The Scythians were Iranic equestrian tribes who were mentioned as inhabiting large areas in the central Eurasian steppes starting with the 7th century BCE up until the 4 th century CE. Their historical appearance coincided with the rise of equestrian semi-nomadism from the Carpathian Mountains of Europe to Mongolia in the Far East. The classical Scythians known to ancient Greek historians were located in the northern Black Sea and fore-Caucasus region. However, other Scythian groups encountered in Near Eastern and Achaemenid sources existed in Central Asia.Moreover, the term Scythian is also used by modern scholars in an archaeological context, i.e. any region perceived to display attributes of the Scytho-Siberian culture. the etymologies of ancient ethnic words for the Scythians in his work Four old Iranian ethnic names: Scythian – Skudra – Sogdian – Saka. In it, the names of Herodotus and the names of his title, except Saka, as well as many other words for Scythian, such as Assyrian Askuz and Greek Skuthes, descend from skeud-, an ancient Indo-European root meaning propel, shoot. Genetically they have European and Mongoloid futures. history i dont want to mention because historians often err like we have seen the examples in Ramayana and Mahabharata by Nehru and other so called SCHOLARS. For Herodotus, the Scythians were outlandish barbarians living north of the Black Sea in what are now Moldova and Ukraine.We have seen about him he is a a Greek calling himself a devotee of Krishna and called himself a Bhagavata. In 512 BCE, when King Darius the Great of Persia attacked the Scythians, he allegedly penetrated into their land after crossing the Danube. Herodotus relates that the nomadic Scythians frustrated the Persian army by letting it march through the entire country without an engagement. According to Herodotus, Darius in this manner came as far as the Volga River. During the 5th to 3rd centuries BCE, the Scythians evidently prospered. When Herodotus wrote his Histories in the 5th century BCE, Greeks distinguished Scythia Minor, in present-day Romania and Bulgaria, from a Greater Scythia that extended eastwards for a 20-day ride from the Danube River, across the steppes of todays East Ukraine to the lower Don basin. The Don, then known as Tanaïs, has served as a major trading route ever since. The Scythians apparently obtained their wealth from their control over the slave trade from the north to Greece through the Greek Black Sea colonial ports of Olbia, Chersonesos, Cimmerian Bosporus, and Gorgippia. They also grew grain, and shipped wheat, flocks, and cheese to Greece. Indo-Scythians is a term used to refer to Scythians (Sakas), who migrated into parts of Central Asia and northern South Asia (Sogdiana (Sogdoi/Umarkot where Akbar was born now in Pakistan), Bactria, Arachosia, Gandhara, Sindh, Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, UP and Bihar.), from the middle of the 2nd century BCE to the 4th century CE. The first Saka king in south Asia was Maues (Moga) (1st century BCE) who established Saka power in Gandhara (Afghanistan) and gradually extended supremacy over north-western India. Indo-Scythian rule in northwestern India ended with the last Western Satrap Rudrasimha III in CE 395 who was defeated by the Indian Emperor Chandragupta II of the Gupta Empire. The power of the Saka rulers started to decline in the 2nd century CE after the Indo-Scythians were defeated by the south Indian Emperor Gautamiputra Satakarni of the Satavahana dynasty .Later the Saka kingdom was completely destroyed by Chandragupta II of the Gupta Empire in the 4th century. The invasion of India by Scythian tribes from Central Asia, often referred to as the Indo-Scythian invasion, played a significant part in the history of South Asia as well as nearby countries. In fact, the Indo-Scythian war is just one chapter in the events triggered by the nomadic flight of Central Asians from conflict with tribes such as the Xiongnu in the 2nd century CE, which had lasting effects on Bactria, Kabul, Parthia and India as well as far-off Rome in the west. The agrarian and artisan communities (e.g. Jats, Lohars, Tarkhans etc.) of the entire western India are derived from the Scythians, who settled north-western and western South Asia in successive waves between 500 B.C.E to 500 CE.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 09:47:34 +0000
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