BOOK VI. Dasyus or plunderers, whether they speak the language of Mlechchas or that of Aryas'. It is not difficult to ascertain the greatest part of the tribes here enumerated, as being equally branches of the military caste; though, in some instances, members of the other castes were confusedly blended with them. The Paundracas seem to be the Drange; whom Strabo places between Ariana and northern India, bordering upon the Arachoti and the Paropamisadæ. The Odras probably gave their name to the river Odryssa, which flows through the Pontic territories of the Alazones that stretched from Armenia to the Euxine sea3. The Draviras fixed themselves on the coast of the eastern Indian peninsula. The Cambojas are plainly the inhabitants of Cambodia; and may be viewed, as comprehending the Burmas, the Peguans, and the Siamese. The Yavanas are the Ionic Greeks, confounded, as was often the case, with the aboriginal Javanim. The Sacas or Sacasenas are undoubtedly the Sacæ of the Greek writers; who spread far to the north of India and Persia, ere they shewed themselves in Europe under the name of Saxons. The Paradas are the Pards or Parths or mountaineer Parsim. The Pahlavas are the Scythic Palli or Pelasgi or Palestim; and the name is equivalent to Shepherds. The Chinas, according to the unanimous and positive assertion of the Pundits, are the Chinese: and, agreeably to this declaration, they are said to have settled in a fine country to the north-east of Gaur and to the east of Camarup and Nepal, to have been long famed as ingenious artificers, and to have professed the primitive religion of Hindostan. They are described as being extremely numerous, so as to consist of no less than two hundred clans and it is a remarkable circumstance, that, when Sir William Jones laid a map of Asia before a well-informed Pundit and shewed him the situation of his own country Cashmir, he instantly placed his finger on the north-western provinces of China as the region where the Chinas of Menu first established themselves, and added that Maha-China or great China : 'Instit. of Menu. c. x. § 43, 44, 45. 3 Strab. Geog. lib. xii. p. 551. 2 Strab. Geog. lib. xv. p. 723. 4 Asiat. Res. vol. i. p. 230, 5 Strab. Geog. lib. xi. p. 511, 512. Asiat. Res. vol. viii. p. 301. vol. vi. p. 517. extended to the eastern and southern oceans'. The Ciratas seems to be CHAP. IV. the Circassians and other neighbouring kindred tribes. The Deradas are the Derds; whom Strabo describes as a great nation of the mountaineer Indians, stretching towards the east'. And the Chasas are most undoubtedly those, whom the Greeks called Indo-Scythæ: for they still occupy the same tract of country, and still possess those high lands on the north of Hindostan which bear the name of Cashgar or Chasa-ghir. This last appellation is in reality the common family title of all the others. The Chasas or Chusas, whom Menu so positively declares to be of the same great house as the war-caste of India, received their name from their acknowledged ancestor Chasa or Chasya or Chusa; who, as Sir William Jones rightly observes, must indisputably be identified with the Cush of sacred history. Hence the appellation of Chasas or Chusas is a general one: and hence we find, that the powerful race, who were distinguished by it, occupied the whole of the vast mountainous range; which extends from the north-eastern limits of upper India, skirting the northern confines of Persia and Iran, as far as the Euxine sea. Now this was the identical tract of country, where the Greek geographers accurately placed the proper Scuthæ, as contradistinguished from those southern Scuthæ, who were governors of the great Iranian empire, and who as such tenanted a Scythia which reached to the banks of the Indus and -the shores of the Erythrèan ocean. Hence it is evident, that the Chasas or Chusas of the Hindoo writers are the same as the Scuths of the Greek writers: and I think it further evident, that, what the former write Chusas, the latter chose to express Scuths with a sibilant prefix. By this corrupted appellation however, the people, except in their extreme western settlements, seem never to have distinguished themselves. They ordinarily, from their great forefather, took the name of Chusas or Cushas or Cassians or Cossais or Chasyas or Chesai: and, as the Babylonians and other nations were wont to write and pronounce sh like th, they often chose to be called Cuthim or Cutèans or Coths or Goths or Cathaians. From the appellation thus modified the 'Asiat. Res. vol. ii. p. 369. * Strab. Geog. lib. xv. p. 706. Asiat. Res. vol. vi. p. 455, 456. ✦ In some of those settlements they were known as Scuits or Scots. BOOK VI. Greeks undoubtedly formed their word Scutha: for, as the national identity of the Scuths and the Goths is an historical matter of fact; so we are plainly told, that the people, whom at one period the Greeks called Scuths and at another Getes, always styled themselves Goths. By this latter name they have deservedly made themselves famous in the west: and their proper title has now universally superseded their corrupt Hellenic nomenclature. Thus extending from the high lands of upper India to the very borders of Europe, they were variously distinguished by the Greeks according to their locality. Those, who were the neighbours of the Hindoos, were the Indo-Scythæ: those, who touched upon the Celts or Cimmerians, were the Celto-Scythæ: and those, who roamed with their herds and their flocks over the vast steppes of the intermediate country, were known as the nomade or pastoral Scythians. 