geography-of-pakistan

"“in the denomination of Ariana, which became known to the Greeks after the Macedonian conquest of the eastern territories of the old Persian empire, there was obviously reflected a tradition that located the Aryan region in the central-southern part of eastern Iran, roughly from the Hindukus southwards, and that considered some of the Medes and the Persians in the west and some of the Bactrians and Sogdians in the north as further extensions of those people who were henceforth known by the name of Ariani. And this, to tell the truth, fits nicely into the picture we have been trying to piece so far. Here too, as in the passages of the Avesta we have studied from the Mihr Yast and the Zamyad Yast, the geographical horizon is central-eastern and southeastern; the northern lands are also completely peripheral, and Chorasmia, which is present only in the very peculiar position of which we have spoken in the Mihr Yast, is not included.” ..."

"[Likewise, in later Greek tradition, Ariane] “is the Greek name which doubtless reflects an older Iranian tradition that designated with an equivalent form the regions of eastern Iran lying mostly south, and not north, of the Hindukus. It is clear how important this information is in our research as a whole.” ..."

"The Indo-Aryan invasion doesn’t get farther than Pirak in Baluchistan."

"In the case of Pirak, however, it must be admitted that the cultural innovations do not appear to be clearly Indo-European. Perhaps there was only indirect contact via other ethnic groups in Seistan."

"The processes [at Pirak] are too complex to be attributed to the arrival of invaders who at the same time would have had to have introduced rice from the Ganges, sorghum from the Arabian Gulf, and camels and horses from Central Asia."

"If Pirak… represents the start of Indian culture, there is in the present state of Indian archaeology no ‘post-Pirak’ except at Pirak itself, which lasted till the 7th century BC: the site remained, along with a few very nearby ones, isolated."

"[None of the transformations] can be explained in the context of invasions of semi-nomadic peoples coming from the [Central Asian] steppes. … How could this series of transformations be seriously attributed to Indo-Aryan invaders? … Nothing, in the present state of archaeological research … enables us to reconstruct convincingly invasions that could be clearly attributed to Aryan groups."

"The evidence from Pirak is, till now, the best from any part of the whole Indus system during this period."

"As a side note, one reference in particular is repeatedly produced from the Puranas as evidence of a large emigration from Gandhara, Afghanistan, to the northern regions. The narrative is situated in the time of Mandhatr, who drove the Druhyu king Angara out of the Punjab. Pargiter ([1922] 1979) notes that the next Druhya king, Gandhara, retired to the Northwest and gave his name to the Gandhara country (which survives to the present day in the name Kandahar in Afghanistan). The last king in the Druhyu lineage is Pracetas, whose hundred sons take shelter in the regions north of Afghanistan 'udicitn disam as'ritah'and become mlecchas. The Puranas make no further reference to the Druhyu dynasty after this.38 The more enthusiastic see this as "evidence of the migration of Indo-Europeans from India to Europe via Central Asia" (Talageri 1993, 367)."

"Ayu went eastwards, the Kuru-Pañcalas and Kasi-Videha are (his descendants) the Ayavas; (And) Amavasu (went) westwards, the Gandharas, Parsus and Arattas are (his descendants) the Amavasyavas."

"The next Druhyu king Gandhāra retired to the northwest and gave his name to the Gandhāra country."

"Hindu society as a whole has ceased to remember that Afghanistan rose on the ruins of Gandhara and Kamboja, the two ancient Janapadas of Bharatavarsha which had stood guard on our North-Western gateway for ages untold."

"[Kennedy also notes the anthropological continuity between the Harappan population and that of the contemporaneous Gandhara (eastern Afghanistan) culture, which in an Aryan invasion scenario should be the Indo-Aryan settlement just prior to the Aryan invasion of India:] “Our multivariate approach does not define the biological identity of an ancient Aryan population, but it does indicate that the Indus Valley and Gandhara peoples shared a number of craniometric, odontometric and discrete traits that point to a high degree of biological affinity.”"

"Hiuen Tsang considered the script which was in use in Makran to be 'much the same as India', but the spoken language 'differed a little from that of India.'"

