Bactria

Bactria (Bâkhtriš): countryin northern Afghanistan, in Antiquity famous for

its fierce warriors and its ancient religion, which was founded by the
prophet Zarathustra.

If there was ever a region that can be described with the old geographical cliché
that it is a country of opposites, it must be Bactria. Situated between the Hindu
Kush mountain range in the south and the river Oxus (Amudar'ya) in the
north, it is essentially an east-west zone that consists of extremely fertile alluvial
plains, a hot desert, and cold mountains. The contrast between the country's
fertility and desolation was already noted in Antiquity (e.g., by the Roman
author Quintus Curtius Rufus); the presence of all types of landscape helps to
explain why agriculture and urbanism started early in Bactria.

Bactria (Bactriana, Bākhtar in Persian, also Bhalika in Arabic and Indian

languages, and Ta-Hsia in Chinese) was the ancient Greek name of the country
between the range of the Hindu Kush and the Amu Darya (Oxus); its capital,
Bactra or Balhika or Bokhdi (now Balkh), was located in what is
now Afghanistan. It is a mountainous region with a moderate climate. Water is
abundant and the land is very fertile. Bactria was the home of one of the Iranian
tribes. Modern authors have often used the name in a wider sense, as the
designation of all the countries of Central Asia.
Bactria was the homeland of Aryan tribes who later moved south-west into Iran,
South Afghanistan, North Pakistan and North-Western India around 2500-2000 BC
Later it became the north province of the Persian Empire in Central Asia.(Cotterell,
59) It was in these regions, where the fertile soil of the mountainous country
is surrounded by the Turanian desert, that the prophet Zarathushtra
(Zoroaster) was said to have been born and gained his first adherents. Avestan,
the language of the oldest portions of the Zoroastrian Avesta, was once
called "old-iranic" which is related to Sanskrit. Today some scholars believe the
Avestan-Language was the western dialect of the Sanskrit because both
languages are the oldest Indo-Iranian language of Aryans we know. With the time
the Avestan-Language became developed by own western style.

Bactria was bounded on the south by the ancient region of Gandhara.

The Bactrian language is an Iranian language of the Indo-Iranian sub-family of
the Indo-European family.

Bactrian was probably spoken by the local populations of Bactria when Alexander
the Great invaded the area around 323 BCE, inaugurating a two-century period
of Hellenistic rule by the Seleucid Empire and the then the Greco-Bactrian
kingdom.
Greek rule ended around 123 BCE with the invasions of
the Yuezhi( Kushans) from the North, who adopted the Greek alphabet to
write the local Bactrian language, a case which is unique among Iranian
languages. Before that time, Bactrian was written in the Aramaic alphabet.

Bactrian seems to have been, together with Greek, the official language of
the Kushans, descendant of the Yuezhi, and was used in their coins and inscriptions.
In 1993, the Bactrian Rabatak inscription was discovered, recording that
under the Kushan king Kanishka (c. 120 CE), use of the Greek language
was officially discontinued. The territorial expansion of the Kushans helped
propagate Bactrian to Northern India and parts of Central Asia, as far
as Turfan where Buddhistand Manichean inscriptions in Bactrian can be found.

The phonetic composition remains very hard to know for sure, because not all
phonemes can be distincted from written documents. Supposedly, there were 9
vowels (all long and short, except short o), which could be reduced easily due to
phonetic processes. The consonant mutations included * d > l, *c > dj, -rs- >
-s'- etc. In general, Bactrian phonetics has features both seen in modern Pashto and
in Middle Iranian Parthian and Sogdian.

In morphology, Bactrian went rather far from ancient languages than other Iranian
tongues. The gender disappeared, only 2 noun cases were preserved (direct and
indirect), the ancient inflected forms of the past tense were replaced. The language
used a definite article i.

According to Professor Nicholas Sims-Williams of SOAS, University of London, who

is the leading expert of the Sogdian and Bactrian languages, gave a lecture on the
discovery and decipherment of Bactrian documents, written in the little-known
Iranian language of Ancient Afghanistan in modified Greek script, at the Ancient
Orient Museum in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, on September 23.

