In India
Some of the earliest ancient human civilisations in South Asia originated from areas encompassing present-day Pakistan. The earliest known inhabitants in the region were Soanian during the Lower Paleolithic, of whom stone tools have been found in the Soan Valley of Punjab.
The Indus region, which covers most of Pakistan, was the site of several successive ancient cultures including the Neolithic Mehrgarh and the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilisation (2800–1800 BCE) at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro.
Mehrgarh, (7000–5500 BCE), on the Kachi Plain of Balochistan, is an important Neolithic site discovered in 1974, with early evidence of farming and herding, and dentistry. Early residents lived in mud brick houses, stored grain in granaries, fashioned tools with copper ore, cultivated barley, wheat, jujubes and dates, and herded sheep, goats and cattle.
As the civilization progressed (5500–2600 BCE) residents began to engage in crafts, including flint knapping, tanning, bead production, and metalworking. The site was occupied continuously until 2600 BCE, when climatic changes began to occur. Between 2600 and 2000 BCE, region became more arid and Mehrgarh was abandoned in favour of the Indus Valley, where a new civilization was in the early stages of development.
The Indus Valley Civilization developed between 3300–1700 BCE on the banks of the Indus River. At its peak, the civilisation hosted a population of approximately 5 million in hundreds of settlements extending as far as the Arabian Sea, present-day southern and eastern Afghanistan, southeastern Iran and the Himalayas.
Major urban centers were at Dholavira, Kalibangan, Harappa, Lothal, Mohenjo-daro, and Rakhigarhi, as well as an offshoot called the Kulli culture (2500–2000 BCE) in southern Balochistan, which had similar settlements, pottery and other artifacts. The civilization collapsed abruptly around 1700 BCE.
In the early part of the second millennium BCE, the Rigvedic civilization existed, between the Sapta Sindhu and Ganges-Yamuna rivers. The city of Taxila in northern Pakistan, became important to Vedic religion (and later in Buddhism).
Early Vedic society consisted of largely pastoral groups, with late Harappan urbanization having been abandoned. After the time of the Rigveda, Aryan society became increasingly agricultural and was socially organized around the four varnas, or social classes.
In addition to the Vedas, the principal texts of Hinduism, the core themes of the Sanskrit epics Ramayana and Mahabharata are said to have their ultimate origins during this period. The early Indo-Aryan presence probably corresponds, in part, to the Ochre Coloured Pottery culture in archaeological contexts.
The Kuru kingdom corresponds to the Black and Red Ware and Painted Grey Ware cultures and to the beginning of the Iron Age in South Asia, around 1000 BCE, as well as with the composition of the Atharvaveda, the first Vedic text to mention iron, as śyāma ayas, literally “black metal.”
The Painted Grey Ware culture spanned much of northern India from about 1100 to 600 BCE. The Vedic Period also established republics such as Vaishali, which existed as early as the 6th century BCE and persisted in some areas until the 4th century CE. The later part of this period corresponds with an increasing movement away from the previous tribal system towards the establishment of kingdoms, called mahajanapadas.
The Vedic Civilization (1500–500 BCE) characterised by Indo-Aryan culture laid the foundations of Hinduism, which would become well established in the region. Multan was an important Hindu pilgrimage centre.
The Vedic civilisation flourished in the ancient Gandhāran city of Takṣaśilā, now Taxila in Punjab. Successive ancient empires and kingdoms ruled the region: the Persian Achaemenid Empire around 519 BCE, Alexander the Great’s empire in 326 BCE and the Maurya Empire founded by Chandragupta Maurya and extended by Ashoka the Great until 185 BCE.
The Indo-Greek Kingdom founded by Demetrius of Bactria (180–165 BCE) included Gandhara and Punjab and reached its greatest extent under Menander (165–150 BCE), prospering the Greco-Buddhist culture in the region. Taxila had one of the earliest universities and centres of higher education in the world.
In India the Maratha (archaically transliterated as Marhatta or Mahratta) are an Indian warrior caste, found predominantly in the state of Maharashtra. The term Marāthā has two related usages: within the Marathi-speaking region it describes the dominant Maratha caste; historically, the term describes the kingdomfounded by Shivaji Raje in the seventeenth century and continued by his successors.
