THE ETHNIC OF THE
SAKAS (SCYTHIANS)
By: I.
P’iankov
The Sakas have long attracted the attention of scholars,
as note a Russian monograph that appeared in 1871. However, new and constantly
updated archaeological, linguistic, and other materials concerning them now
make it possible to reinterpret the written sources in greater depth and to use
information that has gone unnoticed. The present article traces the history of
the Sakas as an ethnic community and the relationship of individual groups of
Sakas and tribes associated with them to the modern peoples who are their
direct descendants. I refer not to the Sakas as defined by linguists and
archaeologists but to Sakas proper, i.e., tribes directly designated as such in
historical sources.
The following study is based primarily on conclusions
drawn in my 1968 article, in which almost all of the available primary data on
the Sakas were used to outline the history of ancient descriptions of them. A
generally coherent picture emerged.
The present article gives a brief overview of Saka
tribes of the Amyrgians, Homodotes, and Komedes, who originally lived in the
Farghana valley and the foothills of the northern Pamirs, and also the closely
related Kaspians (Kaspirs), who inhabited territories to the south and
provided some part of the ethnic substratum of the Sakas.
In my earlier article, the ancient written sources on
the Saka Amyrgians were examined. The root of the word is the element murg-,
mfg-. The Greek form of the name is Amyrgioi, and the Old Persian form,
Haumavarga, an obvious reinterpretation, with the corresponding personal names
Amorges and (H)omarges. In brief, the article concluded that the Amyrgians were
the group of "Sakas proper" in closest proximity to Sogdiana and
Bactria. These were the Sakas who clashed with Cyrus and then Alexander and who
were first subjects and then allies of the Achaemenid dynasty and subsequently
entered into an alliance with Alexander.
Concerning the area in which the Amyrgians lived, one
finds that the Persians and Greeks placed them beyond Sogdiana, across the
Tanais River or the Jaxartes, because they encountered them after crossing
Sogdiana and the Syr Darya in the approximate region of modern Khojend. The
Amyrgians were evidently centered somewhere in that direction, across the Syr
Darya. According to the account (which is completely reliable geographically)
by Chares of Mytilene, who accompanied Alexander on his campaigns, the
headquarters of "King Omarg" was located 800 stadia (150 km) from the
crossing at the Tanais (frag. 5, Jacoby). That the Amyrgians' domain was
not limited to territory on the right bank of the Syr Darya was recognized by
the ancient writers when they repeatedly referred to the Amy rgian Sakas as
Asiatic Scythians. In addition, Hellanicus (fifth century BCE) referred to them
as inhabitants of the "Amyrgian plain [Amyrgion pedion] of the
Sakas" (frag. 65, Jacoby). Litvinskii was correct in concluding
that the Amyrgian plain referred to all of Farghana and also included the Alai
valley.' The inclusion of the latter is based on the fact that the first
century CE Qian Han Shu mentions a river valley, the "Migration of the
Birds;" located within the Saka territory that is commonly considered to
be the Alai valley; in the Chinese term, Herrmann succeeded in identifying an
allusion to the same toponym as that reflected in the Greek Amyrgion.
Finally, the same element murg- is found in the modern
name of the Murghab River, the lower course of which is called the Bartang.
Although Murghab is a widely used hydronym, in this instance, in combination
with other similar names the identification seems to bear some weight. Thus,
these reports containing direct references to the Amyrgians permit us to place
them in Farghana and the Alai valley and, more tentatively, in Qarategin,
Darvaz, and probably on the upper Panj River approximately as far as the
Bartang (the lower Murghab).
While most scholars place the Amyrgians in the eastern
part of Central Asia, and in particular in the area of Farghana and the
Pamirs,' there are other points of view. One, based on primary sources on the
history and historical geography of the area, holds that the Amyrgians occupied
the entire basin of the upper Gokcha, i.e., the main part of Badakhshan, and
lived only there. This thesis was first suggested by Markwart [Marquart]
in a series of studies;' it was subsequently accepted by A. Herrmann; and
Grantovskii is inclined to agree.' Markwart bases his theory on the fact that
Munji, an East Iranian language used by people who must be descendants of the
Amyrgians, has been preserved in valleys of the upper tributaries of the Gokcha
River, and he also cites other indirect data. While this does not in itself
constitute absolute proof, subsequently it has been shown that ethnonyms
associated with the Munjan people are related to the name of the ancient
Amyrgians. Despite doubts about interpretations of some ethnonyms, their
connection to the Amyrgians is incontestable."