During the first centuries of the Christian era, Bactrian could legitimately
have been ranked amongst the world's most important languages. As the
language of the Kushan kings, Bactrian must have been widely known throughout a
great empire, in Afghanistan, Northern India and part of Central Asia. Even after the
collapse of the Kushan empire, Bactrian continued in use for at least six centuries, as
is shown by the ninth-century inscriptions from the Tochi valley in Pakistan.
and the remnants of Buddhist and Manichean manuscripts found as far
away as the Turfan oasis in western China. (This slide, for instance [Slide
212KB], shows the unique fragment of a Bactrian text written in Manichean script,
which forms part of the Turfan collection in Berlin.) The career of Bactrian as a
language of culture thus lasted for close to a thousand years.

Until forty years ago virtually nothing was known of the Bactrian
language except for the legends on the coins of the Kushans and their successors.
The Kushan coins are inscribed in Greek letters of an angular type, apparently
imitating a style of writing used for monumental inscriptions. In principle these
legends are not particularly difficult to read, but their content is limited to the names
and titles of kings and deities. The coins of the later rulers of Bactria --- Kushano-
Sasanians, Kidarites, Hephthalites, Turks, and so on --- are written in a cursive
script, imitating manuscript styles, which has proved much more difficult to decipher.
Some tiny scraps of manuscripts in a similar cursive script were also known, but they
were too few and too incomplete to offer any realistic prospect of interpretation.
Although I have only been able to describe a small part of an immense new body of
material, I hope that I have said enough to show that it will throw new light on
many aspects of the history and culture of ancient Afghanistan. But as yet I have
hardly mentioned its importance for Iranian historical linguistics, though for me
personally this is its chief fascination.
This slide shows a small selection of forms which illustrate the position of Bactrian
amongst the Iranian languages. In particular I have chosen forms which show the
connection between Bactrian and the languages of the surrounding area:
medieval Sogdian and Choresmian; modern Pashto, Yidgha-Munji, and Ishkashmi.
Such forms support the conclusion which Henning reached on first acquaintance with
the new language that it is "in its natural and rightful place in Bactria" and justify his
decision to name it Bactrian.

In many cases the new material confirms or contradicts views originally reached on
the basis of limited evidence. For instance, Gershevitch's controversial interpretation
of lruh-minan in the Surkh Kotal inscription as the plural of a putative * lruh-
min "enemy" receives strong support from the contexts in which the later
form druh-min occurs. It is particularly impressive that the new texts provide
examples of many previously unattested Bactrian words whose existence had
already been postulated by Martin Schwartz on the basis of their occurrence as
loanwords in other languages of Central Asia.
The Hindu Kush, which marks the fault line of the Iranian and Eurasian
tectonic plates, runs more or less from the east to the west, and many small
rivers run down from its slopes to the north, deposeting sediments on the
foothills and the plain that runs parallel to the mountain range. Consequently,
this is a very fertile area, where farmers produced wheat and barley in very
ancient times. Their culture, known as the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological
Complex (BMAC), can be dated to c.2200-1700 and is sometimes associated with
the arrival of the Indo-Iranians.

Once, there had been a semi-arid zone between the fertile area and the river. Some
of the mountain streams, however, had reached the river Oxus, and had formed lush
corridors through the steppe. When the farmers started to dig canals to
irrigate fields immediately north of the foothills, however, the waters
disappeared from the arid zone and it changed into a desert.
So, after 2000 BCE, several parallel zones can be discerned:
  the Hindu Kush mountains in the south;
 the foothills and the fertile agricultural zone;
 the desert;
 the river Oxus.

North of the river was the steppe, which was occupied by Sogdian nomads,
with whom the Bactrians must have exchanged products.