Maharashtra is a state in the western region of India. It is the second most populous state after Uttar Pradesh and third largest state by area in India. Maharashtra is the wealthiest state in India, contributing 15% of the country’s industrial output and 13.3% of its GDP (2006–2007 figures).
The modern Marathi language developed from the Maharashtri Prakrit, and the word Marhatta (later used for the Marathas) is found in the Jain Maharashtri literature. The terms Maharashtra, Maharashtri, Marathi and Maratha may have derived from the same root. However, their exact etymology is uncertain.
The most widely accepted theory among the scholars is that the words Maratha and Maharashtra ultimately derive from a compound of Maha (Sanskrit for “great”) and rashtrika. The word rashtrika is a Sanskritised form of Ratta, the name of a tribe or a dynasty of petty chiefs ruling in the Deccan region.
Mahisha or Mahishaka was a kingdom in ancient India, ruled by the Asura king Mahisha. His capital, Mahisha City, is currently known as Mysore a city in Karnataka. This kingdom is mentioned in Mahabharata, though Puranas (especially Markandeya Purana) gives more information. The Sanskrit word Mahisha means great, powerful.
Another theory is that the term is derived from Maha (“great”) and rathi or ratha (great chariot driver), which refers to a skillful northern fighting force that migrated southward into the area.
The Mahar are an Indian community historically identified as Untouchables. They are found largely within Maharashtra. As Untouchables they were assigned a very low status in Hinduism, and as a result most of the Mahar community followed social reformer B. R. Ambedkar in converting to Buddhism in the early 20th century.
The 19th century activist and social reformer Jyotirao Phule wrote that the Mahars are indigenous people of India belong to Kshatriya (warrior) varna, and they were conquered by Aryan Brahman race, which came from beyond the Indus region to invade India and the established the caste system for social control.
The Mahar fought with the Brahman and their ancestors were singled out as untouchables. Phule proposed etymologies “great/terrible enemy” (maha meaning great and ari or art meaning enemy), or “those who take away dead animals” (mrit har). The name of Maharashtra state is possibly derived from “land of the Mahars”(Mahāran̄ce rāṣṭra).
Kshatriya, from (holder of) Kshatra (rule or authority), is one of the four varnas (social orders) of the Hindu society. The Sanskrit term Kshatriya belonged to the Vedic society wherein members organized themselves into 3 classes, viz., Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya. Traditionally, Kshatriya constitute the ruling and military elite. They were in charge of the protection of the society by fighting in wartime and governing in peacetime.
The most recent gene flow paternal gene flow from West Asia corresponds largely to haplogroup haplogroup J2a-M410. J2a and R1a1 have similar Y-STR variances in the two studied populations, and their ages are roughly a third of those reported (with wide uncertainty), or about ~4ky.
This is roughly consistent with the postulated arrival of the Indo-Aryans in India, and should probably be added to the enumeration of cases where the genealogical mutation rate correlates well with prehistory. It also seems consistent with my speculation about a West Asian origin of the Indo-Aryans.
These findings reveal movement of populations to Maharashtra through the western coast rather than mainland where Western Ghats-Vindhya Mountains and Narmada-Tapti rivers might have acted as a natural barrier.
Within India, J2a is more common among the upper castes and decreases in frequency with the caste level. This can be explained by the assimilation of local J2a (and R2) people from Bactria and Pakistan by the R1a Indo-European warriors who descended from the Volga-Ural region of Russia (Sintashta culture) and established themselves for a few centuries in southern Central Asia, immediately north of the Hindu Kush (including the Oxus civilization) before moving on to conquer the Indian subcontinent. J2a would have reached Bactria with the expansion of Neolithic herders from the Middle East who then blended with the indigenous hunter-gatherers belonging chiefly to R2.
J2b has a quite different distribution from J2a. J2b seems to have a stronger association with the Neolithic and Chalcolithic cultures of Southeast Europe. It is particularly common in the Balkans, Central Europe and Italy, which is roughly the extent of the European Copper Age culture. Its maximum frequency is achieved around Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro and Northwest Greece – the part of the Balkans which best resisted the Slavic invasions in the Early Middle Ages.