This brings up the question of whether one should
accept the placement of the Amyrgians in Badakhshan, ignoring the direct
reports by ancient authors, or whether there is, in fact, no contradiction
between the two sets of evidence? The key to solving the problem is whether
reports of mass migrations of Saka tribes in the second century BCE can be
linked to other information about the Amyrgians. According to Strabo (11.8.2),
the Asii (Asiani), Tokhari, and Sakaraucae, the nomads who took Bactria
from the Greeks, "migrated from beyond the Jaxartes, the territory
occupied by the Sakas." Nothing is said about the fate of the Sakas
themselves, and one can understand why: the territory through which the nomads
passed was beyond the geographical ken of the Greeks. The only clear point is
that, since we are discussing the migration of nomads to Sogdiana and Bactria
(Pompeius Trogus, prol. xli), the Sakas of the trans-Jaxartes region are also
the Amyrgians of the ancient tradition.
Two versions of missing data can be drawn from Chinese
sources. According to Sima Qian, Zhang
Qian (ca. 128 BCE) reported that the Great Yuezhi (the Asii and
Tokhari) moved west through Da Yuan (Farghana) and subjugated Da Xia
(Bactria). These reports correspond to information about the migration
of the Ash and Tokhari across the Saka territories on the Jaxartes and beyond.
Zhang Qian, who did not mention the Sakas, called the area Da Yuan, the common
name of the time; a Greek writing somewhat earlier would have called it
"Sakasena by the Jaxartes" (cf. Stephanus of Byzantium, s.v.
"Alexandreia"). Another version of the events can be
reconstructed from separate reports in the Qian Han Shu: in the west, the Great
Yuezhi defeated the Saka king, occupied his territory, and then migrated
farther west and subjugated Da Xia; the Saka king went south beyond the Hanging
Passage (mountain passes in the Hindu Kush) and became the ruler of the country
of Jibin (Kashmir). Two events are confused here.
1) The Sakas were
displaced from Semirechye and the Tien Shan by the Great Yuezhi. They then
moved west along the usual route of migration for nomads of this area, but this
event took place beyond the view of the Chinese authors and was presented by
Greek authors as a migration of the Sakaraucae.
2) Subsequently, the
Sakas, i.e., the Amyrgians, were displaced from Farghana by the Great Yuezhi,
an event connected with the migration of the Yuezhi across Da Yuan, i.e.,
Farghana.'
This second event is of decisive importance in
explaining the data about the Amyrgians. The "king of the Sakas" (compare
with the Greeks' King Omarg/Amorg), driven out of Farghana, transferred his
headquarters to the south across the Hanging Passage leading to Jibin. His
retreat from Farghana took place in the mid-second century BCE, and by
approximately the mid-first century BCE Saka kings appear in India. It is
significant that the first Saka king known in India (Maues on coins; Moga in
epigraphic evidence) had the same name as the king of the Amyrgian Sakas (Mavakes)
during the time of Alexander the Great. Apparently this king figures in Chinese
sources as Yinmofu, the ruler of Jibin. It is not by chance that Ptolemy
records the Kaspirs (= Jibin) as occupying a vast territory from the Bidaspes
(Jhelum) River to the mountain of Quindion (Vindhya), including the town
of Modura (Mathura) (7.1.47); this evidently reflects the
situation during the early period of Saka dominion in India when Kashmir was
still regarded as the center of the kingdom. Apparently the king's horde,
drawing after them the rest of the Amyrgians, moved from Farghana and the Alai
valley, at first through areas where the Amyrgians were already assimilated,
via Qarategin, Darvaz, and the western Pamirs, and then through the passes of
the Hindu Kush. Individual groups of the Amyrgians might have taken routes
farther to the west (although still within the limits of the eastern,
mountainous area of Central Asia). In this way, the ancestors of the Munjans
penetrated into the Gbkcha valley and Badakhshan. It is also possible that the
Parsii mentioned in Classical sources ended up in the Bamiyan region, and the
Parsyetae, the ancestors of the Afghans, on the upper Kurram. Thus, one may
conclude that the Sakas who appeared in India and the eastern part of the
Iranian plateau in the second-first centuries BCE were Amyrgians from Farghana
and that they migrated across the western Pamirs and adjoining western
mountainous areas, rather than, as is commonly assumed, through the eastern
Pamirs.