"Makran, ‘the frontier of al-Hind’ in the early Arab conquest (futuh) literature, is identified by the geographers of the ninth to twelfth cen­turies as the territory extending ‘about fifteen days travelling from Tlz to Qusdar in the district of Turan’. The geographers commonly use the term al-Hind to denote the regions east of the Indus, while including Makran in as-Sind. The historian Tabari took Makran to be a separate region between the Persian province of Kirman on one side and al-Hind on the other: ‘ . . . the region of Makran . . . is situated beyond Kirm­an and Fars, between the kingdoms of Sind and Hind . . . and cUman. . . ; Makran borders on Kirman and Hind, (while) the sea separates it from cUman’. It is equally common, however, even in the geograph­ical literature, to find Sind conflated with al-Hind in a single term. And since the Makran coast was the westernmost portion of Sind, or a west­ ern dependency of Sind, it is then found that al-Hind (‘India’) is not just the country east of the Indus but includes Makran, starting from Tlz. Al-Biruni thus says that ‘the coast (sahil) of al-Hind begins with Tiz, the capital (qa?ba) of Makran, and from there extends in a south­ eastern direction towards the region of Debal (ad-daybal).. These various statements from the Arabic sources show that Makran was effectually regarded as a frontier zone, but yet as distinctly Indian territory. And this is conform to the view which has been current in anti­quity - when Makran was known as Gedrosia - and down to com­paratively recent times. Pliny the Elder for instance writes in the first century A.D. that ‘the river Indus . . . is the western boundary of India {ad Indum amnem qui est ab occidente finis Indiae)’, but adds: ‘in fact, most authorities do not put the western frontier at the river Indus but include four satrapies, (those of) the Gedrosi (Makran), Arachotae (Qandahar), Arii (Herat), and Parapanisidae (Kabul), with the river Kabul as the final boundary..’ In the sixth century the Nestorian Patriarch Jesujabus considered India to begin from the coast of Persia, i.e. from Fars, about the Persian Gulf. Medieval European literature introduced a tripartite division of India: ‘India Major’, which extended from Malabar to the east; ‘India Minor’, adjoining Persia and embracing Sind and Makran; and ‘India Tertia’ which was Zanzibar. Nicolo de Conti, in the fifteenth century, similarly divided India in three parts: one, from Persia to the Indus (Makran and Sind); a second, from the Indus to the Ganges; and a third, beyond the Ganges. And Marco Polo, in 1290, speaks of the eastern part of Makran - which he calls Kij-Makran after its main inland town - as ‘the last kingdom in India as you go towards the west and north-west’, a kingdom which at that time claimed an independent status, probably under a Muslim ruler."

"Further evidence in the Chachnama makes perfectly clear that many areas of Makran as of Sindh had a largely Buddhist population. When Chach marched to Armabil, this town is described as having been in the hands of a Buddhist Samani (Samani Budda), a descendent of the agents of Rai Sahiras who had been elevated for their loyalty and devotion, but who later made themselves independent. The Buddhist chief offered his alligience to Chach when the latter was on his way to Kirman in 631. The same chiefdom of Armadil is referred to by Huen Tsang 0-Tien -p-o-chi-lo, located at the high road running through Makran, and he also describes it as predominantly Buddhist, thinly populated though it was, it had no less than 80 Buddhist convents with about 5000 monks. In effect at eighteen km north west of Las Bela at Gandakahar, near the ruins of an ancient town are the caves of Gondrani, and as their constructions show these caves were undoubtedly Buddhist. Traveling through the Kij valley further west (then under the government of Persia) Huien Tsang saw some 100 Buddhist monasteries and 6000 priests. He also saw several hundred Deva temples in this part of Makran, and in the town of Su-nu li-chi-shi-fa-lo-which is probably Qasrqand- he saw a temple of Maheshvara Deva, richly adorned and sculptured. There is thus very wide extension of Indian cultural forms in Makran in the seventh century, even in the period when it fell under Persian sovereignty. By comparison in more recent times the last place of Hindu pilgrimage in Makran was Hinglaj, 256 km west of present day Karachi in Las Bela."

"Even Makran remained independent with varying degrees of freedom commensurate with the intensity of resistance so that as late as 1290 Marco Polo speaks of the eastern part of Makran as part of Hind, and as “the last Kingdom of India as you go towards the west and northwest”."