quote:Originally posted by cassiterides: Anthropologists still debate the racial origins of the Dravidian Indians. However one thing for certain is that they are not negroid. Indians do not have wooly hair, and their facial structures lack prognathism. They are far closer to Caucasoid than Negroid.
Though afrocentrics reject anthropology and other sciences and have constructed only two races: melanin and 'lack of' melanin. In the former catagory afrocentrics lump all asians, native americans and africans despite the fact they are completely different races and have different phenotypes (e.g. hair texture, bone type).
So according to the Afrocentrics, wouldn't some East Asians, some of whom are fairer than even some Europeans, now be reclassified as white?
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Dravidian speaking people recognize their African heritage.
See:Aravanan KP. 1976. ''Physical and cultural similarities between Dravidians and Africans''. Journal of Tamil Studies 10:23–27; and
Aravanan KP. 1979. Dravidians and Africans, Madras;
Aravanan KP. 1980. Notable negroid elements in Dravidian India. J Tamil Studies 20–45.
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The Dravidians and Mande began to migrate out of Africa by 2800BC. They were part of the C-Group. They first settled in Iran and from here expanded into Central Asia and the Indus Valley.
B.B. Lal ("The Only Asian expedition in threatened Nubia:Work by an Indian Mission at Afyeh and Tumas", The Illustrated London Times , 20 April 1963) and Indian Egyptologist has shown conclusively that the Dravidians originated in the Saharan area 5000 years ago. He claims they came from Kush, in the Fertile African Crescent and were related to the C-Group people who founded the Kerma dynasty in the 3rd millennium B.C. (Lal 1963) The Dravidians used a common black-and-red pottery, which spread from Nubia, through modern Ethiopia, Arabia, Iran into India as a result of the Proto-Saharan dispersal.
B.B. Lal (1963) a leading Indian archaeologist in India has observed that the black and red ware (BRW) dating to the Kerma dynasty of Nubia, is related to the Dravidian megalithic pottery. Singh (1982) believes that this pottery radiated from Nubia to India. This pottery along with wavy-line pottery is associated with the Saharo-Sudanese pottery tradition of ancient Africa . I call these people the Proto Saharans. I discuss their history here:
Aravaanan (1980) has written extensively on the African and Dravidian relations. He has illustrated that the Africans and Dravidian share many physical similarities including the dolichocephalic indexes (Aravaanan 1980,pp.62-263; Raceand History.com,2006), platyrrhine nasal index (Aravaanan 1980,pp.25-27), stature (31-32) and blood type (Aravaanan 1980,34-35; RaceandHistory.com,2006). Aravaanan (1980,p.40) also presented much evidence for analogous African and Dravidian cultural features including the chipping of incisor teeth and the use of the lost wax process to make bronze works of arts (Aravaanan 1980,p.41).
There are also similarities between the Dravidian and African religions. For example, both groups held a common interest in the cult of the Serpent and believed in a Supreme God, who lived in a place of peace and tranquility ( Thundy, p.87; J.T. Cornelius,"Are Dravidians Dynastic Egyptians", Trans. of the Archaeological Society of South India 1951-1957, pp.90-117; and U.P. Upadhyaya, "Dravidian and Negro-African", International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics 5, no.1) .
There are also affinities between the names of many gods including Amun/Amma and Murugan . Murugan the Dravidian god of the mountains parallels a common god in East Africa worshipped by 25 ethnic groups is called Murungu, the god who resides in the mountains .
Up until the South Indian megalithic period the Dravidians continued to use black-and-red ware and Libyco-Berber/Indus Valley writing. Under the influence of the Ethiopians the script changed into what it is today. The architecture of the Dravidians is an ornamented pyramid with statues and other featured added within the construction of the pyramid.
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The linguistic, anthropological and linguistic data make it clear that these people came to India from Africa during the Neolithic and not the Holocene period.
In the sub-continent of India, there were several main groups. The traditional view for the population origins in India suggest that the earliest inhabitants of India were the Negritos, and this was followed by the Proto-Australoid, the Mongoloid and the so-called mediterranean type which represent the ancient Egyptians and Kushites (Clyde A. Winters, "The Proto-Culture of the Dravidians, Manding and Sumerians",Tamil Civilizations 3, no.1(1985), pp.1-9. (http://olmec98.net/Fertile1.pdf ). The the Proto-Dravidians were probably one of the cattle herding groups that made up the C-Group culture of Nubia Kush (K.P. Aravanan, "Physical and Cultural Similarities between Dravidian and African", Journal of Tamil Studies, no.10 (1976, pp.23-27:24. ).
Genetics as noted by Mait Metspalu et al writing in 2004, in “Most extant mtDNA boundaries in South and Southwest Asia were likely shaped during the initial settlement of Eurasia by anatomically modern humans” http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2156/5/26
can not tell which group first entered India. Mait Metspalu wrote _________________________________________________________________ Language families present today in India, such as Indo-European, Dravidic and Austro-Asiatic, are all much younger than the majority of indigenous mtDNA lineages found among the present day speakers at high frequencies. It would make it highly speculative to infer, from the extant mtDNA pools of their speakers, whether one of the listed above linguistically defined group in India should be considered more “autochthonous” than any other in respect of its presence in the subcontinent (p.9). ________________________________________________________________________
B.B. Lal ("The Only Asian expedition in threatened Nubia:Work by an Indian Mission at Afyeh and Tumas", The Illustrated London Times , 20 April 1963) and Indian Egyptologist has shown conclusively that the Dravidians originated in the Saharan area 5000 years ago. He claims they came from Kush, in the Fertile African Crescent and were related to the C-Group people who founded the Kerma dynasty in the 3rd millennium B.C. (Lal 1963) The Dravidians used a common black-and-red pottery, which spread from Nubia, through modern Ethiopia, Arabia, Iran into India as a result of the Proto-Saharan dispersal.