2. Their chief settlements in the first instance, when they emigrated from Iran, seem very plainly to have been those three mountainous regions, which were equally designated by the appellation of Caucasus; for so the Greeks wrote the word with the common Hellenic termination. One of these was the Indian Caucasus; which may be viewed as extending far to the north, until it be faintly divided by an indistinct line from the Tartarian possessions of Japhet. In the Sanscrit and in the spoken dialects of the Chasas, the word is expressed Cas-Giri or Cas-Ghar or Cas-Car or Chas-Ghar: and this name, with various other kindred appellations which I shall presently notice, is acknowledged in India to be derived from the national title of the Chasas. Now, in the Sanscrit, Ghar or Ghiri signifies a mountain: Chas-Ghar therefore will denote the mountain of Cash or the mountain of the Chasas. But, in the Persic, Cau or Coh is a word of the very same import as Ghar. Hence, what the Hindoos call Chas-Ghar, the Persians have been accustomed to denominate CauCas: and from this name the Greeks, who received much of their oriental information through the medium of Persia, fashioned no doubt their Caucasus. Another of their settlements was the Caucasus to the south of the Caspian sea'. And the third of them was that most westerly Caucasus, CHAP. IV. which lies on the north-eastern shore of the Euxine. We must however view these settlements, not as absolutely distinct, but as connected with each other by various wandering hordes: for, according to the unanimous testimony both of the Greek and the Hindoo writers, the Scythians or Chasas spread over the whole range of country which intervenes between the two extreme Caucasi. According to such an arrangement, it is most curious to observe, whe ther we take up an ancient or a modern map, how indelibly the name of Cush or Cuth or Cash or Cath is imprinted upon the entire district: and, as we have just seen, the Hindoos assure us, that all local appellations of this sound have been derived from the national title of the Chasas. In old geography, we find to the north of India Casia and Caspia and Caspatyrus; round the intermediate Caucasus, the Caspii and the Caspian sea and the Caspian passes; and, in the vicinity of the western Caucasus, Cutarus and Cutèa and Cuta. So, in modern geography, we have, in the region of the Indian Caucasus, Cashmir and Castwar and Chasghar and Chatraur and Cuttore and Chatzan and Coten; at the foot of the middle Caucasus, the Caspian sea; and, in the recesses of the western Caucasus', the CirCassians while the Caisacs or Cossacs, and their brethren the Kir-Ghis, ramble over the intermediate tract, or fix themselves in Russian Europe on the banks of the Tanais. In these extensive regions, averse from labour, and possessing the most unbounded personal freedom; ever retaining the original military propensity of their family, and (as an homogeneous people) ignorant of the servile 'This region is the Mazenderaun of Persic romance, where Rustam encounters the White giant. 2 This whole range of high land is the Caf of the Persian authors, who not unaptly denominate it the stony girdle of the earth. Here they accurately place their Peris and their Dives; and with good reason, for it was the genuine native country of romance. 3 One of the peaks of this Caucasus is still called mount Chat: the Circassians likewise denominate it Elborus, according to its old name. Clarke's Travels. vol. i. c. xxiii. p. 579. Elborus is evidently the Albordi of the Zend-Avesta; and Albordi is the same name as the Armenian Barit or Baris or Alb-Barit. Pag. Idol. VOL. III. 3 S distinction into castes; little regarding the wrathful excommunication of the Ionizing Brahmens, and pertinaciously adhering to the old Scuthic worship of the war-god Buddha or Woden: they very soon, as their numbers increased, merited but too well the reproachfully-complaining name of plunderers, which their more civilized brethren of the south bestowed upon the fearless outcasts. II. The general relationship, and western progress, of the Scythic tribes have been so ably investigated, and so undeniably established on the sure basis of direct historical evidence, by a learned modern writer, that nothing more is necessary than to give an epitome of his discoveries. I may however previously remark, that the singularly exact coincidence of his conclusions with the very ancient testimony, which has been adduced from the Institutes of Menu, serves additionally to prove, with how much judgment and accuracy those conclusions have been drawn. At the same time I think it right to state, that, in various instances, Mr. Pinkerton, like Sir William Jones, appears to me to have mistaken a part for the whole: a circumstance, which has occasionally led him to pronounce those to be Scythians, who really seem to be tribes of a different origin under the government of a Cuthic priesthood and nobility. Much the same remark applies to Mr. Bryant; whose researches, in many respects, bear a close affinity to those of Mr. Pinkerton and Sir William Jones. Yet is the general outline of truth very strongly marked by the united labours of these three most able inquirers: for, unless the evidence had been almost irresistible, they could scarcely have been brought by different roads so very nearly to the same point'. As the removal of error is the first step towards the attainment of truth, Mr. Pinkerton demonstrates negatively, by irrefragable proofs, that the Scythians were a perfectly distinct race both from the Sarmatians or Sauromatæ, from the Huns and Tartars, and from the Cimmerians or Celts who were the original occupants of the greatest part of Europe: and he further establishes, by proofs no less incontrovertible, that they assuredly 'Much the same remark is made by Sir William himself. See Asiat. Res. vol. iii. p. 428. vol. ii. p. 65. |