Excerpts From - The GETES by Sundeep S. Jhutti - 2003 Alex

Excerpts from THE GETES by Sundeep S.
Jhutti 2003 | Alex Imreh
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Excerpts from THE GETES by Sundeep S. Jhutti 2003

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SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS is an occasional series dedicated to making available to
specialists and the interested public the results of research that, because of its
unconventional or controversial nature, might otherwise go unpublished. The editor-inchief actively encourages younger, not yet well established, scholars and independent
authors to submit manuscripts for consideration. This series is not the place for safe, sober,
and stodgy presentations. Sino-Platonic Papers prefers lively work that, while taking
reasonable risks to advance the field, capitalizes on brilliant new insights into the
development of civilization.
Sino-Platonic Papers, 127 (October, 2003)
Jhutti
THE GETES by Sundeep S.
INT RODUCT ION. Iranian-speaking nomads have caught the attention of many
societies, from early Greco Roman, Persian, Indian, and Chinese writers to modem scholars
intrigued by their unique, somewhat romantic lifestyle as horse-mounted warriors
constantly searching for greener pastures, military challenges, and riches. Spread
throughout the vast Central Asian steppes, they were known to the Greeks, the Persians,
the Indians, and the Chinese.
Of these Iranian-speaking nomads, the best known were the Scythians, due to their
contact with the West, particularly Greece. According to Websters Encyclopedia
Dictionary, the Scythians were a nomadic Indo-European people who settled in Scythia
before the seventh century B.C. and were displaced by the Sarmatians. They were
specially noted in warfare for their mounted archers and in art for their rich gold
ornaments. They spoke an Iranian language. Herodotus, dedicated a great portion of his
Histories solely to the Scythians during the days when the Persian and Egyptian empires
were thriving. He was keen in noting another important and more eastern Iranian tribe
called the Massagetae, whom he considered to be like the Scythians (Rawlinson 1928, 79).
In addition, the geographer Strabo applies the comprehensive name Scythian to the
Sakas, Dahae, and Massagetae. He states: Now the greater part of the Scythians,
beginning at the Caspian Sea, are called Daae, but those who are situated more to the east
are called Massagetae and Sacae, whereas all the rest are given the general name of
Scythians, though each people is given a separate name. They are all for the most part
nomads. In the works of the Alexandrian age, writers repeatedly called these nomads at
various times, Scythian, Massagetae, or Dakhs
Interestingly, Alexander Cunningham, the former Director-General of the Archeological
Survey of India, believed that the Dahae of the Greeks and the Dahyu of the Persians
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Excerpts from THE GETES by Sundeep S. Jhutti 2003 | Alex Imreh
Survey of India, believed that the Dahae of the Greeks and the Dahyu of the Persians
were the same word as the colloquial term daku used in India (Indo-English dacoit),
which literally means a robber or enemy~ (Cunningham 1888,32). The Scythians could
have been perceived as dacoits by these sedentary societies, and these terms could have
been those of reproach (Cunningham 1888, 32). The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
also holds this view: The predatory tribes of Turan [Turkistan ] (e.g., Massagetae) seem to
have belonged to the same stock [Iranian]. These tribes are distinguished by the Iranian
peasants as Daha (Gr. Daai), enemies, robbers; by the Persians as Sacae; and by the
Greeks generally as Scythians.
The Sakas, in particular, made their way to the Indian subcontinent. In his Guide to Taxila,
Marshall, the former Director-General of Archaeology of India, says the
following about the Sakian invaders of India: Known to the western world under the
comprehensive name of Scythians, to the Indians as Sakas, and to the Chinese as Sai or
Sai-wang~ these invaders came principally from the three great tribes of Massagetae,
Sacaraucae, and Dahae, whose home at the beginning of the second century B.C. was in the
country between the Caspian Sea and Jaxartes river. (Marshal11960, 24) In addition to
the tribes mentioned by Marshall, there were many other lesser-known nomadic tribes not
mentioned, for example, the Thyssagetae, Tyrigetae, etc., who probably were like the
Sakas. Marshall, therefore, believes that the Scythian term was an all-inclusive name
applied to all Iranian-speaking Central Asian nomads. Cunningham, on the other hand,
referring to the Scythian invaders of India, included the non-Iranian-speaking
Ephthalites or White Huns. He states: the different races of Scythians, which have
successively appeared on the border provinces of Persia and India, are the following
Sakas or Sacae, the Su or Sai of the Chinese Kushans, or Tochari, the Great Vue-chi
of the Chinese Kidaritae, or Later Kushans, the Little Vue-chi of the Chinese
Ephthalites, or White Huns, the Ye-tha-i-lito of the Chinese. (Cunningham 1888, 27) Tod
also classifies the White Huns as a Scythian people!
Now it is difficult to believe the Scythians were ever really one ethnic entity, since they
were so greatly separated along the vast Central Asian steppes. What seems more
reasonable is that they were groups of many independent nations with a similar language
and culture. Therefore, the comprehensive name Scythian probably signifies a people
who shared a common culture, language, and extended geographical area Names of tribes
such as Massagetae, on the other hand, were more geographically specific, referring to, in
this case, a tribe east of the Caspian Sea with almost unique, customs. Leaving tribal origins
aside, the history of these Scythian tribes is impressive. They were known by the
Greco-Romans to the west, by the Chinese to the east, and by the Indians and
Persians to the south. One of the most interesting aspects of these tribes was their
mobility as mounted nomads who left little of Eurasia unexplored.
In his In Search of the Indo-Europeans, referring to a map of Eurasia, Mallory says:
Reading from west to east we can include as Iranian speakers the major Iron Age nomads
of the Pontic-Caspian steppe such as the Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians and
Alans. The incredible mobility of these horse-mounted nomads becomes all the more
impressive when we recall their westward expansions through Europe. Sarmatian tribes
not only settled in the Danube region, but during the second century AD, were conscripted
to defend the borders of Roman Britain. The Alans traveled as far as France and
forced their way south through Spain, ultimately to establish a state in North
Africa. (Mallory 1989, 48-49)
It cannot be overemphasized that the mobility of the Scythian tribes was often the result of
their being driven on by other tribes, even kindred tribes, so that an event on one side
of the steppes would cause a chain reaction of events reaching the other. This
was the case with the Huns (Hsuing-Nu), a nomadic Mongol people, who uprooted the
nomadic Yuezhi near the Great Wall of China before the Christian era. The Chinese
Emperor Zheng (Shi Huangdi, 246-210 B.C.) linked together the existing frontier walls into
a continuous defense system, thereby creating the Great Wall of China (Haywood 2000,
26). As a result the restless Hsuing Nu tribe attacked their neighbors the Caucasian
Wusun and Yuezhi, which led to a wholesale movement of these nomads (Dhillon 1994,
41). Not only were the fleeing Yuezhi uprooted, but so also were a perhaps kindred people,
the Sakas, near the Aral Sea. Eventually this chain of events led to these nations appearing
on the Indo-Iranian borderlands and settling in these regions (Dhillon 1994, 41). This same
movement of tribes was the driving force that finally led the Alans to enter Roman
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territory. Haywood provides a good summary of this large-scale movement: The rise of
the Xiongnu [Huns] had a destabilizing effect on the Iranian nomads to the
west. In 170 the Xiongnu inflicted a crushing defeat on the Vue Qi [Yuezhi], who fled
westward, unsettling the Sakas, before overrunning the Bactrian kingdom around 135.
The Sakas headed south, first to invade the Parthian empire and, around 141,
northern India, and were able to occupy much of the northwest without
facing much serious opposition. On the western steppes, the Sarmatians
defeated and absorbed the Scythians in the 2nd century and by 150 three
distinct groups appeared: the Iazygians, the Roxolani, and the Alans.
(Haywood 2000, 28)
It does not seem mere coincidence that the time line for the barbarian invasions
of Rome corresponds very closely to that of the similar invasions of northwest
India and northeastern Iran, or that Huns were associated with these assaults. For
example, the Alans reached Gaul in A.D. 408 (Dhillon 1994, 91), and the Ephthalites
conquered Transoxiana and Bactria around 440 and reached India around 455-460
(Grousset 1970, 67-68). McGovern provides a birds-eye view of the movement of these
tribes: The Sakas, like their neighbors, the Alani, were destined to play an
important part in later history. But whereas the Alani spread westward into
Europe, the Sakas chose the lands south of them for the seat of their later
actions; and at one time they were lords of much of Eastern Iran and
Northern India. (McGovern 1939) Earlier it was mentioned that the Scythians may
have had similar customs and language, but it is doubtful that they were ever one ethnic
entity. This statement, however, could be partially untrue. The dominance by one group in
particular, the Massagetae, who in post-Alexandrian times were classified as Sarmatians,
may have led to some homogeneity across most of the steppes. McGovern wrote, The
decay and eventual downfall of the Scythians was due almost entirely to invasion by their
distant kinsmen, the Sarmatians (McGovern 1939, 38).
The Sarmatians were a member of the nomadic Indo-European people who displaced the
Scythians on the lower Don. First the enemies and then the allies of Rome, they were
displaced by the Goths in the third century A.D. (W.E.D.1988, 887). The term
Sarmatian gradually began to replace Scythian in classical accounts. Littleton and
Malcor call them Eastern Scythians (Littleton and Malcor 2000, 16). And for good
reason, as the Sarmatians were not much different from Scythians-they spoke an Iranian
language and wore trousers, soft leather boots, and round or peaked caps, although some
also went bare-headed (Sulimirski 1970).
Regarding the Sarmatians, Jeannine Davis-Kimball wrote a rather interesting paragraph in
her popular book Warrior Women: they were also Caucasoids and spoke an Indo-Iranian
language, their skeletons revealed a variety of ethnic types, with some being tall and large
boned while others were shorter and delicate in stature. My theory, based on a number
of notable comparisons between funeral offerings, is that some of these people might have
been younger generations of Saka who were forced from their territories near the Tien
Shan Mountains or the southern Aral Sea by the need for additional summer pasturelands.
Around the third century A.D., they began migrating westward and eventually these
expert horsemen equipped with sophisticated weapons and armor constituted a real threat
to the Roman legions guarding the Danube frontier. The enterprising legionnaires,
however, defused the situation by recruiting some of the Sannatians to join their army. In
A.D. 175, more than five thousand of the steppe tribesmen (most likely along with their
families) were dispatched to the northern English border to guard Hadrians Wall, which
helped repel incursions into Roman Britain by the Picts and the Celtic Scots. Twenty years
later, the Sarmatian regiment was redeployed to Gaul (the ancient designation for France
and Belgium) to quell a rebellion. Later they were returned to Britain, and as they grew
old, the battle-weary Sarmatians retired to a veterans home in Lancashire.
The destruction by Alexander the Great of the Achaemenid (Persian) monarchyand his
subsequent conquest of Bactria and Sogdiana in 330-328 BC also influenced the history
and development of all the peoples of Central Asia. Neither the Chorasmians nor the
Massagetae were subjugated by Alexander, but as a result of having to fight against the
highly trained and organized Macedonian army, they developed new military tactics using
armoured cavalry, the cataphracti. Some authors think that the Massagetae owed their
conquests solely to the use of this armoured cavalry against weaker adversaries.
18/12/2014
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(Sulimirski 1970, 81). In the fourth and third centuries BC, the Massagetae
subdued nearly all the nomad tribes of Central Asian north of the
Macedonian frontier, eastward to the Tien-Shan Mountains, and possibly
many tribes of the Kazakhstan steppes; this led to a tremendous extension of
their culture which to a great extent derived from that of Achaemenid Iran
(Sulimirski 1970, 81). Moreover, this mechanism led to the expansion of their culture east
to China, west to the German frontier, and perhaps even southward to India. So did the
Massagetae provide at least some continuity between the vast steppes, before this nation
was scattered by the Huns?
In a rather bold paragraph in their recent book on The Tarim Mummies, James P. Mallory
and Victor H. Mair suggest that there may have been more cohesion among these nomads
than was previously believed. They wrote in the following paragraph regarding the Yuezhi
nomads near the border of China: Da (Greater) Yuezhi, or in the earlier pronunciation
dad-ngiwat-tieg, has been seen to equate with the Massagetae who occupied the oases and
steppe lands of West Central Asia in the time of Herodotus; here Massa renders an Iranian
word for Great, hence Great Getae. Others have seen in this word an attempt to
capture in Chinese the name of a tribe that is rendered in Greek as the Iatioi who are
recorded in Ptolemys geography. The original pronunciation has been reconstructed as
gwat-ti or got-ti or gut-si, which opens up distant lexical similarities with the Goths,
the Getae (the Dacian, i.e., Balkan, tribes northwest of the Black Sea), the Guti (a people on
the borderlands of Mesopotamia), the Kusha (our Kushans), the Gushi (a people mentioned