Among the living East Iranian languages, Pashto and
Munji share a distinctive feature, the shift of ancient Iranian d to 1.
This is also typical of a dialect, traces of which have been preserved in
personal names and toponyms of Indo-Scythia (the region of the lower Indus
and Kathiavar), Sakastana, and Arachosia, and which was probably brought
there or adapted by Sakas moving into the area from northern India.
If one accepts the hypothesis that these languages
spread as a direct result of migrations of the Amyrgians, the same feature
should be present in the latter's language. The small measure of direct
information about the language of the Farghana Amyrgians includes this
particular trait. Demodamas (who not long after Alexander renewed the
campaign against the trans-Tanais Scythians, i.e., the Amyrgians)
established that the Jaxartes (which Alexander and his soldiers had mistaken
for the Tanais) was called Silis by the Scythians (Pliny 6.49; Solinus
[mid-third century CE] 49.5; compare Eustathius ad Dionysius Periegetes 14).
This Scythian word has long been regarded as an example of a typical d >
1 shift: the most convincing
explanation of the word derives it from the name of the Syr Darya (*Sida =
?), the most ancient form of which is Sanskrit Sita.l6 In Indian texts, the
Sita is mentioned together with the Ganges, Indus, and Oxus (Vakhsh; Amu
Darya) as the either four or seven major rivers that trace their source to
the mythical Mount Meru.
Classical sources contain the earliest, if somewhat
obscure, reports of another Saka group proper, of the Homodotes, locating them
in the Emod and the headwaters of the Oxus. While the Emod had been known to
the ancient world since the time of Alexander the Great's campaigns and almost
invariably figured in Classical tradition as a mountain range in northern
India, there is a certain duality in mentions of the area. Megasthenes noted
that the Emod separated India on the north from "Scythia inhabited by the
Scythians known as the Sakas" (frag. 4, p. 35, 1, Jacoby). In
another passage, regarding the countries that surrounded India, he lists the
Scythians and Bactrians together (frag. 4, p. 37, 5, Jacoby). It appears
that Megasthenes created a single entity from two different Emods: the genuine
Indian Emod and the Scythian Emod, an area near that inhabited by the Sakas.
For example, Megasthenes may have based his location of the Sakas and the
Bactrians on the fact that upstream the Oxus flowed through lands of the former
and downstream passed through Bactria. In fact, it was thought that the Oxus
and its tributaries cross Bactria (Polybius 10.48.4). Dionysius
Periegetes [fl. CE 124] agrees, but he is more definite: the Oxus
descends from Mount Emod (748 ). The name Emodon appears twice in
Dionysius' text, and in the second instance it obviously denotes the Indian
range (1146). It is significant that the first mention is given as
Oimodon. Perhaps the name should be read differently as well (cf. the remark
of a Byzantine commentator on variants of spelling of the term [Eustathius ad
Dionysius Periegetes 747]). This would imply that Dionysius was making a
distinction between the Scythian and Indian Emods and that his information
originated in different sources. Avienus (4th century CE),
who translated Dionysius' text into Latin, transcribes Hemodi as Hemodoontis (1351).
The contents of the translation demonstrate that Avienus used additional
sources of some sort (perhaps the map that sometimes accompanied Dionysius'
work). Might Avienus have substituted for the name of the mountain range
that of the tribe connected with it, which in the source he used could be read
approximately as *Hemodontes? Then, what was the original source from which
Dionysius drew his report about the Scythian Emod?
