (939-966). Apparently at this time Siyaka was a mandalika (a feudatory) of the Rashtrakutas. Thus would make the Paramaras a branch of the Rashtrakitas. That is the view of some of the historians. Others have found the text too disconcerting and have proposed that there is a lacuna in the text and that tasmin-kule refers to some other family, mention of which was left out by mistake of the engraver.

However these are two nearly identical copper-plates with the same initial text. The second copper-plate is obviously in a different hand (I will provide a photograph). It is not likely that two engravers would make exactly the same mistake. We must take the text as it is.

The view that initially the Paramaras regarded themselves to be a branch of the Rashtrakutas is supported by the copper-plate grants of Vakpatiraja. His grants found in vicinities of Dhar (975) and Ujjain (980,982,986) give Vakpatiraj the
titles Prathvivallabha and Shrivallabha and gives Amoghavarsha as his other name (amoghavarsha- parabhidhana-shrimat-vakpatiraj).

A question arises - if the Paramaras were descendants of the Rashtrakutas, why would they give up a famous lineage and start accepting the legend given by Padmagupta?

Before we examine the chronology of the Rashtrakuta-Paramara interaction, we should consider the fact that both Chalukyas (Solanki) and Rasthrakutas (Rathor) who settled in North, eventually forgot their southern origin, even though they kept
their original names. Mularaja established the Chalukya branch at Anahilapatan in 943. The Rashtrakutas under Krishna II had reconquered Gujarat and Indra III made land grants from Navasari in 914. However to the people in the north, the rulers of Karnataka were just obscure houses, not mentioned in any important texts, their memoty did not add any glory. The bards trace the origin of Rathors (houses of Jodhpur and Bikaner) from Kannauj, and Solankis from the the agni- kunda of Abu, which is the prevailing popular view.

The Rashtrakuta king Krishna III dies in 967 causing internal weakness. Paramara Siyaka exploted the opportunity to expand. He invaded the kingdom of Rashtrakuta Khottiga (967-972) and even plundered Manyakheta. In 973, the Chalukyas of Kalyani defeated the Rashtrakutas. The last Rashtrakuta king Indra III retired to Shravanbelgola where he died in sallekhana meditation in 982.

Since the imperial house of Rashtrakutas did not exist, Parmara Vakpatiraja regarded himself as the successor to the Rastrakuta house and took their titles. However the glory of imperial Rashtrakutas was soon forgotten in North making way for creation of the Abu agnikunda myth based on the name "Paramar".

I think there is no need to imagine a lacuna in the Harsola grants.

http://indiaforumarchives.blogspot.com/200...an-history.html

05-01-2006, 11:25 PM

ok so no indian carries saka blood.
sakas never formed any empire in india. buddha was called saka muni just for kicks.

as for the asameese looking like mongoloids whilst the rajputs and jats dont look much different from other north indians, remember the sakas, irrespective of whether they indeed came into india in large numbers or not, are iranians - who are caucasians and that too the blood brothers of north indians, while the mongoloid ahoms are not only an different people vis.a.vis indians, but a altogether different RACE.

now lets get back to the topic - the real history of the marathas.

Bharatvarsh · (This post was last modified: 05-02-2006, 02:02 AM by Bharatvarsh.)

QUOTEok so no indian carries saka blood.
sakas never formed any empire in india. buddha was called saka muni just for kicks.
Cut the wholier than thou attitude, firstly you made it sound as if all Rajputs carried saka blood when facts are to the contrary as Yashwant's detailed post shows, Buddha was not called saka muni, he was called "Sakhya Muni" meaning an ascetic of the Sakhya clan.

Nextly even if Sakas are not completely of a different race, they had their unique features, if Jats and Rajputs have always married among themselves as they claim then they should retain those features, contrary to that they look like just any other North Indians.

People can keep on believing colonial nonsense but facts are to the contrary, we now know that many Rajput clans are indigenous.

QUOTEIt has been held by the colonial historians that at this time of Islamic invasion the inhabitants of Punjab were descended from earlier groups of foreign invadersâthe leftist historians faithfully reproduced these wild theories. The compulsions of both sets of historians have been described earlier. In the case of Punjab they claim that the region was under the rule of Indo-Greeks, the Sakas and Kushans, and finally the Huns in the 6th Century CE. From this they conclude that the poorer sections of these invaders "became" the agricultural classes while the upper section "became" Rajputs.

Now the evolution of the word Rajput and its connection with the resistance against the Islamist onslaught has already been shown previously. The theory of foreigners conveniently "becoming" an Indian community has no basis in fact, since neither the colonial nor the leftist historians bothered to back their claims with actual evidence.