in Han texts and regarded as brigands along with the peoples of Kroran) , or a combination
of some but not all of the above. (Mallory and Mair 2000, 98-99). This comparison of likesounding tribal names, although merely a paragraph in length, could potentially generate
volumes of discussion and can help us understand more definitively the nature of the
barbarian invasions in ancient Rome, the powerful Kushan Empire in India, the possible
origins of the Guti people, the Guti kings of Mesopotamia, and the similarity between the
Goths, Getae, and the Yuezhi. Moreover, this opens up the possibility that at least
some of the people termed Scythians were a single tribe-the Getae. So could
there have been a nation of nomads who knew themselves as Gets, Gats, Guts,
or Yuts?
This is not the first time that the suggestion has been offered that the Yuezhi could be
related to Goths. In his Tableaux Historiques De L Asia, Julius Von Klaproth (1783-1835)
wrote: The name of Yueti or Yut recalls that of Yuts or Goths, which came to Europe: it
would be very possible that the Yutes who arrived in Scandinavia with Odin, are the same
people who three centuries before our era, still inhabited the area northwest of the
Chinese Kansu province. This would suppose the emigration of the Goths of Central Asia.
This identification between the Yuezhi and the Goths by Klaproth suggests that the tribes
involved in the movement of nomads into Roman territory may have been greater than
modem scholarship holds. Could it be that the Goths, along with the Alans, were
pushed into Europe under pressure from the Huns? Moreover, could these
same tribes be found in the Indian and Persian frontiers? The South Asian Jats
are one such group that may lead us in the proper direction, as their settlement
corresponds geographically with the Indo-Scythian settlement on the Indian subcontinent.
Perhaps by examining the customs and characteristics of this living population we can
better understand the role the Getae played in history.
18/12/2014
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Jats, Getae, and Yuezhi. According to Williams, The extent of the Scythian
invasion [of India] has been variously estimated. Some scholars believe they virtually
supplanted the previous population of [northwest] India, and there seems little doubt that
by far the most numerous section of the Punjab population is of Scythian origin (Williams
1905, 481). We also know that many, if not most, of the Massagetae went to India (Tarn
1966, 306-307). So it would not be outrageous to suppose that the inhabitants of
northwest India may be descended from these ancient invaders. The South Asian Jats are
an Indo-European people who number roughly 35 million and follow the three religions of
Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism in roughly equal percentages, based on Dhillons estimates in
1994 (Dhillon 1994, 1). They are found in Northwest India and Pakistan, mainly in the
provinces of Punjab, Sindh, Kashmir, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan. Roughly
speaking, Jats are Muslims in the West, Sikh in the center, and Hindus in the East (Rose
4 / 22
18/12/2014
1883,1: 361).
Father Monserate (1536-1600), a Jesuit priest at the Moghal king Akbars court
considered the Jats to be the descendants of the Getae (Maclagan 1990, 154). By the mid18th century, Joseph De Guignes (1721-1800) would equate the Jats with the Scythians, as
well, but this time also with the Chinese Yuezhi (De Guignes 1756, Dhillon 1994, Tod 1829,
Elphinstone 1874). De Guignes, a French Orientalist, believed the Jats of Punjab were
descendants of Yuezhi who were known to the Indians under the Kushan Dynasty. James
Tod, relying on De Guignes, presented quite an interesting histQry to the Jats and Raj puts
, whom he thou~ht were both descendants of Yuezhi and Getae, as he equated the Getae
and Yuezhi. In his Annals and Antiquities of Rajas than, written in 1829, he says (note Jit,
Jat, and Jut are the same): [A] translation of the Nehrwalla conquerors inscription, which
will prove beyond any doubt that these Jit princes of Salpoori in the Punjab, were the
leaders of that very colony of the Yuti from Jaxartes, who in the fifth century crossed the
Indus and possessed themselves of the Punjab. In short, whether as Yuti, Getae, Jats, Juts,
or Jauts their habits confirmed the tradition of their Scythic origin. In his Tableaux
Historiques De LAsia, Klaproth (1783-1835) also identified the Jats with the Yuezhi. The
Jats offered resistance not only against the Arabs, but also against invaders such as
Ghaznavi, Timur, Babar, Jahangir, and eventually the British at Bharatpur and under the
Sikh Empire (Dhillon 1994). This demonstrates the continuity of the existence of these
people in India and the preservation of their martial qualities.
Alexander Cunningham held that the Jats were descended from Strabo s Zanthi and
PtolemyS Iatioi. In his 1888 work, Coins of the Indo-Scythians, Sakas, and Kushans, he
said: The Xanthii are very probably the Zaths [Jats] of early Arab writers. The Xanthii
were a sub-branch of the Dahae, as per Strabo.. In his Sixth Great Oriental Monarchy,
George Rawlinson, when writing about the original homeland of the Scythian invaders of
India, makes the identification between the Jats and the Massagetae: Of these tribes the
principal were the Massagetae (great Jits, or Jats), who occupied the country on both
sides of the lower course of the Oxus; the Dahae, who bordered the Caspian above
Hyrcania, and extended hence to the latitude of Herat; the Tochari, who settled in the
mountains between the upper Jaxartes and the Upper Oxus, where they gave name to the
tract known as Tokharistan; the Asii, or Asiani, who were closely connected with the
Tochari; and the Sakarauli (Sacarucae?), who are found connected with both the Tochari
and the Asiani. (Rawlinson 1872, 118) .. Modern scholarship has interpreted the Yuezhi as
the phonetic Ywati, and has identified the tribe with Ptolemys Iatioi or Jatioi..
Who were the Tokharoi? Pulleyblank, as aforementioned, believed the Jatioi and the
Tokharoi were closely associated with each other (Pulleyblank 2002, 425). M. Lin, in
Qilan and Kunlun-The Earliest Tokharian Loan-Words in Ancient Chinese, believes the
Yuezhi to be the Tokharoi. He writes, The Yuezhi people who came from Dunhtiang were
called Tokharoi in classical Greek works and Tukhara in the ancient Indian texts (Lin
1998, 477). Further, Rosenfield in his Dynastic Art of the Kushans, says about the Kushans,
the Chinese continued to call these people the Ta (Great) Yueh-chih . In India, strangely
enough, the name Kushan as such never appears in the Puranas, Mahabharata, or other
quasi-historical sources. These people must have been denoted by variations of the
Tokhari, such as Tuskara, Tushara, Tukhara, Turushka (Rosenfield 1967,8).
To summarize, we have Alexander Cunningham, who identified the South Asian Jats with
Ptolemys Iatioi and then equated the Da Yuezhi (Great Yuezhi) with the Massagetae
(Great Getae). Adding Torday, Marquart, and Pulleyblanks identification of the Iatioi with
the Yuezhi, it is logical to conclude that the Getae were the Yuezhi and the Jats.
Ibbetson (who performed the 1880 census of India) says about the modem Dahiya Jats:
They are probably the Dahae of Alexander (Ibbetson 1916, 130). McGovern believed the
Dahae Sakas were a branch of the Massagetae (McGovern 1939,68). It is no wonder that
we have writers like Trevaskis who, in The Land of the Five Rivers in 1928, wrote, But
the great mass of the [Scythian] tribes who took more readily to agriculture were called
Jats, a name which may possibly be identified with the Latin Getae or Goths
(Trevaskis 1928, 87). By the early 20th century, most authorities accepted the Scythian
origin of South Asian Jats, which is affirmed in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica: Some
writers have identified the Jats with the ancient Getae, and there is strong reason to
believe them a degraded tribe of Raj puts, whose Scythic origin has also been maintained
The Jats and Rajputs, as well as Gujars, have been identified as descendants of Scythian
5 / 22
18/12/2014
invaders, of which many became followers of the Sikh religion. MacMunn believed the
Martial Races of India were somehow all connected to the Scythian descendants: the
martial races, almost without exception, come from some branch or derivative of the great
peoples of Northern India who we lmow as Rajputs and Jats (MacMunn 1932,223).
Joseph Davey Cunningham wrote in his famous book, A History of Sikhs, in 1849:
The plains of Upper India, in which the Brahmans and Kshattriyas had developed a
peculiar civilization, have been overrun by Persian or Scythic tribes, from the age of Darius
and Alexander to that of Babar and Nadir Shah. Particular traces of successive conquerors
may yet perhaps be found, but the main features are: 1) the introduction of the
Muhammadan creed; and 2) the long antecedent emigration of hordes of Jats from the
plains of Upper Asia. It is not necessary to enter into the antiquities of Grecian Getae and
Chinese YueChi, to discuss the asserted identity of the peasant Jat. or try to trace the
blood of Kadphises in the veins of Ranjit Singh. (J.D. Cunningham 1849,4). It should be
noted that J.D. Cwmingham equates the Greek Getae with the Chinese Yuezhi. Further, in
the same book, Cunningham discusses the etymology of the word Jat. [We may] derive
Jat from the Sanskrit Jyestha, old, ancient, and so make the term equivalent to aborigines;
but this etymology perhaps too hastily sets aside the sufficiently established facts of Getae
and Yuechi emigrations, and the circumstance of Taimurs [Timurs] warfare with Jettahs
in Central Asia (J. D. Cunningham 1849, 299).
An interesting addition to this statement was made by C. Twiggs, who, in discussing
Timurs Zafarnama, or Memoirs, says, We know from the Zafarnama of Sharfuddin
that Timur, when he invaded India, believed the Jats of the Punjab to be the same race as
Tartars whom he met in Central Asia (Twigg 1870, 318-19). With the generic word
Tartars, I believe he means Sakas or eastern Scythians. This further implies that the
Getae kept their tribal identification as Jatae or Jatahs intact as late as Timurs age.
Further, Toynbee, in discussing the modem Turkish word Jatah or cheteh,
which means guerilla, wonders, Is it perhaps derived from the tribal name
of the Getae (Massagetae and Thyssagetae) or Jats, who were the nearest
Nomadic neighbors of the Oxus-Jaxartes oases in the Achaemenian Age,
before they erupted out of the Steppe and poured over the Hindu Kush into
the Panjab in the second century B.C.? (Toynbee 1934, 2: 145). Interestingly,
Gibbon, the author of The Decline and Fall of Rome, believes that the Jatah of
Transoxiana mentioned by Timur were Getes (Gibbon 1850, 6: 249), suggesting the
survival of the name of the ancient race in Central Asia.
Briggs had this to say as early as 1829, in his History and Rise of Mahomedan Power in
India, about Jats: We have no satisfactory account of these Juts; but there seems reason
to believe them to be a horde of Tartars of the same stock as the Getae so often mentioned
in ancient history . (Briggs 1829, 1: 81). One after another, British and other
historians related the South Asian Jats to Scythian tribes, usually the Yuezhi
or the Getae. Syad Muhammad Latif, a Muslim author, wrote, A portion of
these settlers, the descendents of Masagetae, were called Getes, from whom
sprung the modem Jats (Latif 1891, 56). Even some Indian historians, who are not
Jats themselves, claim that the Jats are descendants of the Getae. Satya Shrava, in his
1981 work, Sakas in India, said, The Jats are no other than the Massagetae (Great Getae)
mentioned in Diodoms as an off-spring of the ancient Saka tribe. a fact now well-known
(Shrava 1981,2-3).
J.F. Hewitt related the Thracian Getae, a tribe mentioned by Herodotus, to
the Massagetae and the Jats, stating: These Thracian Getae must, as a Northern race
of individual proprietors, have held their lands on the tenure existing in the Jat villages,
and these Indian Jats, or Getae, have not degenerated from the military prowess of their
forefathers, for those Jats who have become Sikhs in the Punjab, are known as
some of the best and most reliable Indian soldiers. Further evidence both of
early history and origin of the race of Jats, or Getae, is given by the customs and
geographical position of another tribe of the same stock, called the Massagetae, or Great
Getae (Hewitt 1894, 482). We will discuss later the relationship between the Thracian
Getae, or Tyrigetae, with the other branches of the Getae.
Massagetae. When first hearing the word Massagetae, a Sikh would quickly be
reminded of Massa Ranghar or the Great Ranghar, a Muslim Rajput, who insulted the
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greatest Sikh Shrine, the Golden Temple or Harmandar (Durbar) Sahib, by seizing it and
making it a dancing hall, 3 centuries ago. It was relatively common for Jat Sikhs in those
days to have Persian or Farsi personal names and Massa or Massa Singh was common.
Even today some Sikhs are named Massa Singh, or the Great Singh. Massa was simply
the Persian or Pehlavi equivalent of the Indian Maha, meaning great (Pawar 1993,
364). This is also the view of Elliot, who says Massa means Great in the PehIavi
language (Elliot 1870, 133). The root word Mas, in the Pehlavi glossary by Nyberb, is
believed to mean great (Nyberb 1974, 127). Thus it follows that Massagetae means
Great Getae. The ninth-century work De Universo of Rabanus Maurus clearly states,
The Massagetae are in origin from the tribe of the Scythians, and are called massagetae,
as if heavy, that is, strong Getae (Migne 1864, Col 439). Therefore, we can conclude that
the Massagetae are the Great Getae.
Thyssagetae. Little is known about Herodotuss Thyssagetae, other than that they
were found east of the river Don (Tanais) (Rawlinson 1928, 241). The Thyssagetae appear
to be a branch of the Gothic family, the lesser Goths as distinguished from the MassaGetae, the greater Goths' (H. Rawlinson 1880, 16). Therefore, the Thyssagetae were
the Lesser Getae, as Rawlinson equated Goths with Getae. Crooke endorses
Rawlinsons identification, claiming the Thyssagetae were the lesser Getae (Tod 1829,
72). The Getae and Goth connection will be discussed later. The Tisza or Tisa is one of the
main rivers of Central Europe. It rises in Ukraine, after passing through Hungary, it flows
into the Danube in Vojvodina, Serbia.
Massagetae and Thyssagetae = Da Yuezhi and Xiao Yuezhi. We have

