History of Pakistan

Arts & Culture History
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Man, Jutts are from Jutland

Jutland - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Kharoshti was used in Gandhara and Afghanistan . But it was not the only script. The sister script which was Brahmi was more indigenous to the subcontinent. All of Ashoka's edicts all over the subcontinent including Gandhara were in Brahmi script. Some historians speculate that Brahmi was a purely indigenous development with the Indus script as a predecessor. It was used all over India and Pakistan. Brahmi script was found as far as Sri Lanka and a broken storage jar with inscriptions in Tamil Brahmi script was found in Quseir-al-Qadim,Egypt dating back to 1st century BCE. Two earlier Tamil Brahmi inscriptions were discoveries at the same site. The inscriped text is "பானை ஒறி” (paanai oRi) which means 'pot suspended in a rope net'. So Brahmi script was widely understood in the ancient world. It was Brahmi script which later gave rise to Gupta script which was prevalent in Punjab region, the Sharda script of Sindh and Kashmir and the nagari script of Northl India.

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Some historians speculate that he was the illegitimate son of a prince of the Nanda dynasty and a palace maid. The Nandas were the first "Shudra" dynasty in Indian History. His origin is still not clear. What is clear is that Chandragupta Maurya would not have ruled if not for Chanakya. He was the unquestionable power behind the throne. Chanakya guided both Chandragupta and his son. He is known as the Indian Machiavelli. He is alternately condemned for his ruthlessness and trickery and praised for his sound political wisdom and knowledge of human nature by historians and academics. All authorities agree, however, that it was mainly because of Kautilya that the Mauryan empire under Chandragupta and later under Ashoka became a model of efficient government.

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Gujjars history is not very clear but it is speculated that they were or white hun descent. They were sun worshippers and claimed to be SuryaVanshis .

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The Sakas conquered all the way till Ujjain in India where they were stopped by Samrat Vikramaditya who commemorated his victory by instituting a new calendar (Vikrama Samvat era). One century later the Sakas managed to capture Ujjain and introduced their calendar (Saka Calendar) which is still used as the official civil calendar in India along with the Gregorian calendar

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Pataliputra literally translates to "Son of Patali". Patali was the daughter of King Sudarshan. The name was changed to Patna by Sher Shah Suri when he made it his capital

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Didn’t know of this Jutland :hehe:

They came to Punjab and neighbouring areas but according to historians they are central Asian tribes.

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Nice work. I will read when I have more time.

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Kushans were white huns.

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Kharoshti script was introduced by darius (around 500 BC) and is based on Aramaic language. It is written from right to left, as it was introduced simultaneously work on other scripts began (maybe Brahmic script).

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I was actually joking. Although I read something about genetic testing and Ukraine somewhere today.

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Yes. What I meant to imply was that they were both sister scripts but Kharoshti was more region specific where as Brahmi was all over the region including Gandhara and Afghanistan.Both scripts were used for Gandhari and Prakrit. I remember reading that though Kharoshti was mostly written right to left, some inscriptions also show left to right direction.

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Beyond Brahmi, Indus text shaped modern scripts: study - Indian Express

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Under kanishka, Kushan empire was spread all over northern India (all the way to Pataliputra), the empire was stretched to Bactria, Kabul and khorasan valley. Kanishka was followed by two lines of succession, one line speaks of vajheshka and his son kanishka II. Their inscriptions have been found from chilas to ara and kamra on the eastern side of the Indus right upto sanchi in India. Their rule was limited.

The second line has a continuous series huvishka, vasudeva I, kanishka III and vasudeva II. Vasudevas successors are kanishka III and vasudeva II and their coins have been found mainly in Kabul valley and Punjab suggesting they had no control over mathura and other parts of India.

In the Indus Valley the Kushans were followed by later Kushans or little Kushans. Brahmi inscriptions start appearing on coins during their rule. The gakkars seem to have been ruling between Indus and Jhelum, shakas in multan and Sindh and shiladas between Jhelum and Chenab. The great Kushan empire fragmented into small tribal fiefdoms and they ruled until the coming of Huns in the fifth century.

One thing noticeable is influence of Iranian dieties on the buddhist dieties of gandhara suggesting close links with Persian culture. According to Chinese sources kanishka was the second Asoka, the patron of Buddhist faith.

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Interesting and informative. I like this segment of ‘Khabarnaa’ but can’t bear the rest of kharafaat and Bhaand in that program

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I dont watch khabarnaak, I was searching for something and came across this. Thought I should share it here.