According to some scholars, the Bactrian prophet Zarathustra lived in the second
half of the second millennium. He is the founder of Zoroastrianism and reformed
aspects of an older religion. Archaeologists have tried to see traces of this older
religion in the BMAC, but decisive proof is lacking. Besides, it must be noted that
there are scholars who date Zarathustra in the mid-first millennium, which makes it
very implausible that there is continuity from the BMAC to Zoroastrianism.
However this may be, Bactria was incorporated in the Achaemenid empire as
a special satrapy that was sometimes ruled by the crown prince or
intended heir (mathišta) The country north of the Oxus, Sogdia, was at times
part of this satrapy. The capital of Bactria was Bactra (Balkh, near modern
Mazâr-e Sharîf), an important city in the history of Zoroastrianism. It is known to
have had a sanctuary dedicated to the goddess of water and fertility
Anahita, and is called "the town with the high-lifted banners" in the Avesta, the
sacred book of the Zoroastrians.
When Darius I the Great reorganized the Persian empire and created formal
satrapies, the Bactrians and the otherwise unknown Aeglians were reckoned to be
one tax district, which was supposed to pay 360 talents every year. The Bactrian
warriors were famous: they are known to have been part of the army of Darius'
son and successor Xerxes, who invaded Greece in 480. Herodotus mentions their
turbans, bows, and spears, and tells that they were employed during the battle of
Plataea in 479.
The Greeks knew no nation beyond Bactria. When the Athenian
playwright Euripides wanted to write that the god Dionysus was born in the far
east, he called it Bactria, and the philosopher Aristotle of Stagira argued that
from the Hindu Kush, one could see the eastern Ocean.
From coins, it can be deduced that these exiles managed to keep in touch with the
motherland. Another group of Greek settlers was called the "Branchidae" and
descended from a group of priests that had once lived near Didyma (near Miletus)
and had been taken captive by the Persians.
In 329, the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great arrived in Bactria,
after a heroic crossing of the Hindu Kush. His opponent, the Persian
leader Artaxerxes V Bessus, had expected an invasion from Aria in the west,
and had destroyed the countryside, but Alexander arrived from the southeast. He
captured Bactra, passed through the desert (text) and crossed the river Oxus. For
the Iranian tribesmen in Bactria and Sogdia, the shock was too much, and their
leader Spitamenes arrested Bessus, who was handed over to Alexander's
colonel Ptolemy.
However, the Macedonian occupation of Sogdia and Bactria was not to be
uncontested. Almost immediately after Alexander had decided to build a new city,
called Alexandria Eschatê, 'the furthest Alexandria' (modern Khodzent), the
Sogdians revolted, because they did not like urban settlements in their
nomadic घघममंतत country. Another reason for this revolt was Zoroastrianism: the
Zoroastrians did not want to soil the sacred earth or fire with dead
corpses, and therefore exposed their dead to the vultures and dogs. The
Macedonians were shocked and Alexander forbade this custom. Another cause
may have been cattle raiding. It is impossible that the invading army did not
confiscate ज़ब्त करनन cows - the only sin that was condemned explicitly in
the Zoroastrian creed. All this was unacceptable to the Sogdians, and Spitamenes
became their leader.
Many Bactrians sympathized with the insurrection, and Spitamenes knew how to
exploit this. His mounted archers came dangerously close to the walls of Bactra.
However, the Macedonians were able to overcome the revolt. Alexander's
friend Hephaestion founded several new cities (including, probably, the one
excavated near Ai Khanum). In the spring of 327, Bactria was more quiet, and
Alexander married a native princess named Roxane to create more
sympathy. Many Greek mercenaries -perhaps 30,000 men- were left behind as
an occupation force when the Macedonian army crossed the Hindu Kush to invade
the Punjab.
When Alexander was almost mortally wounded during the siege of the city
of the Indian Mallians (early in 325), the Greek settlers in Sogdia
and Bactria revolted and decided to march home. They were supported by
the native population, who wanted to get rid of their new masters, leave
the cities, and take up their old way of life. Order was restored, but a new
insurrection in the summer of 323 (after the death of Alexander) was never
really suppressed, although Alexander's successor Perdiccas had sent an army
commanded by Peithon (text).
Peithon had wanted to save the Greek settlers, but they were killed by his army.
From now on, there were insufficient Europeans to keep Bactria occupied.
At the same time, war broke out between Perdiccas and several of Alexander's
commanders, and it was only in 308, after Seleucus I Nicator had won
the Babylonian War, that a new European army could invade Bactria again.
From now on, Bactria belonged to the Seleucid Empire, and Seleucus' son and
successor Antiochus I Soter was for some time governor of the eastern
satrapies, as if he were an Achaemenid mathišta.
The Greeks and Macedonian living in Bactria were now cut off from the European
west. They became an independent kingdom, led by a man named Diodotus, who
had already supported the Parni. Although the Seleucid king Antiochus III the
Great invaded Parthia and Bactria in 206, the Bactrians were able to retain
their independence. King Euthydemus appears to have been a powerful man. In
184, the Graeco-Bactrian kingdom seized Gandara and the Punjab, where
the power of the Indian Maurya dynasty was in decline. Euthydemus' son
Demetrius settled in Taxila, which he refounded as a Greek city (Sirkap).