To compare the invaders-becoming-Indian theory with later times we find that the centuries of Islamic invasion left behind a 20% Muslim population in India with a mere 3% claiming definite foreign origin. Moreover according to this theory the earlier invaders adopted the Indian religions and customs and did not forcibly convert Indians to their own customs or ideology; hence their numbers when compared to the Muslim population would be lower still.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JatHistory/message/3065
If these so called eminent historians don't produce evidence for their theories then I have no reason to believe their nonsense.

05-02-2006, 09:47 AM

sakas WERE present in india. Kaniska was saka. and rajputs and jats DO carry saka blood (no where did i say that they are entirely saka)

just leave the scythian bit of it alone, if you have something to say about it, start your own saka based thread.

This is about the history of marathis.

05-02-2006, 04:46 PM

QUOTE(Bharatvarsh @ May 2 2006, 02:00 AM)Nextly even if Sakas are not completely of a different race, they had their unique features, if Jats and Rajputs have always married among themselves as they claim then they should retain those features, contrary to that they look like just any other North Indians.

Not quite... atleast one can make out Jats distinctly from surrounding inhabitants. Particularly the facial features, longish face, sharp jaw line and most prominently dark and tight knit eye brows are a dead give away.

05-03-2006, 01:43 AM

Looking for the history of the Maharattas, one may be wise to consider the etymology of the word, â Mahratta, Maharattaâ

Splitting the word into âMahaâ and âRattaâ, we obtain the simple âGreat Rattâ

Our search s now for does the âRattâ or â Rattaâ word tell us.

We find a people mentioned as the Rattas, or Arratas in the Greek classical accounts.

We should also take note that the earlier name for Gujarat, was Lat or Lata, and since the L transforms into the R, it was Rat or Ratta. One may keep in kind that the word GujRat is the earlier term, which has been softened, and Gujarat is pronounced as Gujrath in Hindi

We also find among the Jats, the clans of Ratthi, or Rathor, both of which are easily derivable from Ratt.

Looking at the Rathi Jats, one does find that their traditions point to a movement of their into Haryana from GujRat and Rajasthan.

The connection between the people known, as Maharattas should then be traced to the area of Old Sindh and Gujarat, which was formerly known as Rat or Lat.

In the early Pre BCE period, we do find that that a people, who were given the nomenclatureâ Sakaâ, appeared- names like Rudraraman etc.

It is not inconceivable that these people, who did gain power, intermixed with the local people, and gradually new ethnic identities evolved.

ON THE TERM âSAKAâ

This term is also divisible, and we look into it we find it evolving from the terms âSaâ or â Saiâ, the latter being a Chinese terminology.

Literally, one should not rule out the simple meaning Sa- ka, to mean âof the Saâ.

In the Maharastra area, the term Maharata took hold, and we have to look at further research as to how it came about

Ravi

05-03-2006, 10:47 AM

Ravi,

In your opinion what did the original Sakas look like?

We know that the Scythians were blued-eyed blondes.

Were the Sakas a branch of the Scythians or were they an Indo-Aryan race living in Central Asia?

Did the Sakas look like Scythians or like Indo-Aryans?

05-03-2006, 12:01 PM

QUOTE(mitradena @ May 3 2006, 10:47 AM)Ravi,

In your opinion what did the original Sakas look like?

We know that the Scythians were blued-eyed blondes.

Were the Sakas a branch of the Scythians or were they an Indo-Aryan race living in Central Asia?

Did the Sakas look like Scythians or like Indo-Aryans?
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but sakas ARE scythians !!

like yavanas ARE greeks.

saka is the indian word for scythian or scythian is the european word for sakas. your choice.

and can you please prove that the sakas were blue eyed blondes - cos so far i know sakas = eastern iranians. And from the pictures and figurines i have seen of ancient scythian artwork they (ie. the saka) look no different from those bearded figurines and sculptures of top iranian personalities like darius, cyrus and zorathustra.

btw the magi are the iranian brahmins and some of them came and assimilated amongest indian brahmins. the second Bhramagupta (of "lilawati" fame if i remember right) had magi blood. the sakas similarly "fitted"/assimilated with the ksatriyas or warrior caste/jati. thats basically true for all immigrants - they all assimilated into indian society as per their trades. which is how the caste system in many ways preserved india.

05-05-2006, 02:06 AM

I prefer and suggest some caution when dealing with terms like Scythian, Magi Brahmin, and caste.

One should also be cautious in using modern geographical terms in discussing ancient history.

Thus we have a problem of dealing with â Eastern Iraniansâ, since Iran as a national identity did not exist.


1. SCYTHIA

One is unable to find any evidence that the people there ever knew themselves as Scythians.

Scythian is a term coined by the Greek Herodotus in roughly 475 BCE, It is unknown before that.