The vast majority of J2b lineages belong to J2b2 and its subclades. While J2b* and J2b1 lineages are mostly restricted to the Caucasus, Anatolia and the Balkans, J2b2 is also found in the Pontic Steppe, in Central Asia and in South Asia, particularly in India. Its very low frequency in the Middle East though suggests that, unlike other J2 lineages it was not disseminated by a demic diffusion of the Neolithic lifestyle.
In many ways the distribution of J2b2 and its subclades is strongly reminiscent of G2a3b1 and its subclades. The most likely hypothesis is that both haplogroups colonised the Pontic Steppe region during the Neolithic, either crossing the Caucasus from eastern Anatolia or, more probably, expanding east from the flourishing cultures of ‘Old Europe’ (Thessalian Neolithic). J2b2 and G2a3b1 would have integrated the local R1a population, and later been joined by a larger contingent of R1b lineages coming from the North Caucasus.
Nowadays J2b2 is found chiefly in south-east and Central Europe, but also in Russia and among the upper castes of India. All these elements reinforce the hypothesis that J2b2 and G2a3b1 were two minor lineages spread within an R1a-dominant population during the Indo-Aryan invasions of South Asia approximately 3,500 years ago.
Another conceivable possibility is that a minority of J2b2, G2a3b1 and R1b-M269 from the Caucasus region migrated to the Volga-Ural region in the early Bronze Age, propagating with them the Proto-Indo-European language and bronze technology to the Caspian steppe before the expansion of this new culture to Central and South Asia. The drawback of this hypothesis is that it doesn’t explain why R1b lineages strongly outnumber J2b2 and G2a3b1 in Europe but not in South Asia.
Sindh
Sindh (Latin: Indus; Sanskrit: Sindhu) is one of the four provinces of Pakistan and historically home to the Sindhi people. It is also locally known as the “Mehran” and has been given the title of Bab-ul-Islam (The gateway of Islam).
The region received its name, Sindh, from the River Sindhu (Indus) that separates it from Balochistan and the greater Iranian Plateau, and the people living in the region are referred to as Sindhi. As a western frontier of South Asia the region has always been exposed to the entry of invaders from Central Asia and the Middle East.
This river was known to the ancient Iranians in Avestan as Hindu, in Sanskrit as Sindhu, to Assyrians (as early as the seventh century BC) as Sinda, to the Greeks as Indos, to the Romans as Indus, to the Persians as Ab-e-sind, to the Pashtuns as “Abasind”, to the Arabs as Al-Hind, to the Chinese as Sintow, and to the Javanese as the Santri.
The terms Hindi and Hindu are derived from the word Sindh, as the ancient Persians pronounce “s” as “h” (e.g. sarasvati as hrauvati). In the same way, Persians called the people of this region as Hindhi people, their language as Hindhi language and the region as Hindh, the name which is used for this region since ancient times and later for the whole northern part of the Indian sub-continent even today.
India is also known as Hindustan, a name which has nothing to do with Hinduism, but related more to a people and their language named after the main river flowing through this region, the Sindhu (Indus).
Sindh is bounded to the west by the Indus River and Balochistan, to the north by Punjab, the east by the Indian states of Gujarat and Rajasthan and to the south by the Arabian Sea. The capital of the province is Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and financial hub.
Sindhis are a Sindhi-speaking ethnic group native to the Sindh province of modern-day Pakistan. Most of the population in the province is Muslim, with sizable Hindu minorities. The main language spoken is Sindhi by about 26 million people, while there exists a significant Urdu-speaking minority of about 8 million.
Some of the places in Sindh have been inhabited as early as the 3rd millennium BC. A large number of Indus valley sites have been found in Sindh.
For several centuries in the first millennium BC., and in the first five centuries of the first millennium AD., western portions of Sindh, the regions on the western flank of the Indus river, were intermittently under Persian and Kushan rule, first during the Achaemenid dynasty (500-300 BC), then, from 150 BC under the Parthians, and still later under the Sassanids, before the Islamic invasion of Iran in the 7th century AD. Alexander the Great marched through Punjab and Sindh, down the Indus river, during his invasion of the eastern flank of the Persian empire.
Sindh was ruled by local Hindu and Buddhist rulers until 712 CE, when it was invaded by the Arabs and incorporated into part of the Umayyad Caliphate, resulting in widespread conversions to Islam. However, a substantial number of Sindhis still retain their Hindu beliefs.