In Pliny's list of Scythian peoples, based on
materials in Demodamas, he lists the Homodoti (6.50) in a group of
tribes, including the Astacae, Rumnici, and Pestici, which inhabited areas
along rivers that flow into the Caspian Sea from the north and east." If
the concept of the Pestici as a people who lived near the mouth of the Oxus (Pomponius
Mela [1st century CE] 3.39.42) is correct, one may assume that
the Homodoti were listed directly after the Pestici because they inhabited the
region at the headwaters of the Oxus. In his Argonautica, written as a
narrative of the arrival in Persia of allied troops from Scythia, Valerius
Flaccus describes the Scythian tribes in terms reflecting the source used by
Pliny. "Emoda [other readings are: Eumeda; Oemeda] joins
forces" with the Scythian hordes (6.143). In all probability,
Demodamas (who himself traveled to Scythia beyond the Jaxartes) was the
original source of the information about the Scythian Emod in later works by
Dionysius, Pliny, and Valerius Flaccus, although none of them made direct use
of his account.
Thus, information about the Scythian Emod is found in
works by Megasthenes and Demodamas dating from the late fourth-early third
centuries BCE Megasthenes did not differentiate it from the Indian Emod and
used the customary term Emodon for it. Demodamas may have denoted it separately
with a name whose Greek prototype can be reconstructed approximately as
*(H)oimoda. In this tradition, the Oxus rose in the Scythian Emod. Finally, the
Scythian people living in this region were simply called Sakas by Megasthenes,
and by Demodamas more specifically by a name which can be reconstructed
approximately as *Ho(i)modotoi. The reconstructed toponym and ethnonym attest
to a dialect in which -d- was preserved and which, in this respect, differed
from the dialect of the Amyrgians. It is generally accepted that the Pamir
languages of the ShughniYazghulami group stem from the language of the Sakas,
and thus the word indicates that the dialect of the Homodotes, rather than that
of the Amyrgians, is the Saka proto-language of this group.
It has been suggested that the first part of the name
Homodoti cited by Pliny conceals the Iranian word Hauma-, which denotes a
sacred plant of the ancient Iranians." But when this name is compared to
(H)oimoda, another origin comes to mind: at its root is the Scythian name Emod
(which might also originate from the name of the tribe). The plural formant,
-t(a), is widespread in Scythian ethnonyms. Among modern languages of the
Shughni-Yazghulami group, this feature is preserved only in Yazghulami as -a
r9; however, according to linguists, the plural suffixes in modern Shughni
dialects are relatively recent formations.'
The Scythian Emod and the headwaters of the Oxus can
serve as points of orientation in determining where the Homodotes lived. Since
scholars have always thought that Classical authors were describing only a
single, Indian Emod, Dionysius' information regarding the Oxus rising in Mount Emod
has been assumed to refer to the upper Panj.z° However, if one assumes that a
completely different mountain range, a Scythian one, is meant, this
interpretation comes into question. During the time when the entire Amu Darya
was called the Vakhsh (= Oxus), its main source may have been the river
that today bears the ancient name. In fact, in his report about the Oxus,
Theophrastus, who was a contemporary of Megasthenes and Demodamas, definitely
refers to the Vakhsh in the sense attached to the word today (Ps.-Aristoteles,
De mirabilibus auscultationibus, 46; Pliny 31.75, 86).21 All this leads one
to search for the Scythian Emod and the Homodotes of that region on the upper
Qizil SuVakhsh. Chinese sources contain additional information that makes it
possible to locate the Emod and the Homodotes more precisely. Here, it seems
relevant to propose a correlation between the Scythian Emod and the Juandu (ancient
form: iwan-d'uok), the nomadic confederation of "ancient Saka
tribes." The basic source of information about Juandu is the Qian Han Shu.
As for the location of this confederation, it is generally agreed that it
occupied territories west and southwest of Kashghar, evidently in the basin of
the Kashgharian Qizil Su and its tributaries.
On the west, its lands extended up to the crest of the
Congling, probably up to the Taunmurun pass,za which is situated somewhat west
of Irkeshtam at the headwaters of the Qizil Su-Vakhsh. Thus, the Homodotes
might correspond to the Juandu; and Mount Emod, as the place where the Oxus
rises, might refer to the Congling, by which in this instance the eastern areas
of the Alai and Trans-Alai ranges are meant.
In sources dating from the fourth-third
centuries BCE to the first-third centuries CE, mentions of the Homodotes always
place them in the same location, the region of the northeastern Pamirs.