The area Scythia is roughly the area between the Caspian Sea and the Pamir ranges, the Tarim Basin. In this falls the Amur and Syr Daryas (rivers), Bactria etc

In the last century the tern caught the fancy of Colonial historians, and has also caught the fancy of some Indians, (North Indians especially) who see merit in their origin in this area- i.e. anywhere but in India.

2. YAVANA- this term also should be treated with some caution. Why is it applied to the Greeks? Were the Greeks that easily distinguishable to the Indian populace?

We do know of peoples known as Yonas, who pre-exist the Greeks, and were found in the area, now called Bactria (NE Afghanistan).

As a variant, we also find the term âYunaniâ. This is commonly used for a system of medicine asking to the Ayurvedic system.
Earlier I though this meant Greek, but on refection, I do not think that is the case, and it was just the system of medicine that was followed in Afghanistan, Persia, and evolved differently form the Ayurvedic stream.

All that Yavana, Yunani then signifies is foreign, that will include the Greeks who visited the Indian subcontinent, but are not restricted to them. (Treat it as a bit like Mleccha)

3. SAKA.

It would a superficial treatment to call these people Eastern Iranian.

We find the people in the area, known in modern nomenclatures as Saka, Hun, Yueh Chi, (Chinese nomenclature) Getae, and Massagetae. (Greek nomenclature), Kushan, Parthian. These terms simply mean Jat, and we see them evolve into the Gujars, Abhira divisions subsequently.

These people are not different from each other but are ethically the same, and this is a major error that historians make, wishing to serve up the dish, in neat categories.

A broader approach shows that they are simply the same people.

4. LINKS TO THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT.

The links of this area and its people to the Indian subcontinent have largely been ignored. Indian literature contains many references to the, links gong back to Vedic / Harrappan times (circa 2500 BCE)(and I am staying away, from using terms like Saraswati civilization, just for neutrality)

We are all aware that a lot of information has been lost, and a lot buried under the Islamic shadow, precluding any research at all today.

However the links are very much there, - in clan names, place names, words, that are found that are common etc

It is also more than possible, indeed it is quite certain, that migrations did occur both backwards and forwards

5. The â Maagâ or the â magiâ were a class of people in what was later called Persia, and now Iran. The evidence does point to their having come into the Indian subcontinent, and of their works the Atharvaveda is probably one. They are also found to be extant in the times of Harsh Vardhan (600 CE) and are found at his court. It is more than possible they became merged in to the â Brahminâ caste stream as time went on, as did the groups- bhats, poets, anyone with any smattering of learning or pretensions thereto

6. PEOPLE MERGING INTO THE HINDU CASTE SYSTEM

Here again more than just a little caution is justified. Many of the Indians never accepted the varna/caste system, or accept the 4 fold hierarchy of the orthodox Hindu system, as especially as it evolved post 7th century CE.

The Jats for example, did not ever accept the Hindu Varna system- contrast for example their historical attitude to widow remarriage- they are in tune with the Vedas in supporting it whole heartedly, but Hinduism frowns a upon Widow remarriage. (This is technical comment only]

Yet some did accept the system, and fell into the system, whether they came from outside or not.

7. INDO ARYANS etc.

If you define Indo- Aryan very loosely, and the term â looselyâ is important, one could say there is more than just some affinity between the people of the Indian subcontinent, and Central Asia, and for that matter Europe.

One thing they are defined by is that they are distinguishable from those with Mongoloid features.

The Sakas, Huns, Getae, were not Mongoloid, but had the features we find among the Jats and other people of Northern/ Central India.

We also find resemble among Indians from the South too, and culturally there is no question, there is much in common.

We find cultural and physical links that are borne out by DNA studies, and this is only to be expected.

We should also always keep in mind that human being mutate and evolve, as they migrate for place to place, intermarry etc, and we will find local variations. We are after all dealing with a culture that is over 5,000 years old.

Ravi Chaudhary

05-05-2006, 05:36 PM

After seeing different clans of maratha I wonder what is this maratha group, as parmars call them rajputs gujjars call them gujjars angre call them jats so on brahmans and other casts ,than what is the common bond to call them maratha seprate from marathi speaking people.