already shown that the Iranian Massagetae can be equated with the obscure Yuezhi that
appeared on the borders of China, but can we be more precise? Views equating the
Massagetae with the Da Yuezhi are fairly common, such as the statement made by Edgar
Knobloch in his Monuments of Central Asia: This time the nomads were the YueChe (Yue-czi) who, according to one authority (Tolstov), could be the same
as the Greater Getae or Massagetae (Knobloch 2001, 15). Tod went further,
to equate the Massagetae, the Yuezhi, and the Indian Jats, as he says: We
will merely add, that the kingdom of the Great Getae, whose capital was on
the Jaxartes, preserved its integrity and name from the period of Cyrus to the
fourteenth century, when it was converted to Islam (Tod 1829, 127). The Yuchi,
established in Bactria and along the Jihun, eventually bore the name Jeta or Yetan, that is
to say, Getae. Their empire subsisted a long time in this part of Asia, and extended even to
India (Tod 1829, 78).
But eventually what strengthens the supposition that the Massagetae are the Yuezhi is
that the Yuezhi were divided into two groups, the Da Yuezhi and the Xiao Yuezhi, meaning
the Great and the Lesser Yuezhi, respectively. We have already shown that the
Massagetae must mean the Great Getae and Thyssagetae probably means Lesser Getae,
thereby suggesting a likelihood of both the Greek and Chinese both not only recognizing
the characteristic denomination of this tribe, but also remaining consistent. Repeating
Alexander Cunninghams comments, By the Chinese the Kushans were called Ta-Vueti, or the Great Lunar Race . That is, if Vue be taken for the Moon, But I incline to, take
Yue-ti or Gueti, the general name given by the Chinese And further, I think that as Ta
means Great, the Ta-Gweti must be the Massa-Getae (Cunningham 1894, 112). It also
seems possible that the Thyssagetae, who are known the Lesser Getae, as per Rawlinson
and Crooke, must correspond with the Xiao Yuezhi, meaning Lesser Yuezhi. Therefore, the
Greek and the Chinese must be identifying the same people. The conclusion is well put by
B.S. D.ahiya, who wrote about the Massagetae and Thyssagetae, These Guti people had
two divisions, the Ta-Yue-Che and Siao-Yue-Che, exactly corresponding to the
Massagetae and Thyssagetae of Herodotus (Dahiya 1980, 23). Therefore, the Iranian
Getae were probably the Yuezhi who appeared strangely on the Chinese frontiers and the
Chinese transcribed their name semi-vocally to Yuet with a dental t.
Some may be apprehensive about reducing the Massagetae and Thyssagetae to branches
of the Getae. But this supposition can be strengthened, as there are additional tribes with
the denomination Getae, such as the Thracian Tyrigetae, the Euergetae, and the
frozen Getae, which will be discussed later.
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For now, we can remark that it appears that the Massa term added to the Getae
perhaps denoted their military prowess, as they became famous for their
defeat of Cyrus the Great and later their hard-fought battles against
Alexander the Great in Bactria and Sogdiana. This compound name may be
analogous, therefore, to the naming of Great Britain. Perhaps this term was known to
both the Greeks and the Chinese as the original homeland of the Getae before they spread
out in various directions and at various times. If this belief is prudent, then the term
Thyssa, which means Lesser Getae, corresponding to the Xiao Yuezhi, may have had a
somewhat less spectacular, although no less important, history, hence Lesser Getae. The
other groups of Getae, whose names similarly must have characteristic or regional
meanings, will be discussed later.
If our supposition that the Yuezhi and Getae were different names for the same people,
t he n we can more precisely identify the Indo-Scythian invaders of India
rather as Getic invaders. Moreover, this identification may further show that the
Getes so often talked about by classical writers were originally from the Caspian
region. However, before we can claim the Indo Scythians to be Getic, we must first
examine yet another obscure tribe, known at the Ephthalites or White Huns, who entered
India after the Xiao Yuezhi or Kiddara Kushans . (Cunningham 1888,59). This is a tribe
whose name may strengthen our belief in the existence of a nation called Getes.
Yetha, the White Huns, or Ephthalites, were known to the Chinese as Ye-thai-li-to, a name curtailed to Yetha (Cunningham 1888, 28). Grousset claims the Yetai were
known as such by the Chinese since they derive their name from the royal clan of Yeta
(Grousset 1970, 67). In the Chinese work Sui-Shu the name of this tribe is I-ta (Enoki
O.N.E. 1998, 135). The Chinese authority Wei Chieh wrote in his His-Jan-chi, I had a
personal talk with some Ephthalites and knew that they also called themselves I-tein
(Enoki D.N.E. 1998, 135). I-tein renders the name phonetically close to the word Jatan,
which is the Panjabi plural form of Jat.
McGovern writes in detail about the Yetha: The origin and exact ethnic affinities of the
Ephthalites are shrouded in mystery. By the contemporary Greek and Roman histories
they are frequently referred to merely as Huns. The Hindu legends and traditions
regarding the dreaded Hunas also go back to the period of Ephthalites invasions and show
that the word Hun must have been intimately associated with the Ephthalites . We know,
however, from various sources that the Ephthalites were a very peculiar group and
differed radically from most of the Hunnish groups. Thus, for example, the Byzantine
writers are careful to distinguish between the ordinary Huns, such as those who invaded
Europe, and the Ephthalites, who are more specifically referred to as White Huns.
The Ephthalites, says Procopius, are of the Hunnish race and bear the Hunnish name,
but they are completely different from the Huns we know. They alone among the Hunnish
people have white skins and regular features. The Chinese are always careful to
distinguish between the Huns proper or the Hsuing-nu and the Ephthalites, whom they call
the Ye-ti-i-lido or Ye-da. .. According to one Chinese chronicle the Ephthalites were
ultimately of the same origin as the Yueji [Yuezhi] . (McGovem1939, 405) Some
authorities claim the name White Huns, as used by Procopius, is erroneous, but this does
not seem to be the case because, in India, Varahamihira refers to a group called
Sveta Hunas, and the Persians noted the Spet Hyon or White Huns (Biswas
1973,27-28).
Kephart believes the Massagetae divided into the Tokhari (Ta Yuezhi) and
the White Huns (Yetha) (Kephart 1960, 522-23). T. Watters claims, [Northwest
India] was conquered by the Veta, i.e., the Vets or Gats, apparently near the
end of our fifth century. The Veta, who were a powerful people in Central Asia, in the
fifth century, are also said to have been of the Vue-Chi stock (Watters 1903,200-201).
Klaproth also sees the Veta or Vita as the descendants of the Yuezhi or Yueti (Klaproth
1826, XII, 135). And if we recall, Cunningham holds the Yetha to be the last wave of
Indo-Scythians (Cunningham 1888).
The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica states, Our earliest information about the Ephthalites
comes from the Chinese chronicles, in which it is stated that they were originally a tribe of
the great Vue-Chi [Da Yuezhi or Massagetae], living to the north of the Great Wall.
(E.B. 1911, 9: 680). The Chinese work Pei-shih states, [The Ephthalites] are a branch
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of the Ta-Yueh-chih (Enoki O.N.E. 1998, 139). Thakur writes, The annals of three
Chinese dynasties assert that the Yetha or Ephthalites were a branch of the great Vue-chi
race (Thakur 1967, 42). Thakur then refers to Ma-tuan-lin: Ma-tuan-lin in his
Encyclopaedia has given two comments on the origin of the Ephthalites: (i) Ye-ta belonged
to the Ta-yue-chi stock but according to some they are a branch of the Kao-che; and (li) Itan belonged to the same race as the Ta-yuechi. (Thakur 1967, 50). In both cases it seems
that the Ephthalites are descended from the Great Yuezhi, and the Ephthalites are also
shown as coming from a different origin than the Huns. The weight of authority, the
testimony of Chinese accounts, and the phonetic resemblance between Yuezhi or Yueti
(Klaproth 1826, 288) with the Yetha or Ita (Enoki O.N.E. 1998, 141, 157) is too strong to
ignore. The name Ita used by the Northern Dynasties (Enoki O.N.E. 1988, 157) renders it
seemingly close to the latii of Pliny, and to the name of Jat or Jata, for that matter. By
examining the customs of the Ephthalites, even more strength is added to this theory.
That the Ephthalites practiced sun worship has been suggested by Enoki, who says,
[That] the Ephthalites built their tents with their entrances facing to the east would also
imply the practice of sun-worship among them (Enoki O.N.E. 1988, 175). He also adds, We
may also recall the practice of sun-worship among the Massagetae (Herodotus I, 212) and
the Kushanians [Ta Yuezhi] (Enoki O.N .E. 1998, 175). Now the implied practice of sun
worship still exists today in the structure of the modem Panjabi villages.
Further, Enoki suggests that the Yetha worshipped the Fire-god (Mithra) and the
God of Heaven (Daeva-Worship), thereby remaining consistent with his idea of the Iranian
origin of the Yetha (Enoki O.N.E. 1998, 177). Based on the coins of the Ephthalites, namely
the coins of Khingila (father of Toramana Jauvla), Gobl suggests that the later Ephthalites
may have followed the practice of skull deformation (Gobl 1967, 200-201). At this
stage it is difficult to determine whether they originally practiced this custom or it was
adopted (Gobl 1967, 200-206). Nonetheless, this practice was prevalent among many of
the Sannatian tribes, most especially, the Alans (Sulimirski 1970).
Another peculiar habit that was unique to the Yetha, as opposed to the other Hunnish
groups, was their practice of polyandry. McGovern writes: One feature of the Ephthalite
social culture is worthy of especial mention, namely the fact that they went in for
polyandry, or the custom whereby each woman was allowed to have several husbands .
the various husbands were for the most part brothers, the eldest brother marrying the
girl, and the younger brothers being automatically admitted to conjugal rights . The fact
that the Ephthalites went in for polyandry is of especial interest inasmuch as this custom
was entirely unknown to the other Hunnish tribes . (McGovern 1939, 406). The
Massagetae were known to have a similar practice, in which they kept all women
in common, and any male had access to the females. Herodotus writes, Each man has but
one wife, yet all the wives are held in common; for this is a custom of the Massagetae
(Rawlinson 1928, 80). Enoki notes this as well: Massagetae, an Iranian tribe inhabiting the
course of the Syr Darya and the north bank of the Aral River, had this custom [polyandry]
(Enoki O.N.E. 1998, 181). Whether this is accurate or not, Pawar claims that certain Jat
tribes followed a similar practice as that mentioned by Herodotus (pawar 1993, 303).
Minns writes: The [Ephthalites] had supplanted the Yue-chih, and destroyed the
kingdom of the Kushanas. We hear of their polyandry, a primitive
Malthusianism which seems to have been endemic in their country, as it is
ascribed to the Massagetae, to the Yue-chih and Tu-huo-Io or Tochari, and to
the Vi-tao (Minns 1971,93). The Jats are well known in India for widow ret1llliage and
allowing for levirate marriage, that is, the marriage of the widow with the younger brother
of the deceased.
The Gujars, who may represent the Gurjara tribe (Rose 1883, 2: 306), still practice their
nomadic life, including vertical transhumance. Baines writes about the Gujars: Next to the
Jat in rank, and probably akin in ongm, comes the Gujar [which] is now generally
affliated to the Gurjara, a tribe which was settled in the neighborhood of the
Caspian, and entered India either in company with or at the same time as,
the Yetha or White Huna, of whom they are said to have been it branch.
(Baines 1912, 44).
In any event, the Yetha appear to have significantly influenced the Jat and Rajput people
of northwest India. Grousset puts it well: Yet from the second half of the seventh century
the Huns [Ephthalites] of India vanish from history, no doubt either exterminated or
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absorbed by the Punjabis. Some of their clans most likely succeeded in gaining admission to
the Hindu aristocracy, in the manner of the Rajput clan of Gurjara, which may possibly
have the same origin. (Grousset 1970, 72). Amongst Rajputs, the Hun tribe represents one
of the 36 royal races of Rajasthan (Tod 1829, 131). Tod recognizes this tribe as the
descendants of the White Huns (Tod 1829, 132-33). V.A. Smith believes the White Huns to
be the ancestors of the agnikula or frrebom tribes of the Rajputs. He says, [T]here is no
doubt that the Parihars and many other famous Rajput clans of 30 Sundeep S. Jhutti, The
Getes, Sino-Platonic Papers, 127 (October, 2003) the north were developed out of the
barbarian hordes [White Huns] which poured into India during the fifth and sixth
centwies (Smith 1914,322). It appears that some of the successful clans of the Yetha or
White Huns were absorbed into the Jat and Rajput fold, who were themselves simply
earlier settlers from Central Asia. Many scholars believe that the proud Rajput clans of
Rajputana [Rajasthan] and stalwart Jats of the Punjab are likewise descended, in part at
least, from these ancient invaders [White Huns], even though the Gurjaras [Gujars], the
Rajputs and the Jats have long since adopted an Indian language and been
absorbed in the vast bulk of Hinduism. (McGovern 1939,419). Cunningham states,
But the successive Scythian invasions of the Sakas, the Kushans and the White Huns,
were followed by permanent settlements of large bodies of their countrymen, which lasted
for many centuries (Cunningham 1894, 93). We can replace the word Scythian with
Gets or Guts.
Etymology of Jat. If we look up the word Jat in the well-respected Panjabi