In c.130, the Graeco-Bactrian kingdom came to an end: the Sacae nomad (

Scythians ) from the north, who had often made incursions, broke through, and in
110, they were also present in India. There were many small kingdoms, which have
produced a remarkable variety of coins.

In the first century CE, the Yuezhi nomads or Kushans reunited Bactria and
the Punjab. From their capital Peshawar in Gandara, the new kings ruled a
powerful Buddhist empire, in which Indian, Iranian, Sacan, Parthian, and
Greek elements were integrated. The Silk road connected Bactria with the Roman
Empire in the west and China in the far east

Bactrian language was completely assimilated by the Persian and later by

Turkish language, which spread in Tocharistan. This process is believed to take
place until the 12th century. Some Bactrian tribes moved south, some north-
west who saved partially thier languages

The Bactrians are one of the ancestral lines of the modern-

day Pashtuns, Tajiks, Dards, and Pamirians . Some bactrians who lived
around Oxus were assimilated by Altic people

Pashtuns are classified as an Iranian people (Iranic People), possibly as partial

modern-day descendants of Bactrians and Saka-Scythians, an ancient Iranian
group.[28] According to academic Yu. V. Gankovsky, the Pashtuns began as a "union
of largely East-Iranian tribes which became the initial ethnic stratum of the Pashtun
ethnogenesis, dates from the middle of the first millennium CE and is connected
with the dissolution of the Epthalite (White Huns) confederacy."[29] Early
precursors to the Pashtuns were Old Iranian tribes that spread throughout the
eastern Iranian plateau. The Pashto-speaking Pashtuns refer to themselves as
Pashtuns or Pukhtuns depending upon whether they are speakers of the
southern dialect or northern dialect respectively. In terms of phenotype, the
Pashtuns overall are predominantly a Mediterranean Caucasoid people, although
light hair and eye colors are not uncommon, especially among remote mountain
tribes.

Haraiva (Aria)
The Aryans first settled on the Oxus (AMU DARYA in BACTRIA)
around 4000 B.C. They called this river the Sarasvati and here Vedic
culture developed. Around this time agriculture begins, allowing the
population to move from the foothills into oases along the rivers that flow
into the Central Asian desert. The new settlements include large fortified
buildings.

Seen in isolation, the Rigveda is undateable. However, by placing it in the

context of external evidence some useful time brackets can be assigned.
The reference to copper, harnessing of domesticated horse for
transport and draft, and use of wheeled-vehicles show that the oral
tradition of the Rigveda is from around 4000-3000 BC
The 2 rivers Sarasvati (Oxus) and Drishadvati (Jaxartes) represent
Ikshvaku. Mr. Gangaram writes:” The Aryan civilisation was centered
around the Sarasvati and Drishadavati rivers. We know that the goddes
Sarasvati is also called Vaks (speech) and that the Sarasvati (daugher
of the lake, sea) river is called Va(m)ksu in the Mahabharata. The
Greek word Oxus is a corruption of Vaksu. The other river Jaxartes
(Caks-sar(i)tes means eye-river) is. Drishadvati which means
daugher of the eye (or stone).(Drish means: to see). The one river
signifies sight while the other signifies speech. There is a
relationship with Iksh-vaku (sight-speech), the well-known sage. Iksh-
vaku is the great grandson of sage Kashyapa. The 2 rivers represent
Iksh-vaku (see-speak), while Kashyapa is the Caspian sea, which in
Vedic times was called Kasyapa Mira. Scientists have shown that the 2
rivers used to flow in the Caspian sea, before they changed their
course and emptied in the Aral sea. This could be the cause of the
southward movement of the Aryans. The Vedic river Raha ro Rasa is
identified with the Volga river, which in old slavonic languages is
called Rasa, from which Russia derives its name”.).