05-11-2006, 03:26 PM

(A) The following I know for a fact - from my reading of books (before the current Age of Propaganda, as I like to refer to it):
- Shakas are Scythians. Shaka is the Indian name for them.
- 'Sakhya muni' has nothing to do with the invading Shakas. Gautama Buddha's life is estimated to have been at 2500 bp (before present).
- The Shaka invasions were about 2100 years ago (in the 1st century bc).
- Shakas were Iranian speakers. They originated from Central Asia
- Zoroastrians specifically stated that the Shakas were not Airya, Indians held similar views
- Shakas being Iranian-speaking are not Indo-Aryan at all
(i) in the Indology sense of the term. They're Iranians, going by language. Indology speaks of Indo-Aryan as a linguistic term.
(ii) not from India, hence not Indo
(iii) not Arya, according to ancient Zoroastrians and ancient Hindus who coined the phrase
- The Shakas had nothing to do with Harrappa or the Vedas, which are much older than 2100 bp
- Yavanas were applied to many foreigners. Greeks were one of them. Whether the Ionians gave rise to the word or whether we had an applicable word already, the use of the term Yavana was not restricted to Greeks.
- No evidence whatsoever that the Shakas had blond hair, blue eyes or anything European. They were Iranian speaking, some of them were from Mongolia or Turkic.

(B) The following I think I remember reading (90% sure, unless specified)
- Yavanas at one point meant (foreign) meat-eaters. I think on occassion Shakas were called Yavanas in this sense.
- Persians called the Greeks (Ionians) Yaunas.
- Kaniska was a Shaka, and became a Buddhist
- Indians referred to Shakas as Anaryas, like the Zoroastrians did.
- Magi were a presence throughout India, Afghanistan and Iran before the Zoroastrian religion. They practised the same Vedic religion as the ancient Hindus. In Iran they were called Magi. The Magi did not come to India and become Brahmins. Those in India were Indians. After Iran became Zoroastrian, the Iranian Magi became Zoroastrian priests. The Atharvaveda is of the Indian subcontinent, not Iran. That makes the question of whether Indian Magi brahmins or Indian brahmins wrote it moot, since the first is a subset of the second.
- Shakas were neither of Hindu nor Zoroastrian religion.

( C) Correct me if I'm wrong:
- Kanishka was from the northern reaches (Mongolia) or other Turkic lands, not from the north western expanses. Persia's outposts had Iranianised many central Asian countries. Thus, if Kanishka's ancestors were Iranian speaking, he might still be called Shaka by Indians even if he were not Iranian by ethnicity. Turkic or Mongolian culture and Iranian language would be enough to designate Kanishka as such.
- The Shakas have left relatively very few traces of themselves, culturally, religiously or otherwise in India.
- Jats are an older presence in India than Shaka invasions
- Jats are Indians and speak Indian languages, not a modified dialect of Iranian (excepting any of Urdu's minor Persian influences from after Islam)
- Jats are Hindu and with the emergence of Sikhism, there are Sikh Jats
(Shakas did merge into Hinduism I know, but do any Jats claim they had an older religion neither related to Hinduism nor Zoroastrianism?)

(D) Not from books, but from traditional knowledge
- Marathas came from the South of India. The Karnatakans say the Marathas came from Karnataka. Their local histories speak of this.
In recent times, other claims have been put forth for various reasons. Today's pan-Islamist Pakistani sites including their dalitstan, their persistent lobbying in wikipedia has accomplished the same, pro-AIT people and now jathistory group say that Marathas are Shakas.
- Rajputs are Indian Kshatriya tribes. Only with the British and the Aryan Invasion Theory did the idea start that Rajputs emerged from the Shakas of the Shaka Invasions. The idea has apparently caught on greatly with Indologists, dalitstan and other Pak-sponsored and Islamist sites (there are entries in wikipedia that refer to such sites) and the Not From India crowd.

(E) Is there great architecture built by the Shakas in Central Asia? Does it have the kind of ancient architecture that there is in Afghanistan and Iran?
- What is to be found in Central Asia that was not Shamanist (Turkic) or Buddhist?

- How do Jats remember they were Shaka, when people making these claims
(i) do not recall they came from Central Asia, but think they had to do with India's Vedic/Harrappan civilization
(ii) do not recall they invaded in the 1st century bc, but think they were in India in the Vedic/Harrappan periods.
(iii) do not know that Scythian and Shaka do refer to the same groups of people. The Shakas were the part of the population group that invaded India. The Scythians were the ones of the same original population group that the Greeks came across. They essentially refer to the same people.
(iv) refer to Shakas as 'Indo-Aryan', implying not the Punjabi language of today, but the historic language they were supposed to have spoken. This, in spite of the fact that they spoke an Iranian language not an Indo-Aryan one.
Or perhaps if they meant Indo-Aryan as an ethnicity, then it is wrong too. Because Shakas originated in Central Asia at the time they invaded.

Until actual evidence turns up I am forced to believe that Jats have always been Indian and are not Shaka. In this I am not alone. Many Jats that I know are even more vocal about it.

05-12-2006, 03:29 AM

- Shakas being Iranian-speaking are not Indo-Aryan at all

so the iranians being iranian speaking are not indo-aryan at all ??