This refutes the idea that the Sakas of the Tien Shan
and Semirechye took part in the Saka migration of the second century BCE and
moved along the eastern Pamirs. In general, however, participation by the
Homodotes and related tribes in Saka migrations of the second century BCE is
entirely possible, as witness the Komedes, who are mentioned in the itinerary
of Maes Titianus (1st century CE) used by Ptolemy in his
treatise on geography. Ptolemy gives a relatively full account of this people:
the Komedes inhabited the entire mountainous land of the Sakas (6.13.3).
The headwaters of the Jaxartes (Gulcha is evidently considered its source)
and its two left tributaries originate in the land of the Komedes (6.12.3).
The "Gorge of the Komedes" (Qarategin) is mentioned (1.12.7-8;
6.13.2), and Ptolemy remarks that the mountainous region of the Lambates at
the headwaters of the Koas (Kunar) "rises up as far as the Komedes'
land" (7.1.42). From this, one may conclude that in the time of Maes
Titianus, the Komedes inhabited the Alai Mountains, the Alai valley, and
Qarategin, and that to the south their lands extended from Darvaz well up along
the Panj, following the route leading to mountain passes on the upper Kunar
(Chitral) River.
The badly damaged text of Julius Honorius' Cosmography
also mentions the Komedes as the Traumeda (< *Caumedae, A, 13, 38).
The corresponding mountain, Caumestes (< *Caumedes, A, 4), is
described as the place where the Oxus rises (A, 7). Thus, the mountain
appears to occupy all of the territory between the Oxus and the Jaxartes (compare
with: A, 8; B, 5). Honorius' map belonged to the Agrippa tradition (first
century BCE), but the Komedes are absent from other maps produced by that group
and therefore probably were a later addition. However, the word Honorius uses,
Caumedae, which preserves the diphthong au, is a more archaic form of the name
given by Ptolemy as Komedai.
Information about the Komedes in Classical sources
dates from the 1st century BCE-1st century CE, when the
Komedes occupied the territory that had been inhabited by the Amyrgians before
the migrations of the second century BCE.
The Saka dialect of the Komedes, judging from the preservation of the
ancient Iranian -d- in their ethnic name, is similar to that of the Homodotes
and differs from that of the Amyrgians. Therefore, the Komedes might have
originated among the Homodotes and related tribes; they occupied the territory
outlined above by moving down the valley of the Qizil Su-Vakhsh and then into
territories farther south after the Amyrgians abandoned those lands.
Chinese and medieval Islamic sources are helpful in
tracing the further history of the Komedes. Chinese sources reflecting the
situation during the 1st century BCE – 3rd century CE
locate the Xiuxun, a nomadic confederation of ancient Saka tribes similar to
the Juandu, in the areas where the Classical sources place the Komedes. They
lived west of the Congling, i.e., of the Taunmurun pass-and they were centered
in the valley known as the Migration of the Birds (the Alai valley),
whose ancient name by then was only a toponymic relic of the Amyrgians who had
formerly inhabited it. There are also indications that Xiuxun territory
extended about as far south as the lands of the Komedes. It is evident that one
and the same Saka tribe was called Xiuxun by the Chinese and Komedes by the
Greeks. The latter name appeared in Chinese sources much later. Although the
Chinese obviously knew only the southern part of the Komedes' territory (Darvaz
and lands farther up the Panj), information concerning this area shows a
tendency to diminish it: Xuanzang (seventh century CE) mentions yet another
territory between the Komedes and Shughnan peoples.26 What medieval Muslim
sources have to say about the Komedes (Kumed; Kumiji) reflects a later
stage of settlement. They locate the Komedes only in the middle Vakhshab (Vakhsh)
below Rasht (Qarategin). According to the more complete information from
Hudud al-~dlam, the Komedes were divided into two groups on either side of the
Vakhshab.
This information may be interpreted as follows. The
Komedes occupied the greatest territory during their initial period of
settlement. Evidently, at that time they were ethnically homogeneous. Their
dialect was that which most probably provided a basis for the development of
the later languages of the Shughni-Yazghulami group; it is pertinent that the
initial territory of the Komedes takes in almost the entire modern region of
these languages. Between the third and seventh centuries CE, the community of
the Komedes began to disintegrate, probably as the nomads gradually settled
down. Shughnan was the first to separate, and other regions followed suit,
leading to a disruption of ethnic unity. Evidently, only that part of the
population that continued to lead a nomadic way of life preserved the name
Komedes, but the territory of those Komedes was also reduced by new waves of
nomads who came down the valley of the Qizil Su-Vakhsh. Eventually, the Komedes
were left with only small islands of their former territory.