Dictionary by Maya Singh, who was designated to create this lexicon by Denzil Ibbetson (at
that time Director of Public Instruction), we find, The name of a great tribe,
descendents of the Massagetae, which forms the backbone of the Punjab
peasantry, they are usually farmers and may be of any religion (M.Singh 1895, 485).
It first should be mentioned that Getae is pronounced GUT-AY. Strabo pluralizes the
Getae as Getan (Jones 1928 3, 221). Further, Russian authors, such as Sulimirski and
Yablonsky, pluralize the Getae as Getan. We can compare this to the pluralization of the
word Jat in Panjabi, Jatan (Dhillon 1994, 110). This Jatan is very close to Getan
and probably represents a palatalization of the latter. Palatalization is the shifting of a
sound so that it is made by the blade of the tongue against the hard palate (notice how your
tongue moves when you say keys and then the palatalized cheese), and is a frequent
enough sound change in many languages (Mallory and Mair 2000, 120). In the singular
case, then, Get (Gut) could be palatalized into Jat or Jut. It should be further
mentioned that in Hindi, Jat is pronounced Jaut, rhyming with hot, which renders it
perhaps with a palatalization of Got.
Further, if we examine Jat or Jut from the Yuezhi or Yuti angle, we find that they
are again very close. Yuti, being possibly the semi-vocal Sinitic transcription of Getae, is
rendered once again very close to the pronunciation of Jat or Jut. The 1911
Encyclopedia Britannica, under the subject Yue-Chi, summarizes this
etymology: Some authorities consider that the Vue-Chi are the same as the
Getae and that the original form of the name was Yut or Get, which is also
supposed to appear in the Indian Jat. (B.B. 1911,28: 944).
Therefore, Jat < Jut < Yut(i) < Get(i). Moreover, the Jats could be the remnants of the
invading Yuts or Guts. This is the view of Dhillon, who attributes it to the rigid Hindu caste
system, which involved forced endogamy (Dhillon 1994, 16) and ritual purity. It seems the
palatalized form of the tribal name Getae was retained intact as Jettah or Jatta in
Transoxiana up until the time of Timur, as testified by his Zafarnama (Twigg 1870, 31819). Further, even in Punjab today, a term of endearment used to address a Jat is Jatta
(Pawar 1993, 339). However, those Getic tribes that were noted in the west
remained Getae, as in the Thracian Getae, and were later known as Goths by
the Roman writers, as will be demonstrated later. So if we believe that the name of
the tribe of these ancient invaders remained intact, what about their physical
characteristics-do they bear the impress of Central Asian origin?
Scheme of Indo-European migrations
from c. 4000 to 1000 BCE according to
t h e Kurgan hypothesis. The magenta
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area corresponds to the assumed