The Aryans called their country Arya-varta or shortly varta. Later

on varta was corrupted to varat, barat which in modern times is mistaken
for Bharat a character from the Mahabharata.

Bunsen however states that around 4000BC or earlier the Ayans were
living on the Oxus or Sarasvati banks, around 3000 BC they were in
Bactria and they reached the Indus around 2000 BC and in 1000 BC they
reached Ceylon (Vambery, Bunsen, iii. 584,586), but some scolars object
to this and state that the Aryans were much earler in the Indus/Ganga
region).
From the Oxus river the Aryans reached the Tarim Basin around 3000 BC.
Recently Aryan Nordic type mummies from around 2000 BC have been
found in his ormer part of Aryavarta.
Alexander the Great invaded Bactria, Arya and Arachosia in 332 BC. He
built Alexandrias in many parts of the country. Later, one of his generals
founded the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom in the north ofAfghanistan which
lasted two centuries.
Buddhism began to penetrate Afghanistan around 250 BC and from the 1st century
to the 7th, it flourished in one of its greatest centers in the
beautiful valley of Bamiyan where today the two giant statues of Buddha (the tallest
in the world) carved in the face of a cliff, are one of the wonders of the world
According to the historians, the same Bactrian Aryans were the ancestors
of the Eastern Iranian tribs (Tajiks, Pashtuns, Ossetians, Pamirians) they
had settled in the areas of Balkh, Herat, Kabul and Gandhara. They gave it
the name of Aryana. In the hymns of reg Veda, there was a clear-cut
indication of sindho (inus) , kubha (Kabul) , kurrma (kurram) , gumati
(gumal) suvastu (swat) and other rivers of the area. Above all, according
to bakhtar shah zafar, the philologists agree that Pashto joined hands with
the Aryans group of languages. Abdul hye habibi, the most eminent
scholar, has given a list of Pashto words, which resemble other languages
of house of Aryans.

In historical times, the Arians lived in the country along the river Arios (the modern
Hari Rûd), which is more or less identical to
the Afghanistan province of Herât (Arya). The Aryans moved later south-west
into Iran and into North-Western India around 2500-2000 BC . There were large
deserts surrounding the fertile river valley.

From the late seventh or early sixth century BCE, the Arians were subjects of the
Medes, and their country became a satrapy of the Achaemenid empire when
king Cyrus the Great defeated the Medes (550 BC).

During the civil war of 522/520, the Arians seem to have remained quiet. Under
Persian rule, the Arians started to live in towns; the Greek geographer Ptolemy of
Alexandria (Geography 6.17.3) states that there were many towns and villages in
the valley of the river, and that there were nomadic tribes who were living in the
mountains. The center of the Persian government was the palace at Artacoana,
which is usually identified with the modern town of Herât (Arya)

In September 330 BC, the Macedonian king Alexander the Great conquered Aria in
pursuit of the leaders of the Persian national resistance, king Bessus and the last
satrap of Aria, Satibarzanes. Alexander used siege towers to take Artacoana; the
inhabitants were killed or sold as slaves. The empty town was rebuilt and
called Alexandria.

After Alexander's death (in 323), Aria became a stable part of the Seleucid empire
-ruled by a Macedonian dynasty- for more than half a century. However, after 240,
the neighboring countries Bactria and Parthia became independent from their
Macedonian overlords. Aria was part of the new Bactrian kingdom, although the
Seleucid king Antiochus III the Great managed to extend his realm to the east
between 208 and 190. His son Antiochus IV Epiphanes sent a general, Eucratides, to
do the same in 167, but the Parthian king Mithridates I outsmarted him and seized
almost all Afghanistan. From now on, Aria was part of the Parthian empire.
In Antiquity, Aria was famous for its wine. It is mentioned in the Avesta as one
of Ahuramazda's special creations (Vendidad, Fargard 1.9).