An analysis of reports on the Kaspians (Kaspirs)
of the sixth to second centuries $.c. leads to the following conclusions. The (eastern)
Kaspians were indigenous tribes of the Hindu Kush-Himalaya region whose direct
descendants, under the name of the Burashki, still live in the center of that
region in the valleys of the Yasin and the Hunza. From the 6th to
the 2nd century BCE, the Kaspians occupied a vast territory that
included Kashmir, Gilgit, Chitral, Badakhshan, and Wakhan. Somewhere to the
north, they came into direct contact with the Amyrgian Sakas.
The Kaspians led approximately the same way of life as
the neighboring Sakas, and therefore Classical authors sometimes called both
groups Scythians. However, as well as herding livestock in the mountain
pastures, in suitable places the Kaspians practiced agriculture to a greater
degree than did the Sakas.
Regarding the situation in this region in the 1st
century BCE – 1st century CE, Ptolemy, using contemporary sources
(perhaps the itinerary of Maes Titianus) provides information that is detailed
but difficult to interpret, as note the text of his Geography and his map. He
places Kaspiria at the headwaters of the Bidaspes, Sandabal, and Adris 7.1.12,
i.e., at the sources of the Jhelum, Chenab, and Ravi rivers, a region that
generally corresponds to modern Kashmir. North of Kaspiria, an extension of the
Imaum [Imaon] range continues to the west until it merges into the Caucasus.
Ptolemy locates the territory of the Sakas north of the Imaum and the country
of the Sogdians north of the Caucasus; he locates the Oxus as rising from the
extreme western end of the Caucasus. In Sogdiana, there is a region called
Vandabanda "between the Caucasus and the Imaum" (6.12.4). The
mountainous land of the Komedes lies north of that region, and they also must
live west of it, since their territory adjoins that of the upper Koas. East of
Vandabanda, in the land of the Sakas, the Byltai live "by the Imaum
range" (6.13.3), evidently between the east-west and north-south
extensions of the Imaum.
Ptolemy's Vandabanda has been placed in Badakhshan, or
even in Farghana, primarily because the names sounded alike. However, Ptolemy's
report suggests another site. It cannot be disputed that Vandabanda lay
somewhere in the region of the upper course of one of the tributaries of the
Oxus, which in this instance means the Panj. In reality, Vandabanda had nothing
to do with Sogdiana, but the mere fact that Ptolemy attributed it to Sogdiana
suggests that the source he used placed Vandabanda east of the south-north
course of the Panj, approximately in Wakhan. With Ptolemy's map in mind, the
location of Vandabanda as between the Caucasus and Imaum is incomprehensible.
If, however, the Imaum is considered to be the Himalayas, and the Caucasus
means the eastern Hindu Kush, then one may conclude that Ptolemy's original
sources referred to the area between these two ranges, i.e., the region along
the Gilgit and tributary valleys. In this interpretation of Ptolemy's map,
Vandabanda extended to Wakhan and Gilgit. As for the name of the region,
Markwart was correct: the spelling of Ovandabanda is a dittograph that
originated in the merging of two words that in the original text were two
variants of a single name: Ovanda and Banda, whose nominal meaning is
"fortified border; border fortress." The famous mountain fortresses
in Wakhan (and perhaps also those farther to the south, in Gilgit and Chitral
[? ] ), which were clearly designed to guard the borders, already existed at
the time. The original name probably denoted the area immediately adjoining
those fortresses and then expanded to cover the entire region.
The reports from Classical authors can be refined and
supplemented by Chinese sources, in particular the Qian Han Shu. Jibin (Kaspiria)
beyond the Hanging Passage undoubtedly corresponds to Kashmir. However, there
is no exact information on the site of Jibin, and it is possible that the
source sometimes refers to a more extensive territory than modern Kashmir.