Urheimat (Samara culture, Sredny Stog
culture). The red area corresponds to the
area which may have been settled by
Indo-European-speaking peoples up to c.
2500 BCE; the orange area to 1000 BCE.
An increasing amount of evidence supports the hypothesis that horses were
domesticated in the Eurasian Steppes approximately 40003500 BCE.[1][2][3] Recent
discoveries in the context of the Botai culture
suggest that Botai settlements in the Akmola
Province of Kazakhstan are the location of the
earliest domestication of the horse. A genetic
study published in 2012 that performed
genomic sampling on 300 work horses from
local areas as well as a review of previous
studies of archaeology, mitochondrial DNA,
andY-DNA suggested that horses were
originally domesticated in the western part of
the Eurasian steppe. The Indo-Iranians and their expansion are strongly associated with
the Proto-Indo-European invention of the chariot.
Map of the approximate maximal extent of the Andronovo culture. The formative
Sintashta-Petrovka culture is shown in darker red. The location of the earliest spokewheeled chariot finds is indicated in purple. Adjacent and overlapping cultures (Afanasevo
culture, Srubna culture, BMAC) are shown in green. The Sintashta culture emerged from
the interaction of two antecedent cultures. Its immediate predecessor in the Ural-Tobol
steppe was the Poltavka culture, an offshoot of the cattle-herding Yamnaya
horizon that moved east into the
region between 2800 and 2600 BCE.
Several Sintashta towns were built over
older Poltovka settlements or close to
Poltovka cemeteries, and Poltovka motifs
are common on Sintashta pottery.
Sintashta material culture also shows the
influence of the late Abashevo culture, a
collection of settlements in the forest
steppe zone north of the Sintashta region
that were also predominantly pastoralist.[6]
The first Sintashta settlements appeared around 2100 BCE, during a period of climatic
change that saw the already arid Kazakh steppe region become even more cold and dry.
The marshy lowlands around the Ural and upper Tobol rivers, previously favoured as
winter refuges, became increasingly important for survival. Under these pressures both
Poltovka and Abashevo herders settled permanently in river valley strongholds, eschewing
more defensible hill-top locations.[7] The Abashevo culture was already marked by
endemic intertribal warfare;[8] intensified by ecological stress and competition for
resources in the Sintashta period, this drove the construction of fortifications on an
unprecedented scale and innovations in military technique such as the invention of the war
chariot. The Sintashta economy came to revolve around copper metallurgy.
Copper ores from nearby mines (such as Vorovskaya Yama) were taken to Sintashta
settlements to be processed into copper and arsenical bronze. This occurred on an
industrial scale: all the excavated buildings at the Sintashta sites of Sintashta, Arkaim and
Uste contained the remains of smelting ovens and slag.[7] Much of this metal was destined
for export to the cities of the BactriaMargiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) in Central
Asia. The metal trade between Sintashta and the BMAC for the first time connected the
steppe region to the ancient urban civilisations of the Near East: the empires and citystates of Iran andMesopotamia provided an almost bottomless market for metals. These
trade routes later became the vehicle through which horses, chariots and ultimately IndoIranian-speaking people entered the Near East from the steppe.
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The Yamna culture dating to the 36th23rd centuries, was preceded by the Sredny Stog
culture, Khvalynsk culture and Dnieper-Donets culture, while succeeded by the Catacomb
culture and the Srubna culture. The Yamna culture is identified with the late Proto-IndoEuropeans (PIE) in the Kurgan hypothesis of
Marija Gimbutas. It is the strongest candidate for
t h e Urheimat (homeland) of the Proto-IndoEuropean language, along with the preceding
Sredny Stog culture, now that archaeological
evidence of the culture and its migrations has
been closely tied to the evidence from linguistics.
T he Sredny Stog culture dating from the 5th millennium BC is a pre-kurgan
archaeological culture, named after the Russian term for the Dnieper river islet of
Seredny Stih, Ukraine, where it was first located, dating from the 5th millennium BC. It
was situated across the Dnieper river on both its shores, with sporadic settlements to the
west and east. The Sredny Stog culture seems to have had contact with the
agricultural Cucuteni-Trypillian culture in the west. Most notably, it has perhaps
the earliest evidence of horse domestication (in phase II), with finds suggestive of cheekpieces (psalia).
There is an agreement that the PIE community split into two major groups
from wherever its homeland was situated (its location is unknown), and whenever
the timing of its dispersal (also unknown). One headed west for Europe and became
speakers of Indo-European (all the languages of modern Europe save for
Basque, Hungarian, Estonian, and Finnish) while others headed east for Eurasia to
become Indo-Iranians. Present day Romania is the turntable, the
intersection of all indo-european branches!!
T h e BactriaMargiana Archaeological Complex (or BMAC, also known as the
Oxus civilization) is the modern archaeological designation for a Bronze Age civilisation
of Central Asia, dated to ca. 23001700 BCE, located in present day northern Afghanistan,
eastern Turkmenistan, southern Uzbekistan and western Tajikistan, centered on the
upper Amu Darya(Oxus River). Sarianidis excavations from the late 1970s onward
revealed numerous monumental structures in many sites, fortified by impressive walls and
gates. Reports on the BMAC were mostly confined to Soviet journals,[1] until the last years
of the Soviet Union, so the findings were largely unknown to the West until Sarianidis
work began to be translated in the 1990s.
The inhabitants were farmers who kept herds of goats and sheep and grew wheat and
barley, with origins in southwest Asia. The inhabitants of the BMAC were sedentary people
who practised irrigation farming of wheat and barley. With their impressive material
culture including monumental architecture, bronze tools, ceramics, and
jewellery of semiprecious stones, the complex exhibits many of the hallmarks of
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civilization. The complex can be compared to proto-urban settlements in the Helmand