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Interesting run down of the history.

Salman Rashid: Foreign Invaders Through Afghanistan

Greek historians of the Classical Age wrote a very curious observation about India (Pakistan). They wrote that India was a country that did not attack any other and that no other country attacked India. Indeed, the ruins of Moen jo Daro and Harappa, the two major Indus Valley Civilisation, show citadels and walls that were obviously not made to withstand attacks. They were more to keep a check on the people entering or leaving the city; perhaps with a view to prevent traders from evading payment of customs dues. It was as if our ancient ancestors had no threat of invasion. Though this remote period was separated from Greek writers by five thousand years in which much happened, the collective memory of the people of India held the word to be passed on to the Greeks.

That was our prehistory. But about 1700 BCE, came the great influx of speakers of the Aryan tongues. (Some Indian ‘scholars’ contest this invasion, asserting instead that India was the original home of this white-skinned, fair-haired, blue-eyed race whence they spread across the world. They tread on weak ground). The Aryan invasion changed everything for thereafter India lay open.

Even before Alexander brought his Macedonian, Greek, Persian and Scythian legions into this great and wonderful land, we know that Cyrus, the great Achaemenian king who ruled Persia from 550 until his death in 529 BCE had made Makran and Sindh a part of his eastern satrapy. At the same time, most of Afghanistan, modern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab were also under his control.

For the next two centuries this situation prevailed. Then Alexander dismantled the Persian empire to establish his own rule over what was once the Achaemenian Empire. But Alexander’s empire was as short-lived as he was himself. Barely had his body gone into rigor mortis that there erupted a contest that was to rage over two generations: the War of the Successors. These battles were fought to determine the worthiest successor to Alexander. Though the answer was never determined, the empire broke up between Alexander’s several generals.

Seleucus Nicator, gained control of Syria, Persia, Afghanistan and Central Asia. Meanwhile, here in India, the great Paurava was assassinated sometime about 318 BCE and, though it is moot if he had a hand in this dastardly act, Chandragupta Maurya, that brilliant man of the hour, rose to power. It was during this time that Seleucus took it into his head to emulate Alexander by invading India and claiming it as his own. He tried, was defeated by Chandragupta and had to settle on the far side of Afghanistan.

By 274 BCE, the empire had passed into the able hands of Chandragupta’s grandson Asoka who held Kabul, Kandahar and much of eastern Afghanistan also as part of his empire. But as is the wont of empires to rise and eventually decay, so too did the Mauryans fade away. Fourth generation descendents of Greek adventurers settled in Balkh (Mazar Sharif, Afghanistan) during the time of Alexander were now powerful enough under their leader Demetrius to completely subdue the Pakhtuns of eastern Afghanistan. By 184 BCE, Demetrius and his followers took control of Taxila as well. Today, we know them as the Indo or the Bactrian Greeks.

Sixteen years later, in 168 BCE, another wave of Greeks appeared on the western horizon. This time it was a descendent of Seleucus coming east to claim Alexander’s old kingdom. Demetrius was routed and what is now Pakistan changed from one set of Greek hands to another. The following fifty years were uncertain with kings changing in quick succession in Greek Pakistan. And then there came upon the scene descendents of the very people who had mocked the power of Darius, the king of Persia, in the latter years of the 6th century BCE.

Encouraged by the lose control of the Greeks on Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Scythians, fair-skinned horse rider from the wind-swept grasslands of Central Asia, poured down across the fords on the Oxus River. The Greeks were defeated and ousted from Pakistan and Afghanistan to be replaced by the Scythians. The year was about 110 BCE. So great was this influx that Sindh, where the Scythians settled in vast numbers came to be known to Greek geographers as Indo-Scythia. To local writers it was Saka Dvipa – the [river] Island of the Scythians. (The river island referred to the land between the two branches of the Sindhu River south of Hyderabad).

The Scythians, once taken by the Greeks as mere barbarians, had cultivated themselves in the meantime. They copied Greek arts, culture and town planning to a tee. Indeed, Indian sources refer to the Sakas and the Yavanas (as the Greeks were known in our part of the world) as one and the same people. Under their able king Maues, they flourished in what is now Pakistan.

The death of Maues in 53 BCE set the wheel in motion once again. This time it was the Parthians who were to take over Afghanistan and Pakistan. From the south-eastern shores of the Caspian Sea, came this nation of horse-riders known for their terrifying battle tactic of riding straight within a couple metres of the opposing army. There, at full gallop, they discharged their arrows held at the ready in their bows and wheeled quickly around riding out of range before their adversaries could even react. The ‘Parthian Shot’ (from which we get our modern ‘parting shot’) was a deadly tactic.

