In response to post 13:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->so the iranians being iranian speaking are not indo-aryan at all ??<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->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 <i>Indo-Aryans</i>, hinting left and right at an ethnicity.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->no. magi appeared on the horizon after zorastrianism was formed.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> 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 <i>Magis</i>, 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.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->there werent magi in india - till the magi came and became one with the brahmins.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> 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.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->- Shakas were neither of Hindu nor Zoroastrian religion.
then what were they??<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> 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.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->they [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.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> 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.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->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<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> 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 <i>clan</i>. 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 <i>were</i> 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 <i>before</i> their entry into central Asia, then we are no longer speaking of the Shakas who were a temporary problem in the <i>later</i> 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 <i>conjecture</i>, some of them might also have been ancestors of some Jains (Jains did not do fire sacrifices).
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->so the iranians being iranian speaking are not indo-aryan at all ??<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->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 <i>Indo-Aryans</i>, hinting left and right at an ethnicity.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->no. magi appeared on the horizon after zorastrianism was formed.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> 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 <i>Magis</i>, 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.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->there werent magi in india - till the magi came and became one with the brahmins.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> 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.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->- Shakas were neither of Hindu nor Zoroastrian religion.
then what were they??<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> 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.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->they [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.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> 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.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->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<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> 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 <i>clan</i>. 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 <i>were</i> 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 <i>before</i> their entry into central Asia, then we are no longer speaking of the Shakas who were a temporary problem in the <i>later</i> 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 <i>conjecture</i>, some of them might also have been ancestors of some Jains (Jains did not do fire sacrifices).