basin at Mundigak in western Afghanistan and Shahr-i Shkhta in eastern Iran, or at
Harappa and Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley.
Sarianidi regards Gonur as the capital of the complex in Margiana throughout the Bronze
Age. The palace of North Gonur measures 150 metres by 140 metres, the temple at
Togolok 140 metres by 100 metres, the fort at Kelleli 3 125 metres by 125 metres, and the
house of a local ruler at Adji Kui 25 metres by 25 metres. Each of these formidable
structures has been extensively excavated. While they all have impressive fortification
walls, gates, and buttresses, it is not always clear why one structure is identified as a
temple and another as a palace. Extensive irrigation systems have been discovered at the
Geoksiur Oasis.
Models of two-wheeled carts from c. 3000 BCE found at Altyn-Depe are the earliest
complete evidence of wheeled transport in Central Asia, though model wheels have come
from contexts possibly somewhat earlier. Judging by the type of harness, carts were
initially pulled by oxen, or a bull. However camels were domesticated within the BMAC. A
model of a cart drawn by a camel of c. 2200 BCE was found at Altyn-Depe.
There is evidence of sustained contact between the BMAC and the Eurasian steppes to the
north, intensifying c. 2000 BCE. In the delta of the River Amu Darya where it reaches the
Aral Sea, its waters were channeled for irrigation agriculture by people whose remains
resemble those of the nomads of the Andronovo Culture. This is interpreted as nomads
se t t ling down to agriculture, after
contact with the BMAC. The culture
they
created
is
known
as
[13]
Tazabagyad. About 1800 BCE the
walled BMAC centres decreased
sharply in size. Each oasis developed
its own types of pottery and other
objects. Also pottery
of the
Andronovo-Tazabagyab culture to the
north appeared widely in the Bactrian
and Margian countryside. Many BMAC
strongholds continued to be occupied
and Andronovo-Tazabagyab coarse
incised pottery occurs within them
(along with the previous BMAC pottery) as well as in pastoral camps outside the mudbrick
walls. In the highlands above the Bactrian oases in Tajikistan, kurgan cemeteries of the
Vaksh and Bishkent type appeared with pottery that mixed elements of the late BMAC
and Andronovo-Tazabagyab traditions.
A significant section of the archaeologists are more inclined to see the culture as begun by
farmers in the Near Eastern Neolithic tradition, but infiltrated by Indo-Iranian speakers
from the Andronovo culture in its late phase, creating a hybrid. In this perspective, ProtoIndo-Aryan developed within the composite culture before moving south into the Indian
subcontinent.[14] As James P. Mallory phrased it It has become increasingly clear that ..
steppe cultures were transformed as they passed through a membrane of Central Asian
urbanism. The fact that typical steppe wares are found on BMAC sites and that intrusive
BMAC material is subsequently found further to the south in Iran, Afghanistan, Nepal,
India and Pakistan, may suggest then the subsequent movement of Indo-Iranian-speakers
after they had adopted the culture of the BMAC.[20]
The Andronovo, BMAC and Yaz cultures have been associated with Indo-Iranians. The
Indo-Iranians were a community that spoke a common language prior to their branching
off into the Iranian and Indo-Aryan languages. Iranian refers to the languages of Iran
(Iranian), parts of Pakistan (Balochi and Pashto), Afghanistan (Pashto and Dari), and
Tadjikistan (Tajiki) and Indo-Aryan, Sanskrit, Urdu and its many related languages.
(Carl C. Lamberg-Karlovsky: Case of the Bronze Age). By the early 1st millennium
Scythian tribes, along with Cimmerians, Sarmatians and Alans populated the steppes north
of the Black Sea.
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The Indo-Aryan migration was part of the Indo-Iranian migrations from the
Andronovo culture into Anatolia, Iran and South-Asia. The Indo-Iranian migrations took
place in two waves.[6][7]
The first wave, starting at 1700BC consisted of a migration into Anatolia, founding the
Hittite empire and Mittani kingdom, and a migration south-eastward, over the Hindu Kush
into northern India. It is believed that Indo-Aryans reached Assyria in the west and the
Punjab in the east before 1500 BC: the Hurrite speaking Mitanni rulers, influenced by
Indo-Aryan, appear from 1500 in northern Mesopotamia, and the Gandhara grave culture
emerges from 1600. This suggests that Indo-Aryan tribes would have had to be present in
the area of the Bactria-Margiana Complex
(southern Turkmenistan /northern
Afghanistan) from 1700 BC at the latest (incidentally corresponding with the decline of that
culture).
Anatolia Hittites and Mittani. The only linguistic remains in a Hittite horse-training
manual written by one Kikkuli the Mitannian. Other evidence is found in references to
the names of Mitanni rulers and the gods they swore by in treaties; these remains are
found in the archives of the Mitannis neighbors. The time period for this is about 1500
BC.[14]:257 In a treaty between the Hittites and the Mitanni, the deities Mitra, Varuna,
Indra, and Nasatya (Ashvins) are invoked. Kikkulis horse training text includes technical
terms such as aika (eka, one), tera (tri, three), panza (pancha, five; compare with Gr.
pente), satta (sapta, seven), na (nava, nine; compare with Lat. novem), vartana (vartana,
turn, round in the horse race; compare with Lat. vertere, vortex). The numeral aika one
is of particular importance because it places the superstrate in the vicinity of Indo-Aryan
proper as opposed to Indo-Iranian or early Iranian (which has aiva) in general.[15]
Indian Subcontinent- Vedic culture. The standard model for the entry of the IndoEuropean languages into South Asia is that this first wave went over the Hindu Kush, into
the headwaters of the Indus and later the Ganges. The earliest stratum of Vedic Sanskrit,
preserved only in the Rigveda, is assigned to roughly 1500 BC.[14]:258[16] From the Indus,
the Indo-Aryan languages spread from c. 1500 BC to c. 500 BC, over the northern and
central parts of the subcontinent, sparing the extreme south. The Indo-Aryans in these
areas established several powerful kingdoms and principalities in the region, from eastern
Afghanistan to the doorstep of Bengal. The most powerful of these kingdoms were the
post-Rigvedic Kuru (in Kurukshetra and the Delhi area) and their allies the Paclas
further east, as well as Gandhara and later on, about the time of the Buddha, the kingdom
of Kosala and the quickly expanding realm of Magadha. The latter lasted until the 4th
century BC, when it was conquered by Chandragupta Maurya and formed the center of the
Mauryan empire.
In eastern Afghanistan and southwestern Pakistan, whatever Indo-Aryan languages were
spoken there were eventually pushed out by the Iranian languages. Most Indo-Aryan
languages, however, were and still are prominent in the rest of the Indian subcontinent.
Today, Indo-Aryan languages are spoken in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka,
Fiji and the Maldives.
The second wave is interpreted as the Iranian wave.[9]:4243 The first Iranians to
reach the Black Sea may have been the Cimmerians in the 8th century BC. They were
followed by the Scythians, who are considered a western branch of the Central Asian
Sakas. Sarmatian tribes, of whom the best known are the Roxolani
(Rhoxolani), Iazyges (Jazyges) and the Alani (Alans), followed the Scythians
westwards into Europe in the late centuries BCE and the 1st and 2nd centuries of the
Common Era (The Age of Migrations) . The populous Sarmatian tribe of the
Massagetae, dwelling near the Caspian Sea, were known to the early rulers of
Persia in the Achaemenid Period. In the east, the Saka occupied several areas in Xinjiang,
from Khotan to Tumshuq.
The Medes, Parthians and Persians begin to appear on the Iranian plateau from c. 800 BC,
and the Achaemenids replaced Elamite rule from 559 BC. Around the first millennium of
the Common Era (AD), the Kambojas, the Pashtuns and the Baloch began to settle on the
eastern edge of the Iranian plateau, on the mountainous frontier of northwestern and
western Pakistan, displacing the earlier Indo-Aryans from the area.
In Central Asia, the Turkic languages have marginalized Iranian languages as a result of
t h e Turkic expansion of the early centuries AD. Extant major Iranian languages are
Persian, Pashto, Balochi and Kurdish, besides numerous smaller ones.
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Spread of Vedic-Brahmanic culture. Map of northern India in the later Vedic age.
River Indus is shown by its Sanskrit name Sindhu. The location of Vedic shakhas is labelled
in green. Thar desert is in orange. Main
article: Vedic period During the Early Vedic
Period (ca.1500-800 BCE[web 1]) the Vedic
culture was centered in the northern
Punjab, or Sapta Sindhu.[web 1] During the
Later Vedic Period (ca.800-500 BCE[web 2])
the Vedic culture started to extend into the
western Ganges Plain,[web 2] centering
ar ound Kuru and Panchala,[14] and had
some influence[15] at the central Ganges
Plain after 500 BCE.[web 3] Sixteen Mahajanapada developed at the Ganges Plain, of which
the Kuru andPanchala became the most notable developed centers of Vedic culture, at the
western Ganges Plain[web 2][14]
The Scythians were mentioned as inhabiting large areas in the central Eurasian
steppes starting with the 7th century BC up until the 4th century AD. Their historical
appearance coincided with the rise of equestrian semi-nomadism from the Carpathian
Mountains of Europe to the Altai mountains of present-day Mongolia in the Far East
during the 1st millennium BC.
T h e Parthian Empire (mostly
Western Iranian) is shown in
red, other areas, dominated by
Scythia (Eastern Iranian), in
orange.
Conclusions which might be
drawn thus far, by an
increasing number of studies by
Russian
scholars, from an
mtDNA perspective, are (i)
an early, Bronze Age mixture of both west and east Eurasian lineages, with western
lineages being found far to the East, but not vice-versa; (ii) an apparent reversal by Iron
Age times, with increasing presence of East Eurasian lineages in the western steppe; (iii)
the possible role of migrations from the sedentary south: the BalkanoDanubian and Iranian regions toward the steppe.[25][26][27]
Ancient Y-DNA data was finally provided by Keyser et al in 2009. They studied the
haplotypes and haplogroups of 26 ancient human specimens from the Krasnoyarsk area
inSiberia were dated from between the middle of the 2nd millennium BC and the 4th
century AD (Scythian and Sarmatian timeframe). Nearly all subjects belong to
haplogroup R-M17. The authors suggest that their data shows that between Bronze and
Iron Ages the constellation of populations known variously as Scythians,
Andronovians, etc. were blue- (or green-) eyed, fair-skinned and light-haired
people who might have played a role in the early development of the Tarim
Basin civilization. Moreover, this study found that they were genetically more
closely related to modern populations of eastern Europe than those of
central and southern Asia.[28] The ubiquity and utter dominance of R1a Y-DNA
lineage contrasts markedly with the diversity seen in the mtDNA profiles.
The Olanesti/Romania treasure is unique in Europe. Discovered in the 1960 the artefacts
are dated to the 5th century BC. The treasure contain six helmets, five greaves and an oil
lamp. All the pieces are from the army of the Alexander The Great under Zopyrion
command.
Indo-Scythians is a term used to refer to Scythians (Sakas), who migrated into parts
o f central and northern South Asia (Sogdiana, Bactria,
Arachosia, Gandhara, Sindh, Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana,
Rajasthan, UP and Bihar.), from the middle of the 2nd
century BC to the 4th century AD. Pliny the Elder (Gaius
Plinius Secundus, AD 2379) claims that the Persians
gave the name Sakai only to the Scythian tribes nearest
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to them.[5] Another people, the Gimirrai,[6] who were