Northeast of Jibin and subject to it lay the territory of Nandou. To the east
lay Wucha; the road from Wucha to libin must have run through Nandou. In the
north, Nandou bordered on Xiuxun; in the west, on Wulei and the Great Yuezhi;
and in the south on Chuo Qiang (i.e., the Tibetans of Baltistan). Thus,
some scholars have placed Nandou in Gilgit and in the same area have located
the Hanging Passage, by which they meant mountain passes of the Hindu Kush that
communicated with the valleys of the Hunza and Yasin. This location implies
that there was a close relationship between Nandou and Jibin and that to the
south, Nandou was the neighbor of Chuo Qiang.
Other evidence from the Qian Han Shu does not agree
with this. In preface, however, one should keep in mind that it is not
appropriate to take the description of the location of the neighboring areas of
a country in the ancient sources literally, and attempt then to transfer the
description directly to the modern map. These descriptions appear to be based
only on travelers' information, and if, for example, the source says that a
region is to the west of a certain country, it means that from some point
within the borders of the given country the road to the center of the
neighboring region led west.
Nandou's domain was west of Wucha, i.e., Sarikol,
indicating that the road from Sarikol, turning west, passed through the
territory of Nandou. Thus, Nandou can only be Wakhan. West of Nandou lay the
land of the Great Yuezhi. Nandou's immediate neighbors most probably were
Shuangmi and Xiumi, two territories that had been subjugated by the Great
Yuezhi in the preKushan period. As is now accepted, Shuangmi corresponds to
Chitral, which in reality lies west of Gilgit. Xiumi has been convincingly
identified with Wakhan. While this at first appears to eliminate the
possibility of including Wakhan in Nandou, later Chinese sources from a period
when Xiumi actually did correspond to Wakhan give the capital city of Xiumi as
Saijiazhen (= Ishkashim). Hudud al-`alam also calls Sikashim the capital of
Wakhan. Therefore, Xiumi (or Xumi) was a domain that included Wakhan and
Ishkashim and was centered in the latter. In this ancient period, Xiumi might
have been bordered by the region of Ishkashim. Between Ishkashim and Wakhan
stands the ancient fortress of Yamchun, which was in existence in the Kushan
period perhaps marking the border between Xiumi as a part of the Great Yuezhi
and Nandou.
It is more difficult to interpret the report that
Xiuxun was Nandou's neighbor to the north. Nevertheless, this appears to be
correct. The Xiuxun/Komedes, who had settled far up the Panj River, might have
come as far south as Shughnan and Ishkashim and penetrated into the domains of
the Great Yuezhi. In this area, they would have bordered on Nandou. In
addition, the road to the center of Xiuxun in the Alai valley actually did lead
directly north from that point.
Finally, the domain of Wulei is described as the
western neighbor of Nandou, although according to the modern map it is to the
north. Wulei is convincingly placed in the Alichur and Aqsu-Murghab
valleys. On the west, it also bordered
the Great Yuezhi; a group of fortresses, ruins of which still stand in the
valleys of the Gunt and Shahdara, may mark the boundary. Ptolemy placed the
Byltai roughly in those areas where the Wulei lived. According to Ptolemy's
information discussed above, the Byltai occupied the area west of the
north-south extension of the Imaum. Since, according to Maes Titianus'
itinerary, that branch passed through the "Halting Place for Merchants who
trade with Sera" (Ptolemy 1.12.8; 6.13.1) situated in the region of
modern Irkeshtam, one may conclude that the Imaum mentioned in connection with
the Byltai corresponds to the Sarikol range. The domain of Wulei (Puli) was a
Tibetan nomadic tribe, although Ptolemy situates his Byltai in the country of
the Sakas and gives their name in a form attesting to a passage through the
Saka area (the typical Scythian particle -ta).
The picture finally derived from first century BCE to
first century CE sources is that the country of Kaspiria/Jibin generally
corresponds to Kashmir. The adjoining area of Vanda(Banda)/ Nandou encompasses
Gilgit with Hunza and Yasin and also evidently Wakhan and the adjoining parts
of the Pamir plateau. The agreement of the various sources on the neighboring
areas in this region is remarkable. Despite the fact that Ptolemy took these
reports from new itineraries and fit them roughly into Eratosthenes' old
cartographic scheme, his description clearly corresponds to the analogous
Chinese data: Kaspiria/ Jibin lies south of the region of Vanda(Banda)/ Nandou;
the Komedes/Xiuxun are to the north and west; and, finally, the Byltai/Wulei in
fact are neighbors to the north.