- Magi were a presence throughout India, Afghanistan and Iran before the Zoroastrian religion. 

no. magi appeared on the horizon after zorastrianism was formed.

They practised the same Vedic religion as the ancient Hindus.

almost. they were the brahmins of zoroastrianism.

In Iran they were called Magi. The Magi did not come to India and become Brahmins.

no they fitted into the brahmins. caste system assimilated inbound people according to their trades.

Those in India were Indians.

there werent magi in india - till the magi came and became one with the brahmins.

- Shakas were neither of Hindu nor Zoroastrian religion.

then what were they??

- Jats are an older presence in India than Shaka invasions.

yes. they did absorb the bulk of the sakas, as did the ksatriyas of rajasthan.

(D) Not from books, but from traditional knowledge
- Marathas came from the South of India. The Karnatakans say the Marathas came from Karnataka. Their local histories speak of this.

er... there are people in maharashtra who came from south india (refer OP - not all who speak marathi are marathas. the marathas, the 96 clans of them, came largely from ayodhya and other aryas north of maharashtra). the LAND of maharashtra is one of the "punch-dravirs" india

In recent times, other claims have been put forth for various reasons. Today's pan-Islamist Pakistani sites including their dalitstan, their persistent lobbying in wikipedia has accomplished the same, pro-AIT people and now jathistory group say that Marathas are Shakas.

they have a little saka blood, or at least they have gotten the "clan" system from the sakas. in fact the only people in india who have clans have some connection with the sakas to lesser or greater degree.

- Rajputs are Indian Kshatriya tribes.

yes. who absorbed/assimilated a lot of invading sakas.

Husky · (This post was last modified: 05-14-2006, 01:19 PM by Husky.)

In response to post 13:
QUOTEso the iranians being iranian speaking are not indo-aryan at all ??That's right. The Indo-Iranian language family is a branch of the Indo-European family. The Indo-Iranian language family is divided into the Iranian branch (1) and the Indo-Aryan branch (2). Look up a diagram of language families and you'll see what the linguists mean.
(1) contains Avesta and modern Farsi (Kurdish too I believe) and all Iranian languages.
(2) contains Sanskrit, Prakrit, Pali, Hindi, and the rest.
Hence, linguistically speaking: Iranian languages are not Indo-Aryan, because they are of the Iranian language family. But if you have to, you can call the language(s) of the Shakas with the overarching names of Indo-Iranian or Indo-European, but of course, the Indo part of those is not applicable to them. Just like Indo- is not applicable to English.
Ethnically the Shakas are somewhat of a question mark. I suspect they are Iranian for the most part. There are officially no ethnic Indo-Aryans as the word was supposedly invented to convey a linguistic group. This does not stop the AIT Indologists from speaking of the Indo-Aryans, hinting left and right at an ethnicity.

QUOTEno. magi appeared on the horizon after zorastrianism was formed. No. Magi were there when Zoroaster first came to the Iranian king's court. They were known in pre-Zoroaster times. When Persia became Zoroastrian, the Iranian Magis did too. This is from a book on Zoroastrianism's beginnings and the history of the Parsee people in India that I read. It was written by a Parsee, relating the tradition of Persia's conversion. The author knew what he was talking about.
India did not really have Magis, because the ones in India were Vedic and we did not call them Magi. Practising Vedic rituals in India by Indians meant they were brahmanas. The antagonistic branch of people who moved to Persia would have had religious heads who practised similar rituals and they eventually were called Magi.
If someone had evidence that before Persia became Zoroastrian, the Iranian Magi came to India and then merged into our Vedic religious people, then:
(1) They already had the same Gods, because the pre-Zoroastrian Iranian deities were in effect the same as ours
(2) They already had the same rituals (fire oblations)
(3) Their language at that stage was insufficiently different from Vedic Sanskrit to make much fo a difference
(4) They were closely related to the Indians at that time

Thus, even if the Iranian Magi made a detour and returned to the Indian fold, at that stage, there would have been no difference.

QUOTEthere werent magi in india - till the magi came and became one with the brahmins. That's what I am saying: no magi in India. The ones that matched the same description were called brahmin in India. If magi ever did come (please show evidence from books from before the Age of Propaganda), see the paragraph above.