known to the ancient Greeks as theCimmerians, were
closely associated with the Sakas. In ancient Hebrew
texts, theAshkuz (Ashkenaz) are considered to be a
direct offshoot from the Gimirri (Gomer).
The Massagetae, or Massageteans (Greek: , Massagetai),[1] were an ancient
Eastern Iranian nomadic confederation,[2][3][4][5][6] inhabiting the steppes of Central Asia
east of the Caspian Sea, in modern-day Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, western Uzbekistan,
and southern Kazakhstan. They are known primarily from the writings of Herodotus.
The Dahae (Persian: ; Sanskrit: Dasa; Latin: Dahae; Greek: (Daoi), ,
(Daai), (Dasai)[1]), or Dahaeans were a confederacy of three Ancient Iranian tribes
who lived in the region to the immediate east of the Caspian Sea. They spoke an Eastern
Iranian language. The first dateable mention of this nomad confederacy appears in the list
of nations of Xerxes the great Daeva inscription. In this list of the peoples and provinces of
t h e Achaemenid Empire, the Dahae are identified in Old Persian as Dha and are
immediately followed by a Saka group, who are listed as being neighbors of the Dha.
The Dahae, together with the Saka tribes, are known to have fought in the Achaemenid
armies at the Battle of Gaugamela. Following the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, they
joined Alexander of Macedon in his quest to India.
The Sarmatians of the east became the Alans, who also ventured far and wide, with a
branch ending up in Western Europe and North Africa, as they accompanied the Germanic
Vandals during their migrations. Another group of Alans allied with Goths to defeat the
Romans and ultimately settled in what is now called Catalonia (Goth-Alania).[44]
worldhistorymaps.info/CentralAsia: By 700 BC, Eastern Iranian tribes known

collectively as the Scythians (Sakas) dominated most of Central Asia. The Scythians
werent a unified nation; they were a series of independent tribes with similar languages
and customs. For example, the Massagetae occupied Transoxiana, while the Dahae
were in Margiana, the Bactrians near India, the Chorasmians near the Aral sea, etc.
They often raided neighboring lands such as Iran and Armenia. They attacked Assyria in
676 BC but were defeated by King Esarhaddon. The Sakas, probably descendents of
the Massagetae, pushed by the Yuezhi/Tocharians, fled in what became a massive
invasion towards Bactria and Parthia, when the Tocharians settled in Sogdiana.
Transoxiana and Bactria were the first Greek provinces to fall to these Sakas. In 145 BC
the Greco-Bactrian city of Alexandria-on-the-Oxus (Ai-Khanoum) was destroyed during a
massive Saka attack. The last Greek stronghold in Bactria, the Eucratidian kingdom of
Heliocles I, was destroyed in 130 BC. About the same time, the Tocharians evicted the
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Sakas from Bactria and forced them south into Parthian lands. King Phraates II of Parthia
was killed in battle against the Sakas, as
was his uncle and successor, King
Artabanus I. The Sakas settled for a while
in the province of Aria, which became
known as Sakastan. In the early 1st
century BC, the Parthian Empire
expanded eastward, defeating the
Tocharians and subjugating the Sakas.
Sakastan became a Parthian province
ruled by the Suren family. By 20 AD, one
of the Suren by the name of Gondophares became independent from the Parthians and
founded the Pahlava or Indo-Parthian Empire. The Pahlava Empire barely outlasted
Gondophares death in 45 AD, as the Tocharians were then united into the expanding
Kushan Empire. Shortly after 200 AD the Kushan Empire broke up into seperate
kingdoms, an East Kushan kingdom in the Punjab, and the West Kushans in
Afghanistan.
The Hephthalites (sometimes called White Huns, also known as Hoa or Hoa-tun
by the Chinese,Ephthalites by the
Greeks, and Hunas by the Indians)
were a confederation of nomadic
peoples in Central Asia during the 5th
and 6th centuries AD. Their precise
origins and composition remain
obscure. They were likely of Iranian or
Turkish decent (or a mixture of both).
According
to
the Encyclopaedia
Britannica, they had no cities or system
of writing, lived in felt tents, and
practiced polyandry, while very little is known of their language.[2]
wiki: The Yuezhi (Chinese: ; pinyin: Yuzh, literally Moon Clan) were an
ancient Indo-European people[5][6] often identified with the Tkharoi () of
Classical sources. They were originally settled in the arid grasslands of the eastern Tarim
Basin area, in what is today Xinjiang and western Gansu, in China, before they migrated to
Transoxiana, Bactria and then
northern South Asia, where one
branch of the Yuezhi founded the
Kushan Empire.[7][8] The Yuezhi
may have been an Europoid people,
as indicated by the portraits of their
kings on the coins they struck
following
their
exodus
to
Transoxiana (2nd1st century
BCE), some old place names in
Gansu explainable in Tocharian
languages,[28] and especially the
coins they struck in India as Kushans (1st3rd century CE). Ancient Chinese sources do
describe the existence of white people with long hair (the Bai people of the Shan Hai
Jing) beyond their northwestern border. Very well preserved Tarim mummies with
Europoid features (light hair and eyes) and dominated by Haplogroup R1a1a (Y-DNA),
today displayed at the rmqi Museum and dated to the 3rd century BCE, were found at
the ancient oasis on the Silk Road, Niya.
Shortly before 176 BCE, the Xiongnu invaded Yuezhi territory in the Gansu region and
achieved a crushing victory. Following Chinese sources, a large part of the Yuezhi people
therefore fell under the domination of the Xiongnu, and these may have been the ancestors
of the Tocharian speakers attested in the 6th century CE. A large group of the Yuezhi fled
from the Tarim Basin towards the Northwest circa 165 BCE,[37] first settling in the Ili
valley, immediately north of the Tian Shan mountains, where they confronted and
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defeated the Sai (Sakas or Scythians). The Tocharians defeated a related tribe, the
Issedones, called Wusun by the Chinese, then invaded Dzungaria and evicted the Northern
Sakas (called Sai Wang by the Chinese). The Sai then undertook their own migration,
which was to lead them as far as Kashmir, after travelling through a Suspended Crossing
(probably the Khunjerab Pass between present-day Xinjiang and northern Pakistan). The
Sakas ultimately established an Indo-Scythian kingdom in northern India. In the year 132
BCE, the Wusun, in alliance with the Xiongnu and out of revenge from an earlier conflict,
managed to dislodge the Yuezhi, forcing them to move south.[36] The Yuezhi crossed the
neighbouring urban civilization of the Dayuan in Ferghana and settled on the northern
bank of the Oxus, in the region of Transoxiana, in modern-day Tajikistan and Uzbekistan,
just north of the Hellenistic Greco-Bactrian kingdom. The Greek city of Alexandria on the
Oxus was apparently burnt to the ground by the Yuezhi around 145 BCE. In 124 BCE, the
Yuezhi were apparently involved in a war against the Parthians. Some time after 124 BCE
the Yuezhi moved south to Bactria. (The extremely wealthy Greco-Bactrian empire of
1000 cities declared independence in
about 255 BC. In 244 BC Andragoras
was overthrown by the Parni a tribe
descended from the Dahae, who founded
the Arsacid dynasty. The Bactrian king
Euthydemus I and his son Demetrius I
crossed the Hindu Kush mountains and
began the conquest of the Indus valley.
For a short time, they wielded great
power: a great Greek empire seemed to
have arisen far in the East. But this empire was torn by internal dissensions and continual
usurpations.)
The conquest of Bactria by the Yuezhi is recorded in Classical Greek sources, when Strabo
presented the Yuezhi as a Scythian tribe and explained that the Tokharitogether with
the Assianis, Passianis and Sakaraulistook part in the destruction of the Greco-Bactrian
kingdom in the second half of the 2nd century BCE: Most of the Scythians, beginning from
t he Caspian Sea, are called Dahae Scythae, and those situated more towards the east
Massagetae and Sacae; the rest have the common appellation of Scythians, but each
separate tribe has its peculiar name. All, or the greatest part of them, are nomads. The
best known tribes are those who deprived the Greeks of Bactriana, the Asii, Pasiani,
Tochari, and Sacarauli, who came from the country on the other side of the Jaxartes,
opposite the Sacae and Sogdiani.
As they settled in Bactria from around 125 BCE, the Yuezhi became Hellenized to some
degree, as suggested by their adoption of the Greek alphabet and by some remaining coins,
minted in the style of the Greco-Bactrian kings, with the text in Greek. The area of Bactria
they settled came to be known as Tokharistan, since the Yuezhi were called Tkharoi by
the Greeks. The Chinese continued to call them Yuezhi: City layouts and palaces are quite
similar to those of Daqin (the Roman empire). The skin of the people there is reddish
white. People are skilful at horse archery. Local products, rarities, treasures, clothing, and
upholstery are very good, and even India cannot compare with it.
By the end of the 1st century BCE, one of the five tribes of the Yuezhi, the Guishuang
managed to take control of the Yuezhi confederation and expanded to the east during the
1st century CE to found the Kushan Empire. During the 1st and 2nd century, the Kushan
Empire expanded militarily to the north and occupied parts of the Tarim Basin, their
original grounds, putting them at the center of the lucrative Central Asian commerce with
the Roman Empire. About 120 CE, Kushan troops expanded their power and influence in
the Tarim Basin.
Knock-on effect The Parthians from Iran and the Bactrian Greeks from Bactria had
both been dislodged by the Sakas coming down from somewhere near the Aral Sea. But the
Sakas had in turn been dislodged by the Yueh-chi who had themselves been driven west to
Xinjiang by the Xiongnu. The Xiongnu would not reach India for a long time. But the Yuehchi continued to press on the Shakas, and having forced them out of Bactria, it was sections
or clans of these Yueh-chi who next began to move down into India in the second half of
the first century CE. General Cunningham identified the Kushans as Gurjars or Gujjar.
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The Kushans were one of five branches of the