Important evidence regarding the population of the
region in question is provided by materials from the archaeological work
carried out in the eastern Pamirs under the direction of Bernshtam and
Litvinskii, namely, the location and investigation of burial mounds and other
monuments of the seventh-first centuries BCE in the valleys of the
Aqsu-Murghab, Alichur, and Pamir rivers in the vicinity of Lake Rangkul. Most
date from the fifth-third centuries BCE; the most recent (second-first
centuries BCE) are concentrated in the eastern and southern sections of the
area in which they appeared earlier. The material culture resembles that of the
Sakas, `but this is decidedly not true of the anthropological data. Like the
modern inhabitants of the western Pamirs, the Sakas are primarily of the
anthropological type characteristic of the Central Asian region between the Amu
Darya and Syr Darya.
The population of the eastern Pamirs of the earlier
period belonged to a completely different type, that of the eastern
Mediterranean area. Therefore, anthropologists are in agreement that
genetically these people are not related to the Saka tribes who inhabited the
areas farther to the north: their ties lie to the southwest, perhaps in the
Hindu Kush and northern India, and in all likelihood they are the descendants
of a more ancient local population. In fact, although the modern population of
Wakhan belongs to a different type, there is reason to believe that, at least
in the last centuries BCE, a people of the same physical type and culture as
the modern population of the eastern Pamirs lived there. As yet, there are no
paleoanthropological materials on the given period from areas farther to the
south, but their modern population-the Kashmirians and Burashki of Hunza and
Yasin in particular (the latter are direct descendants of the ancient
Kaspians)-are representatives of the
Indo-Afghan type, a modern variant of that predominant in the ancient
population of the eastern Pamirs. It is clear that the anthropological data coincide with the conclusions about the
Kaspians (Kaspirs) presented in this article.
In summary, in the sixth-third centuries BCE, the Kaspians
occupied the entire Hindu KushHimalaya mountainous region sketched here. At
that time, the population of the eastern Pamirs consisted of only the extreme
northeastern segment of a vast body of Kaspian tribes. It is possible that
somewhere in the Murghab valley these tribes might have come into contact with
the Amyrgian Sakas. Amyrgian migration in the second century BCE only brushed
against the western and southern sections of the region inhabited by the
Kaspians, while the eastern Pamirs remained untouched. In that area, Kaspian
territory shrank for another reason: pressure from the Tibetans. The Byltai,
one of the Tibetan tribes which had settled in the northwest foothills of the
Kun-lun in the second-first century BCE, penetrated to the Pamir plateau,
perhaps from the northeast, and drove the Pamir Kaspirs to the extreme east and
south of their former territory. As early as the first century BCE, this
Tibetan tribe evidently occupied part of the Gez Darya valley south of the
Juandu area of settlement. At that time, generally only Kashmir was still
called Kaspiria. The land of the Kaspians farther to the north became part of
Vanda (Banda); the memory of the fact that it had once been a single entity
with Kaspiria was preserved in the concept of it as a Kaspian dependency.
Together with Wakhan, it evidently included those parts of the Pamir foothills
that were still in the hands of the local Kaspians.
Further displacement of the Pamir nomads was related
to the expansion of the domains of the Great Yuezhi. As Bernshtam noted, the
presence of fortresses in the western Pamirs attests both to the existence of
agricultural oases and to an active defense against the nomads of the eastern
Pamirs. If those fortresses guarded the borders of the domain of the Great
Yuezhi in the preKushan period, the shift of boundaries to the east as far as
the Congling (Sarikol) range (in the mid-first century CE, when Vima
Kadphises conquered Kaspiria [Jibin] and probably the associated area of Vanda
[Banda]) reflected a farther advance on the nomads of the eastern Pamirs.
Ultimately, in the fourth-sixth centuries Wakhan and the neighboring regions
probably were inhabited by settled farmers who came from the Khotan oasis.
This reconstruction of the history of individual Saka
tribes is, of course, a working hypothesis to be corroborated or rejected upon
further investigation. In this respect, much depends on new data, particularly
the study of the toponymy of areas once inhabited by the Sakas and Kaspians.
The sequence of key moments in their history remains to be clarified by
detailed archaeological investigation of Kashmir and Gilgit, Badakhshan, and
regions of Kashghar and Khotan.