ARYA / HERAT
by W. J. Vogelsang

PRE-ISLAMIC PERIOD

The present town of Herat in western Afghanistan dates back to ancient

times, but its exact age remains unknown. In Achaemenid times (ca. 550-330
B.C.E.), the surrounding district was known as Haraiva (in Old Persian), and
in classical sources the region was correspondingly known as Areia. In the
Zoroastrian Avesta (Yašt 10.14; Vidēvdāt 1.9), the district is mentioned
as Harōiva. The name of the district and its main town is derived from that of
the chief river of the region, the Hari Rud (Old Iranian * Harayu “with
velocity”; compare Sanskrit Saráyu [Mayrhofer, Dictionary III, p. 443]), which
traverses the district and passes just south (5 km) of modern Herat. The
naming of a region and its principal town after the main river is a common
feature in this part of the world. (Compare the adjoining districts/rivers/towns
of Arachosia and Bactria.)
The site of Herat dominates the productive part of ancient Areia, which was,
and basically still is, a rather narrow stretch of land that extends for some 150
km along both banks of the Hari Rud, from near Obeh in the east to near
Kuhsān in the west. At no point along its route is the valley more than 25
km wide. The city and district of Areia/Herat occupy an important strategic
place along the age-old caravan routes across the Iranian Plateau.
The Persian Achaemenid district of Areia is mentioned in the provincial lists
that are included in various royal inscriptions, for instance, in the Bisotun
inscription (q.v., DB 1.16) of Darius I (ca. 520 B.C.E.) in Fārs province. In the
texts the name of Areia is grouped with Zranka (or Dranka), modern Sistān to
the south; Parthava (Parthia) to the northwest, and Bāxtriš (Bactria) to the
northeast. Representatives from the district are depicted in reliefs, e.g., at the
royal Achaemenid tombs of Naqš-e Rostam and Persepolis. They are wearing
Scythian-style dress (with a tunic and trousers tucked into high boots) and a
twisted turban around the head. This costume is also worn by the
representatives from nearby Sistān (to the south) and Arachosia (to the
southeast) and is reminiscent of the dress worn by the representatives from
almost all of the northern lands of the Achaemenid Empire, which were
strongly influenced by the Scythic cultures from the Eurasian steppes. On the
so-called Darius Statue that was discovered at Susa (Kervran, 1972), the
representative from Areia is also shown wearing a long coat worn around the
shoulders with empty sleeves. This type of coat is known from classical
sources (Gk. kandys) and was sometimes also worn by the Persians and the
Medes. The origin of this coat should be sought among the nomadic Scythians
of Central Asia. (See further in Gervers-Molnár, 1973.)
Very little is known about Areia during the Achaemenid period. Herodotus
(7.61 ff.) tells that Areians were included in Xerxes’ army against Greece,
around 480 B.C.E. In Herodotus’s taxation list of the Achaemenid Empire
(3.89 ff.), the Areians are listed together with the Parthians, Choresmians
(from south of the Aral Sea), and Sogdians (from the valley of
the Zarafshan River, around Bukhara and Samarkand). According to
Herodotus, the Areians in Xerxes’ army were dressed in the Bactrian fashion,
which means that they were wearing a Scythian-type outfit.
At the time of Alexander the Great, Areia was obviously an important district.
It was administered by a satrap, called Satibarzanes, who was one of the
three main Persian officials in the East of the Empire, together with the satrap
Bessus [see BESSOS] of Bactria and Barsaentes of Arachosia. This would
mean that the capital of Satibarzanes, which may have been Herat, was one
of the three main Achaemenid centers in this part of the world, together with
ancient Bactra (modern Balḵ, the capital of ancient Bactria), and Old
Kandahār, the capital of ancient Arachosia. In late 330 B.C. Alexander the
Great, according to his biographers, captured the Areian capital that was
called Artacoana (Arrian, Anab. Alex. 3.25.2-6; Curtius 6. 6.33 [Artacana];
Diodorus 17.78.1 [Chortacana]; Pliny, Nat. hist. 6.61.93; Strabo 11.10.1
[Artacaena]). The etymology of this name remains unknown, and whether
this place should be identified with the modern city of Herat is also uncertain,
although the strategic position of modern Herat would suggest its great
antiquity; and thus the possiblity remains that they are one and the same
place. In the early nineteenth century a Persian Achaemenid cuneiform
cylinder seal was found in or near Herat (Torrens, 1842).
After Alexander the Great, classical biographers refer to a city called
Alexandreia in Areia, but again its identification remains unknown. Soon after
the death of Alexander, Areia was briefly attacked by Scythic nomads from
the far north (Pliny, Nat. hist. 6.47). In the following years, Areia became a
frontier area between the empire of the Parthians to the west and that of the
Greco-Bactrians to the east. In the late second century B.C.E. the Greco-
Bactrians were defeated by northern tribes, and Scythians (or Sakas)
traversed the district of Areia; perhaps under pressure from the Parthians,
they finally settled in nearby Sistān (Mid. Pers. skstn “Sakastān”), farther to
the south. In the Parthian Stations (14-16)by Isidore of Charax, an itinerary
composed in the Augustan era, the district of Areia is placed between
Margiana (in the vicinity of modern Marv to the north), and Anauon (around
modern Farāh) to the south. At that time the district was clearly regarded as
forming part of the Parthian realm.
In the Sasanian period (226-652 C.E.), “Harēv” (hryw) is listed in Šāpūr I’s
Kaʿba-ye Zardošt inscription; and “ Hariy” (hr’y) is mentioned in the Pahlavi
catalogue of the provincial capitals of the empire (Markwart, Provincial
Capitals, pp. 11, 46). Ca. 430 C.E., the town is also listed as having a
Christian community. Sasanian seals and engraved gemstones were reported
to have been found in or around Herat (Torrens, 1842). The city served as a
Sasanian mint, its name being recorded as hr, hry, and hrydw. Additionally,
gold and copper coins have been found that are clearly Sasanian in
inspiration, although the Sasanians in Iran generally did not strike gold coins
 but preferred silver issues. The gold coins from the Herat area show a fire
altar on the reverse and the portrait of the ruler on the obverse. The name of
the ruler is often identical to one of those listed on the so-called Kushano-
Sasanian coins from Bactria, and this would indicate that the Sasanian
governor in the northeast of the Sasanian Empire at times also controlled the
Herat district. (For the coin evidence, see Dani and Litvinsky, 1996.)
In the last two centuries of Sasanian rule, the area and town of Areia/Herat
had great strategic importance in the endless wars between the Sasanian
Iranians and the Chionites and Hephthalites (qq.v.), of Hunnish origin, who
had been settled in modern northern Afghanistan since the late fourth
century; but exact information is scarce. The city of Herat, however, became
well known with the advent of the Arabs in the middle of the seventh century.