Yuezhi confederation,[7][8] a possibly Iranic[9] or
Tocharian,[10] Indo-European[11]nomadic people who
had migrated from the Tarim Basin and settled in
ancient Bactria.[8] Their official language, the IndoEuropean Bactrian language, is closely related to the
modern Afghan languages. The Kushans spread from
the Kabul River Valley to also encompass much of the
Indo-Greek Kingdom, from which they took their
first official language (Greek),[6] Bactrian alphabet,
Greco-Buddhist religion, coinage system, and art.
The last of the Kushan and Sassanian kingdoms were
eventually overwhelmed by the Hepthalites, another
Indo-European people from the north.
Recap: cultures going from Central Europe to East >> 1]Cucuteni/Dniester >>
2]Sredny
Stog/Dnieper
5th
millennium
Bc,
horse
domestication
>>
3]Yamna/Dnieper-Donets 36-23rd century BC, kurgan proto IE >> 4]Poltavka /Volga
27002100BC >> 5]bi-etnic Abashevo 25001 900BC Volga and southern Ural
Mountains 6]Sintashta-Petrovka/North of Caspian Sea 21001800BC earliest known
chariots & copper mining and bronze metallurgy >> 6]Andronovo/East of Caspian Sea
18001400BC, copper ore in the Altai Mountains >> 7]Tocharians/Tarim Basin maybe
linked with the Afanasevo culture of eastern Siberia (c. 3500 2500 BC), the Tarim
mummies(c. 1800 BC) and the Yuezhi of Chinese records >> 8] big-bang: kurgan
warriors meet BMAC 23001700 BCE farming civilisation/ Oxus/Amu_Darya
results a much stronger hybrid culture >> 9]Indus 1700BC first arian conquest >>
Anatolia Hittites 1600-1500Bc and Mittani 1400bc >> Vedic Indus Culture 1750500
BC >> Massageteans/on the Oxus are in the center of Scythian/Getae/Jet
continuum from Dniester to Indus. The Getes were known by the Greco-Romans
to the west, by the Chinese to the east, and by
the Indians and Persians to the south. In the
fourth and third centuries BC, after resisting
Alexander the Great, the Massagetae subdued
nearly all the nomad tribes of Central Asian
north of the Macedonian frontier, eastward to
the Tien-Shan Mountains, and possibly many
tribes of the Kazakhstan steppes; this led to a
tremendous extension of their culture. Sakas, Dahae, Daae, Sacae, Daks, Alans, Sarmatians,
ThracoGetians, Thyssagetae, Tyrigetae, Great Yuezhi, Ephthalites or White Huns,
Kushans, Tochari, Cimmerians, Goths, Iazygians, Roxolani, Dacians, there seems to be a
continuity between the vast steppes, from neolithic to the Middle Age.
Physical Characteristics of Jats. Risley writes the following about the Jats and
Rajputs of Panjab: We are concerned merely with the fact that there exists in the Punjab
and Rajputana at the present day, a defmite physical type, represented by the Jats and
Rajputs , which is marked by a relatively long (doUcho-cephalic) head; a straight, finely cut
(leptorrhine) nose; a long, symmetrically narrow face; a well developed forehead, regular
features, and high facial angle. The stature is high and the general build of the figure is well
proportioned, being relatively massive in the Jats and relatively slender in the Rajputs.
Throughout the group the predominant colour of the skin is a very light transparent
brown, with a tendency towards darker shades in the lower social strata. (Risley 1915,49)
Barstow writes about the physical characteristics of the Jat Sikhs, The Sikh Jat is
generally tall and muscular, with well shaped limbs, erect carriage, and strongly marked
and handsome features . In physique his is not surpassed by any race in India, if indeed
he is not put at the top of the tree in this respect (Barstow 1928, 166-67).
Now the Jats, after being in India for several centuries, obviously intenningled to some
degree with the previously settled populations, but still maintained their identity. The
main factor is probably the displacement of many of the original inhabitants of the Punjab
and surrounding areas toward the interior of India and the forced endogamy of the rigid
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Hindu caste system, which allows for practically no intermarriage between castes (Dhillon
1994, 16). Although in reality, the situation with the Indo-Scythian populations in the
Northwest is that they probably have undergone a process analogous to the American
South with regard to the local Dravidian and interleaving Aryan populations once settled
there. Moreover, the somewhat allowed institution of hyperagamy may have allowed for
women of lower status to marry men of higher status (Barstow 1928, 159). Still the Jats
may not be free from elements of subsequent invaders of India, such as the Arabs,
Ghaznavids, and Mughals.
Therefore, the physical characteristics of the Indo-Scythian descendants in northwest
India are discussed by Coon and Hunt who write: The second invasion [of India was by]
peoples who were related to the Scythians and Sarmatians. The tallest people are found in
Rajasthan and the Punjab and beards are fullest among the warrior castes and the Sikhs.
Most of these people have glossy black hair, although brown hair is not uncommon.
Reddish and blond hair is extremely rare. Almost all of them have brown eyes of various
shades, but one sees light and mixed eyes in rare individuals, particularly among the Sikhs.
(Coon and Hunt 1965,204-206)
Dhillon claims that around seventy percent of Sikhs are of the Jat background (Dhillon .
1994, 12). In his Germanic People: Their Origin, Expansion and Culture, Owen writes, In
the shape of face, stature and general physical build the Sikhs approximate the Nordic
type (Owen 1960, 50-51). Further, Rose says, [W]e find to this day in the Punjab a
physical type predominating which in many respects resembles that of certain European
races, and is radically different from the typical characteristics of the other Indian stocks
(Rose 1883, 1:58, 2: 362-63). Although physical characteristics alone probably do not
satisfy the more skeptical reader, perhaps a brief analysis of their customs, in addition to
the aforementioned practice of levirate marriage, will be helpful.
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Excerpts From - The GETES by Sundeep S. Jhutti - 2003 Alex

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Excerpts from THE GETES by Sundeep S.

Jhutti 2003 | Alex Imreh

Ethnogeneses Around the Black Sea and along the

Danube. Present day Romania, the turntable of Old &

Excerpts from THE GETES by Sundeep S. Jhutti 2003

THE GETES by Sundeep S.

Excerpts from THE GETES by Sundeep S. Jhutti 2003 | Alex Imreh

Excerpts from THE GETES by Sundeep S. Jhutti 2003 | Alex Imreh

Excerpts from THE GETES by Sundeep S. Jhutti 2003 | Alex Imreh

Excerpts from THE GETES by Sundeep S. Jhutti 2003 | Alex Imreh

Excerpts from THE GETES by Sundeep S. Jhutti 2003 | Alex Imreh

Excerpts from THE GETES by Sundeep S. Jhutti 2003 | Alex Imreh

Massagetae and Thyssagetae = Da Yuezhi and Xiao Yuezhi. We have

Excerpts from THE GETES by Sundeep S. Jhutti 2003 | Alex Imreh

Excerpts from THE GETES by Sundeep S. Jhutti 2003 | Alex Imreh

Excerpts from THE GETES by Sundeep S. Jhutti 2003 | Alex Imreh

Etymology of Jat. If we look up the word Jat in the well-respected Panjabi

Excerpts from THE GETES by Sundeep S. Jhutti 2003 | Alex Imreh

area corresponds to the assumed

Excerpts from THE GETES by Sundeep S. Jhutti 2003 | Alex Imreh

Excerpts from THE GETES by Sundeep S. Jhutti 2003 | Alex Imreh

civilization. The complex can be compared to proto-urban settlements in the Helmand

Excerpts from THE GETES by Sundeep S. Jhutti 2003 | Alex Imreh

Excerpts from THE GETES by Sundeep S. Jhutti 2003 | Alex Imreh

Excerpts from THE GETES by Sundeep S. Jhutti 2003 | Alex Imreh

to them.[5] Another people, the Gimirrai,[6] who were

worldhistorymaps.info/CentralAsia: By 700 BC, Eastern Iranian tribes known

Excerpts from THE GETES by Sundeep S. Jhutti 2003 | Alex Imreh

Excerpts from THE GETES by Sundeep S. Jhutti 2003 | Alex Imreh

Excerpts from THE GETES by Sundeep S. Jhutti 2003 | Alex Imreh

The Kushans were one of five branches of the

Excerpts from THE GETES by Sundeep S. Jhutti 2003 | Alex Imreh

Ethnogenesis *3. I2-Urnfield. I-Italic tribes. 536 depopulation.

About Alex Imreh

Ethnogeneses Around the Black Sea and along the

Excerpts from THE GETES by Sundeep S. Jhutti 2003 | Alex Imreh

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Excerpts from THE GETES by Sundeep S. Jhutti 2003 | Alex Imreh

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