Sindhi culture is highly influenced by Sufi doctrines and principles. Some of the popular cultural icons are Raja Dahir, Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, Jhulelal and Sachal Sarmast.
Because of its location at the western edge of South Asia, Sindh was one of the earliest regions to be influenced by Islam after 632 AD – as the Qu’ran was not written until then. Prior to this period, it was heavily Hindu, and Buddhist. After 632 AD, It was part of the Islamic empires of the Abbasids and Umayyids. Fundamentalist rulers played a pivotal role in forcibly converting millions of native Sindhis to Islam.
At the same time, Muslim technocrats, bureaucrats, soldiers, traders, scientists, architects, teachers, theologians and Sufis flocked from the rest of the Muslim world to the Islamic Sultanate in Sindh. The region got settled by Turks, Pashtuns and Mughals. Habbari, Soomra, Samma, Arghun dynasties ruled Sindh. Many Baloch tribes migrated and settled in Sindh. These Baloch assimilated with Sindhis, and now they constitute a significant population of Sindh.
Soomro (or Soomra, Sumrah) is a Sindhi tribe mainly in Sindh, in parts of Punjab bordering Sindh and in Balochistan, Pakistan. Other cities also have some Soomro population, who have been there for work reasons, but their origins remain in Sindh.
Writers like E. O’Brein describe the Sumra as originally Rajputs: In A.D.750 they expelled the first Arab invaders from Sindh and Multan, and furnished the country with a dynasty which ruled in Multan from 1445 to 1526 A.D., when it was expelled by the Samma.
British political agent Colonel James Tod refers to them as a part of the twin clans of Umra and Sumra Rajputs who were a subdivision of Sodha tribe of Rajputs, which in turn has been mentioned as a grand division of Parmar Rajputs who in remote times held all the Rajputana desert.
Frequently combining with their brethren the Umars, gave name to a large tract of country, which is even still recognized as Umra-Sumra and Umarkot, and within which Alor and Bhukkar is situated.
Following the 985 CE expulsion of the Qarmatian Muslim sect from Iraq and Egypt, the Qarmatians relocated to Sindh. The grey part of history is that some say that when they relocated they were called Sumero along with some suggesting that they were the possibly converts to Islam in Sindh, however, there is no evidence of this as their presence becomes evident later on after they became rulers of Sindh and when they did they had Arabic names.
The term Soomro, spelled Soomro in English, but pronounced Soomera or Soomara, means ‘of Samarra’ in Sindhi. There is also a wide accepted concept of Soomera being men brought by bin Qasim and left there after he went back but according to the lack of information on this part of history, the facts are blurred.
When Sindh was under the Ummayad caliphate, the Habbari dynasty was in control. The Ummayads appointed Aziz al Habbari as the governor of sindh. Habbaris ruled Sindh until Mahmud Ghaznavi defeated the Habbari’s in 1024. Mahmud Ghaznavi viewed the Abbasids to be the Caliphs thus he removed the remaining influence of the Ummayad Caliphate in the region.
Following the defeat of the Habbari’s, the Abbasid Caliphate made Al Khafif from Samarra the new governor of Sindh for a better, stronger and stable government. Once he became the governor he allotted several key positions to his family and friends, thus Al-Khafif or Sardar Khafif Soomro formed the Soomra Dynasty in Sindh and became its first king. The Soomra ruled Sindh from 1024-1351.
Until the Siege of Baghdad (1258) the Soomra dynasty was the Abbasid Caliphate’s functionary in Sindh but after that it became independent. Since then some soomra’s intermarried with local women and adopted some local customs as well. It be noted that Mansura was the first capital of the Soomra Dynasty and the last of the Habbari dynasty.
Also a majority of Hindu Sindhi names end with ni thus to distinguish them from Hindu Rajputs they were called Soomero, written Soomro in English, and not Soomerni by the Hindu Rajputs of Sindh.
The overwhelming majority of Soomros are Sunni and a significant number who adheres to Sufi Islam and Shiite Islam like most of Sindhis but these days due to the rising influence of Wahhabi Islam a large number are Wahhabi as well.
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