QUOTE- Shakas were neither of Hindu nor Zoroastrian religion.
then what were they?? I asked the same question. I'd like to know this too.
(a) The pro-AIT crowd in the west and their followers imagine the Shaka practising the Proto-Indo-European religion. That is, the religion practised by the PIE people, who supposedly spoke the PIE language. A religion supposedly older than the Vedic religion and the pre-Zoroastrian Iranian religion.
However:
- no PIE except in extrapolations/wild guesses made by present day people living several thousands of years after the fact
- the Shakas did not speak PIE, they spoke a language of the Iranian linguistic family: i.e. an Iranian language. Whatever their purported ancestors might have spoken is unknown. That the highly artificial PIE might have been it is just a guess.
- No evidence that people prior to those following the Vedas in India worshipped the Indian and Iranian deities. Dates for the AIT and the Hittite-Mittani treaty are in doubtful order. The West claims that the treaty was signed before the supposed Aryans allegedly entered India and therefore before the Vedas were written. We're supposed to imagine that these Aryan beings (white dudes) were in Anatolia and then entered India sometime afterward.

(b) What the Shakas believed might be determined if we knew what their ethnicity was: were they partly Turkic or Mongolian? Shamanism. Were they Iranian? Pre-Zoroastrian Iranian religion (related to the Gods of the Vedas). However, it is noteworthy that the Armenians practised a very different, though still polytheistic religion. But their language was supposedly related to that of Indians and Iranians.
Language and religion need not travel together. (I speak English, I am still Hindu.) Language and ethnicity need not be connected (I speak English, I am Indian).
We know little about these aspects of the Shakas.

QUOTEthey [Marathas] have a little saka blood, or at least they have gotten the "clan" system from the sakas. in fact the only people in india who have clans have some connection with the sakas to lesser or greater degree. Guess all of the Tamil and Kannada village communities must be Shaka then, too, they are full of different clans. That throws light on the origins of the supposed Dravidians then: the invading Shakas bypassed the north and became South Indians. :Sarcasm:
Of course, Scots and Celts form clans, so do Native Americans. They must be Shakas too. It's amazing logic. All human societies form tribes or clans. Hence we are all Shakas. Brilliant.

That the Shakas invaded and then eventually merged into the northwest populations is common knowledge. The key is they merged. They did not stick out like a separate community still existing as the Jatts and Rajputs. Maybe as a subcommunity within these, but not as the entire groups. The Jatt and Rajput communities (whether going by these or other names) have been in India longer than 2100 bp/100 bc.

QUOTEer... there are people in maharashtra who came from south india (refer OP - not all who speak marathi are marathas. the marathas, the 96 clans of them, came largely from ayodhya and other aryas north of maharashtra). the LAND of maharashtra is one of the "punch-dravirs" india Karnatakans do not talk about the people you refer to as 'having come from South India', but of the Maratha kshatriya clan in particular. Their traditions tell them that the Marathas were a Karnatakan clan. Just like very old South Indian traditions attribute the Pallavas to an ancient South Indian community.

Don't get all your information from propaganda sites and then parrot it around like fact.

Facts remain:
- Shakas were Iranian speaking, thus they were not Indo-Aryan.
- Their collective ethnicity is unknown and we can only guess some of it from the ethnicity of individuals (Kanishka, for instance).
- They were from Central Asia - so they were not Indian at the time they were called Shakas. If they had originated from India before their entry into central Asia, then we are no longer speaking of the Shakas who were a temporary problem in the later period of the Shaka invasions, but of their ancestors (who would then not have been called Shakas).
- Shakas were neither of the Indian religions (Hindu traditions, Jain tradition) nor Zoroastrian religions.
- Magi were ancient Iranian religious priests who existed prior to Zoroastrianism (with the advent of Zoroastrianism they became Zoroastrian priests also called Magi).
- People who practised the same rituals and believed in the same Gods in India, would have been grouped as Indians, Hindus and Brahmins. AND/OR, and this is conjecture, some of them might also have been ancestors of some Jains (Jains did not do fire sacrifices).

05-12-2006, 01:27 PM

in fact the only people in india who have clans have some connection with the sakas to lesser or greater degree.

Guess all of the Tamil and Kannada village communities must be Shaka then, too, they are full of different clans. That throws light on the origins of the supposed Dravidians then: the invading Shakas bypassed the north and became South Indians. :Sarcasm:
Of course, Scots and Celts form clans, so do Native Americans. They must be Shakas too. It's amazing logic. All human societies form tribes or clans. Hence we are all Shakas. Brilliant.

scots and celts - are not indian. read my post.

as for the clans of south india, can we have the names please??? rajputs have many clans each with a seperate name, deity etc. as do marathis.

finally i never said "those who have a clan system MUST be saka". i pointed out that the only people IN INDIA who have a system of clans in their society (ie. rajputs, marathis and jats) incidentally have (or are rumoured to have) connections with the sakas. so your brialliant conclusion goes to the dustbin.

05-13-2006, 12:57 AM

Age of propoganda......

1 There were some people who were ancient kashtriyas.

In fact people from all groups fought in wars and did cultivation or other works during peace times.