Thus came the Parthians riding rough shod across Pakhtun lands to take over what is now Pakistan. If their kinsfolk, the Scythians, had Maues, the Parthians had Gondophares to rebuild Taxila after the devastating earthquake of 19 CE. Maues died in about 50 CE to leave behind a great vacuum which was filled by another Central Asiatic horde. This time it was the Kushans who, like their kinsfolk, the Scythians and the Parthians, also came from the great expanse of Central Asia.

Three centuries went by under Kushan rule when both Afghanistan and Pakistan fell under the Persian Sassanian yoke after Emperor Shahpur II defeated the Kushans in the year 355. But this was a short-lived interlude. Across the landmass of Central Asia a great horde was marching relentlessly westward. The Huns who were to terrorise Europe under Attila had another branch moving south across the Oxus.

Under Tor Aman and his son Mehr Gul (Latinised as Toramana and Mihirakula), these savages laid waste, first, Afghanistan and then nearly all of what is now Pakistan. Not a mother’s son could stand up against these unholy barbarians who killed for the mere sport of it. Not until two Rajput princes, Yasodharman and Baladitya, formed a confederacy to defeat Mehr Gul in 528.

There followed five hundred years of peace in India. The Hindu Shahiya rulers expanded their sway across the Suleman Mountains to Kabul, Kandahar and Parwan in Afghanistan. They raised magnificent buildings and ruled well. Then, in the closing years of the 10th century, came the Turks under Subuktagin and his predatory son Mahmud. Unlike the Greeks or the Scythians who gave to India fine arts, culture and town planning, these impoverished savages were only plunderers seeking wealth in the name of their newly acquired belief: Islam.

They were followed by the Ghorids and then there came the great parade of kings in a period known as the Sultanate Kingdom. In between, from 1221 until 1398, the repeated incursions of the Mongols ravaged this land as they killed, destroyed and robbed. They began under Chengez Khan to dislodge and slay the cowardlyJalaluddin Khwarazm and ended with Temur the Lame who robbed everyone alike regardless of their religion and then gloated over his ‘service’ to Islam.

The 15th century was a period, after a very, very long time, that local dynasts ruled over northwest India. We had, first, the Syeds and then the Lodhis. This, incidentally, was the first time in history that a Pakhtun dynasty was ruling in this country. Babur, the first Mughal who claimed descent from Chengez Khan and Temur, dislodged the Pakhtuns. The Mughals ruled over India for the next two hundred years with the short interlude of Sher Shah Suri’s kingdom lasting five years – one cannot even mention his worthless son. The rest is what we know the British Raj and is known history.

It is commonly believed that the Ghaznavides, Ghorids, and the Sultanate kings were all Pakhtuns. This is the greatest falsehood ever fed to us. They were not Pakhtuns; they were, one and all, Turks. The originator of this idiotic fallacy is one Abul Qasim Farishta who wrote his Tarikh e Farishta in the middle years of the 17th century during the Mughal reign. He repeatedly referred to, and erroneously of course, the Turks as Afghans. Once that happened, every ignorant body began to believe that all those so-called conquerors were indeed Afghans.

This is another discussion on the myth of the invincible Afghan. There was no such animal in history. Beginning with Cyrus the Great and right through that great parade of invaders running down to the Mughals, the Afghans/Pakhtuns/Pashtuns either meekly submitted or were beaten into the dirt by every outsider. The Afghans/Pakhtuns/Pashtuns took every invader lying down. There was never any resistance for none is read of in history. The only tales of Pakhtun/Pashtun courage in combat are what they call seena gazette – tales passed down by word of mouth. We know well enough what merit they have as history.

The only time the Afghans ever stood up to an invader was against the British forces in the First Afghan War. To hide their discomfiture upon their ignominious defeat, the Brits invented the myth of the invincible Afghan, reinforcing the belief first created by Farishta.

Ever since that time, every idiot writer pretending to be an historian has referred to Afghanistan as the Graveyard of Empires. If that were true, if the Afghans really had ever been capable of defeating an outsider, the Achaemenians, Greeks, Scythians, Parthians, Kushans, Sassanians, Turks, Mongols, Mughals et al, having been trounced in that mythical Graveyard of Empires would never have made it to India. Not only did all those outsiders make it to India, they also held Afghanistan under their yoke.