Bibliography: F. R. Allchin and N. Hammond, The Archaeology of Afghanistan.

From Earliest Times to the Timurid Period, London , 1978. Warwick
Ball, Archaeological Gazetteer of Afghanistan / Catalogue des sites
archéologiques d’Afghanistan, Paris, 1982. A. H. Dani and B. A. Litvinsky,
“The Kushano-Sasanian Kingdom,” in History of Civilizations of Central
Asia III. The cross-roads of civilizations, A.D. 250 to 750 , Paris, 1996, pp.
103-18. Veronika Gervers-Molnár, The Hungarian Szür. An Archaic Mantle of
Eurasian Origin, Toronto, 1973. Ph. Gignoux, Glossaire des Inscriptions
Pehlevies et Parthes (Corpus Inscr. Iran., Supplementary Series, Vol.
I), London, 1972, p. 52. Robert Göbl, Sasanian Numismatics, Braunschweig,
1971. Kent, Old Persian, p. 213. M. Kervran et al., “Une statue de Darius
decouvert à Suse,” JA 260, 1972, pp. 235-66. H. Torrens, Õn a Cylinder and
certain Gems, collected in the neighbourhood of Herat, by Major
Pottinger,” Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 11, 1842, pp. 316-21. W.
J. Vogelsang, The Rise and Organisation of the Achaemenid Empire. The
Eastern Iranian Evidence, Leiden, 1992. Idem, The Afghans, Oxford, 2002.

