Pahlavas

Figure of a foreigner, found in Sarnath. This is a probable member of the West Asian Pahlava or Saka elite in the Gangetic plains during the Mauryan period.[a]

The Pahlavas are a people mentioned in ancient Indian texts. According to Patrick Carnegy,[3] a Raj-era ethnographer, the 4th-century BCE Vartika of Katyayana mentions the Sakah-Parthavah, demonstrating an awareness of these Saka-Parthians, probably by way of commerce.[4] Knowledge of the Pahlavas is distilled from the literary references in texts like the Manu Smriti, various Puranas, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and the Bṛhat Saṃhitā.

Eastern border of the Achaemenid Empire and the kingdoms and cities of ancient India (circa 500 BCE), around the time of the Achaemenid conquest of the Indus Valley. [5][6][7][8]
Pahlava kingdom alongside other locations of kingdoms and republics mentioned in the Indian epics or Bharata Khanda
  1. ^ Gupta 1980, p. 318.
  2. ^ Gupta 1980, p. 122.
  3. ^
    • Carnegy, Patrick (1868). Notes on the races tribes and castes inhabiting the province of Avadh [Oudh]. Lucknow: Government of Oudh. p. 4. Native ethnologists ... say that of the six remaining original races of which they take cognizance [...] that the Pahluv are probably those people who spoke Pahluvi or Pehlvi, a language of Persia ...[failed verification]
    • Notes on the Races, Tribes and Castes Inhabiting the Province of Avadh [Oudh]. Lucknow: Oudh Government Press. 1868. p. 4.
    • See:
    • Singh, M. R. (1972). Geographical data in the early Purāṇas: A critical study. Calcutta: Punthi Pustak. LCCN 72903450. OCLC 736935. A revision of the author's thesis, University of Rajasthan, 1967.
    • "Introduction". The Laws of Manu, with extracts from seven commentaries. Sacred Books of the East. Vol. XXV. Translated by Bühler, Georg (1886 ed.). p. cxv.
    • Rapson, Coins of Ancient India, p. 37, n. 2.
  4. ^ V. S. Agarwala (1954). India as Known to Panini. p. 444
  5. ^ Sen 1999, pp. 116–117.
  6. ^ Philip's Atlas of World History (1999)
  7. ^ O'Brien, Patrick Karl (2002). Atlas of World History. Oxford University Press. p. 43. ISBN 9780195219210.
  8. ^ Barraclough, Geoffrey (1989). The Times Atlas of World History. Times Books. p. 79. ISBN 9780723009061.


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