2 Some people called sythian or saka (one does not understand who was that wise man who made these two terms as synonimus and how) came to india.

In fact people known as jats jattae or azats lived from indus to caspian sea and were clubbed in a wider term sythian used for other non jat groups also by Greeks and some times people moved in both east and west ward directions.

3 Rajput and maratha are a group as jats.

In fact jats relate to ethnicity and rajput and maratha are a conglomerate of diferent groups adopting a common title as Choudhary Thakur or Rao.

Husky · (This post was last modified: 05-14-2006, 01:31 PM by Husky.)

Post 15:
Thanks Nandibum. I know of 1 and 3.

QUOTErajput and maratha are a conglomerate of diferent groups (3) I know that Marathas and Rajputs don't form a single ethnicity (as claimed by wackypedia's hints at them being one, classifying them as being an ethnicity dubbed Shaka). Was merely trying to state that Karnatakan traditions tell of contributions to the Maratha caste, which they see as significant. This does not negate significant contributions of Indian people of other regions to the Maratha community. Just that they're not a uniform people (Shakas).
Rajputs are full of different communities too, but wackypedia, supposed scholars from the west, and Paki sites make them out to be uniform Shakas from Central Asia. And of course, people who parrot it back because they don't know better.

QUOTEIn fact people from all groups fought in wars and did cultivation or other works during peace times.(1) Yes I know that too. You can still see every village community in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka come up in arms when there's serious trouble (for example, of the missionary kind). And I'll wager that if they did that in the US, the US police would be surprised at how dangerous peaceful villagers can be.
QUOTEThere were some people who were ancient kashtriyas.The ancient Kshatriya groups came to exist from specialisation, as did the other 3 varnas. They eventually became endogamous, probably to pass on teachings (made sense, if one views them as guilds) and eating habits, etc.
I also know that other than these ancient endogamous Kshatriya groups, later, entire communities were gained Kshatriya position. A bit of like being recognised for valour in extreme circumstances and to bring the numbers of Kshatriyas (dwindled after Islamic wars) back up. In the South there are many such communities, Reddy, Menon,...

Now for (2)
- I can accept that the Jatts would have been a population group, still genetically linked with the rest of India, but over time becoming one community as happens over large regions.
- It's new to me that they had spread all the way to Central Asia, up to the Caspian. Nevertheless, it makes sense.
QUOTEpeople known as jats jattae or azats lived from indus to caspian sea This leads me to conclude that they originated in India and from there spread to Central Asia.
Significant time must have passed before the Shaka invasions of the 100 bc where the Shakas in question, by then speaking Iranian, were entrants from Central Asia into India. The Jatts in India would have found the Shaka culture to be as alien as the rest of us and minor or significant frictions ensued, else these incursions would have been called migrations (or merely a one-way population in-flux) not invasions.

QUOTEa wider term sythian used for other non jat groups also by Greeks The Shakas, whom reliable books had consistently equated with Scythians (reliable ones still do - don't know the current state of wackypedia) in the past, were all Iranian speaking. Hence Jat or non-Jat, the people Indians and Greeks came across spoke Iranian. Still have to wonder about the Mongolian or Turkic Shakas, though they too spoke Iranian.
With reliable I mean: books from before the Age of Propaganda. The use of reliability in this case has nothing to with its accuracy, just that these books were not motivated by present day propaganda considerations (they could of course still have been motivated by the old-fashioned AIT).

Now here comes my question: why do people who host/join jattworld and the like, identify themselves with Shakas but not with the Indian Jats who had never resided in Central Asia? Why specifically Central Asian Shakas? How do they know that they don't have Indian Jatt ancestry? And what is left of Central Asian Shaka Jatt culture to identify with? It seems like some political ploy. Paki sites promote the same information. Unsurprisingly, they're seriously anti-Hindu. Now with propaganda sites set up to assign alien origins for Jats, Rajputs and Marathas (the latter ignorantly treated as an ethnicity), the problems might grow out of hand.

I think, whatever Indians' opinion of the AIT, whether they believe in it or not, it has left a still indelible mark on their self-esteem. Some North Indians still want some mythical creatures called Aryans to exist. Whether they think these beings were white or North Indian looking is all the difference in consideration between them and the traditional AIT people. Indian scriptures do not speak of a difference from north to south. They speak of a difference from West India/East Afghanistan and Iranian people.

In such a manner, it must somehow speak to the imagination of some vulnerable Jatts that they were Central Asians, in spite of the fact that most Jatts are Indian. "Anything but Indian" seems to be the driving force.
Are there are any Shakas today in Central Asia? Or did all their population drain into present day India-Pakistan regions leaving later Iranians to occupy the central Asian Iranian -stan countries? Or are the Jatts still closely related (genetically) to the Iranians of the -stans? (After all, the Iranians there still speak languages of the Iranian family. But to be honest, from watching the news, they look nothing like Jats.)
If so, won't this skew genetics data unfavourably towards the AIT position, if current Central Asians are auto-classified as European/non-Indian? Then of course the Northwest of India would show a close correlation to 'Central Asians', Jats being related to Jats.