Who are Iranic People ?

Iranian people ( Irannic People) are not confined to the borders of the current state of Iran. The term
Iranic People is sometimes used as an alternative in order to avoid confusion with the
citizens of modern Iran. The Iranian peoples (Iranic People) live chiefly in
the Iran ,Afghanistan, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and parts of
the Indian subcontinent, though speakers of Iranian languages were once found
throughout Eurasia, from the Balkans to western China.

"Iranian", as used above, refers to all Iranian peoples, at the time not yet differentiated from each other at
the time of the composition of the Zoroastrian Yashts texts, where Zarathustra is described to have lived
in Airyanem Vaejah meaning "Land of Aryans".
Persian/Farsi speaking region will have loan words from a geographically close neighboring nation. Languages
like Pashto, Kurdish and Baluchi are close to Persian/Farsi but have become distinct Aryana languages of their
own. These languages were all one language with Old Persian during the arrival of the Aryans, but later
during the development phase in Aryana ,they took their own course.

The Iranian peoples (Iranic people) are a collection of ethnic groups

(Persians ,Pushtuns,Ossetians, Yaghnobi, Tajiks, Kurds, Baluchis and ...), who are descents of Old
Persians, Saka-Scythinas, Bactrians, Alanian, Sarmatians and Tocharians defined by
their usage of Iranian languages and discernable descent from ancient Iranian
peoples( Indo-Europeans, Aryans ). The Iranian peoples live chiefly in the
Iran,Afghanistan, Central Asia , Caucasus and parts of the Indian subcontinent, though
speakers of Iranian languages were once found throughout Eurasia, from
the Balkans to western China.
Tocharians language is classified as indo-european langauge,its not an Iranian language.

Early Iranian tribes were the precursors to many diverse modern peoples, including
Persians, Pushtuns,Ossetians,Pamirians,Yaghnobi, Kurds,Baluchis and many other smaller groups. The
southern Iranian peoples survived Alexander the Great's conquests, Muslim Arab attempts at cultural
dominance, and devastating assaults by the Mongols.
The series of ethnic groups which comprise the Iranian peoples are traced to a branch of the ancient Indo-
European Aryans known as the Iranians or Proto-Iranians.
Having descended from the Aryans (Proto-Indo-Iranians), the ancient Iranian peoples separated from
the Indo-Aryans in the early 2nd millennium BCE. The Iranian languagesform a sub-branch of
the Indo-Iranian sub-family, which is a branch of the family of Indo-European languages. The
Iranian peoples stem from early Proto-Iranians, themselves a branch of the Indo-Iranians, who are believed
to have originated in either Central Asia or Afghanistan circa 1800 BCE. The Proto-Iranians are traced to
the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, a Bronze Age culture of Central Asia.

The area between northern Afghanistan and the Aral Sea is hypothesized to have been the region where
the Proto-Iranians first emerged, following the separation of Indo-Iranians tribes.

By the first millennium BCE, Ancient

Iranian peoples such as
the Medes, Persians, Bactrians ( Pushtuns,Pamirians,Tajiks ) and Parthians populated the Iranian
plateau, while Iranian peoples such as the Scythians, Sarmatians, and Alans populated the steppes
north of the Black Sea. The Saka and Scythian tribes remained mainly in the north, and spread as far
west as the Balkans and as far east as Xinjiang. Later offshoots, related to the Scythians, included
the Sarmatians, who vanished following Slavic and other invasions into southern Russia, the Ukraine,
and the Balkans, presumably due to having been assimilated by other tribes.