The modern claims that the Jats did not follow the varna system are nonsense. Specialisation occurred the same in the Punjab region as it did in the rest of India. Many Jats (not all) were in the Kshatriya varna. There are exceptions. Just like the already specialised GSBs who migrated south grew and specialised once more. Not all of them are Brahmanas anymore. Some evolved to fill occupations that were not in accordance with this position. Today they merely keep the GSB (Gowda Saraswat Brahmins) title as a community name. If we lived a few thousands of years back, these non-brahmana GSBs would be grouped into the other 3 varnas.

05-13-2006, 08:31 AM

Example of a clan in Karnataka:

The Bunts are an endogamous clan, they are one of the few clans that might be familiar to those on this board. They're a martial community (clan) in Karnataka. They speak Tulu, classified as part of the Dravidian language family. Examples of Bunts are the Shetty community (Shilpa, Sunil Shetty), Aishwarya Rai.
Rai indicates the same position as Rao (there are GSB Rao-s in Karnataka as well as other Rao-s, but only Bunt Rai-s). Rai is a Bunt name in Karnataka, Aishwarya is not (like Pakistanis like to imagine) a GSB emanating from what they imagine is 'their' Kashmir.

Rai and Rao designate position, not sub-ethnicity. Hence Rai/Roy/Rao in different parts of India are not particularly related any more than Indians in general are related to the rest of the subcontinent. But Rai/Rao/Roy-s share the same function/position in their respective communities. Hence surname Rai among Bunts, historically designated to such a position. Likewise, a small section of the Bunt community, just like in the rest of India, are Brahmins. Hence there is the Brahmin subcommunity of the Bunt clan.

The Bunts are a very good example of the evolution of specialisation in Hindu communities. Though initially they were a martial clan, they grew and needed other positions filled.

05-13-2006, 08:35 AM

Post 15 by Benjamin/Benjamina:
See also my post 18 above.
QUOTEso your brialliant conclusion goes to the dustbin.No, it was merely a logical extension of your statements (though now you've backtracked) that currently lies in the dustbin. Let's hope you don't resurrect it.

At least you've grown silent about your serious mistake in equating Iranian and Indo-Aryan.

Husky · (This post was last modified: 05-14-2006, 05:45 AM by Husky.)

Post 1 of this thread:
QUOTEThe cognate of clan is Kul or cul, cognate of shatriya is shah(Iranian),Shah-nav(Maratha),satrap(european).There's wackypedia again.
Shah is king in Persian, like Raja/Raya among us.
Kshatriya is Sanskrit for the ruling and soldier varna. The equivalent in ancient Avestan is not Shah, like the ignorami contributing to wackypedia imagine, but kshayat(h)iya. More fool them (wackypedia), exhibiting their ignorance everywhere and for everyone to see. Even I, a non-Iranian not conversant in Farsi let alone ancient Avestan, know this much.

The word Satrap is of Persian origin, as far as I can recall, not originally a European word. It was used to designate little kingdoms or regions paying tribute to the Persian high king. The Europeans (Greeks and/or Romans) understood its meaning and repeated the word Satrap in their references to Persia's regions. From there it entered English and thus I can find the word in an English dictionary.

The (somewhat later, probably) Persian word Shah, king, is derived from Kshayathiya, as is logical when you consider that the position of rulers was given to those from among the soldier/warrior class. Hence a Shah was of the Kshayathiya class.
Kshayathiya was used as one of the self-designations by a King Darius in his edict, who wrote in ancient Avestan.
Doubtless, ignorant Pakis imagining themselves the inheritors of the grand Persian civilisation thought they knew a thing or two about Sanskrit, Avestan and 'European'. Mwahaha.

So now that the blatant ignorance of wackypedia on this topic has been discussed (see also Post 26 below), the question remains: what is the 'European' equivalent to Kshatriya/Kshayathiya
Of course it is not Knight, just 'cause the word starts with a 'K' in front of another consonant. Although I won't put it past the wackypedians for thinking themselves clever to invent this next misstep.

Wackypedia. One eventually learns to appreciate it for the never-ending stream of ignorance, mistakes and propaganda. That's the kind of encyclopaedia one gets when every and any person, however ignorant on a chosen topic, gets to contribute.
Hopefully no teacher or school uses it as a teaching tool, other than to teach the evident moral lessons of creating a user contributed encyclopaedia.

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