B.B. Lal (1963) a leading Indian archaeologist in India has observed that the black and red ware (BRW) dating to the Kerma dynasty of Nubia, is related to the Dravidian megalithic pottery. Singh (1982) believes that this pottery radiated from Nubia to India. This pottery along with wavy-line pottery is associated with the Saharo-Sudanese pottery tradition of ancient Africa .
Aravaanan (1980) has written extensively on the African and Dravidian relations. He has illustrated that the Africans and Dravidian share many physical similarities including the dolichocephalic indexes (Aravaanan 1980,pp.62-263; Raceand History.com,2006), platyrrhine nasal index (Aravaanan 1980,pp.25-27), stature (31-32) and blood type (Aravaanan 1980,34-35; RaceandHistory.com,2006). Aravaanan (1980,p.40) also presented much evidence for analogous African and Dravidian cultural features including the chipping of incisor teeth and the use of the lost wax process to make bronze works of arts (Aravaanan 1980,p.41).
There are also similarities between the Dravidian and African religions. For example, both groups held a common interest in the cult of the Serpent and believed in a Supreme God, who lived in a place of peace and tranquility ( Thundy, p.87; J.T. Cornelius,"Are Dravidians Dynastic Egyptians", Trans. of the Archaeological Society of South India 1951-1957, pp.90-117; and U.P. Upadhyaya, "Dravidian and Negro-African", International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics 5, no.1 ) .
There are also affinities between the names of many gods including Amun/Amma and Murugan . Murugan the Dravidian god of the mountains parallels a common god in East Africa worshipped by 25 ethnic groups called Murungu, the god who resides in the mountains .
There is physical evidence which suggest an African origin for the Dravidians. The Dravidians live in South India. The Dravidian ethnic group includes the Tamil, Kurukh,Malayalam, Kananda (Kanarese), Tulu, Telugu and etc. Some researchers due to the genetic relationship between the Dravidians and Niger-Congo speaking groups they call the Indians the Sudroid (Indo-African) Race (RaceandHistory,2006).
Dravidian languages are predominately spoken in southern India and Sri Lanka. There are around 125 million Dravidian speakers. These languages are genetically related to African languages. The Dravidians are remnants of the ancient Black population who occupied most of ancient Asia and Europe.
Linguistic Evidence
1.1 Many scholars have recognized the linguistic unity of Black African (BA) and Dravidian (Dr.) languages. These affinities are found not only in the modern African languages but also that of ancient Egypt. These scholars have made it clear that lexical, morphological and phonetic unity exist between African languages in West and North Africa as well as the Bantu group.
1.2 K.P. Arvaanan (1976) has noted that there are ten common elements shared by BA languages and the Dr. group. They are (1) simple set of five basic vowels with short-long consonants;(2) vowel harmony; (3) absence of initial clusters of consonants; (4) abundance of geminated consonants; (5) distinction of inclusive and exclusive pronouns in first person plural; (6) absence of degrees of comparison for adjectives and adverbs as distinct morphological categories; (7) consonant alternation on nominal increments noticed by different classes; (8)distinction of completed action among verbal paradigms as against specific tense distinction;(9) two separate sets of paradigms for declarative and negative forms of verbs; and (l0) use of reduplication for emphasis.
1.3 There has been a long development in the recognition of the linguistic unity of African and Dravidian languages. The first scholar to document this fact was the French linguist L. Homburger (1950,1951,1957,1964). Prof. Homburger who is best known for her research into African languages was convinced that the Dravidian languages explained the morphology of the Senegalese group particularly the Serere, Fulani group. She was also convinced that the kinship existed between Kannanda and the Bantu languages, and Telugu and the Mande group. Dr. L. Homburger is credited with the discovery for the first time of phonetic, morphological and lexical parallels between Bantu and Dravidians
1.6 By the 1970's numerous scholars had moved their investigation into links between Dr. and BA languages on into the Senegambia region. Such scholars as Cheikh T. N'Diaye (1972) a Senegalese linguist, and U.P. Upadhyaya (1973) of India , have proved conclusively Dr. Homburger's theory of unity between the Dravidian and the Senegalese languages.
1.7 C.T. N'Diaye, who studied Tamil in India, has identified nearly 500 cognates of Dravidian and the Senegalese languages. Upadhyaya (1973) after field work in Senegal discovered around 509 Dravidian and Senegambian words that show full or slight correspondence.
1.8 As a result of the linguistic evidence the Congolese linguist Th. Obenga suggested that there was an Indo-African group of related languages. To prove this point we will discuss the numerous examples of phonetic, morphological and lexical parallels between the Dravidian group: Tamil (Ta.), Malayalam (Mal.), Kannanda/Kanarese (Ka.), Tulu (Tu.), Kui-Gondi, Telugu (Tel.) and Brahui; and Black African languages: Manding (Man.),Egyptian (E.), and Senegalese (Sn.) _________________________________________________________________
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COMMON INDO-AFRICAN TERMS
ENGLISH DRAVIDIAN SENEGALESE MANDING MOTHER AMMA AMA,MEEN MA FATHER APPAN,ABBA AMPA,BAABA BA PREGNANCY BASARU BIIR BARA SKIN URI NGURU,GURI GURU BLOOD NETTARU DERET DYERI KING MANNAN MAANSA,OMAAD MANSA GRAND BIIRA BUUR BA SALIVA TUPPAL TUUDDE TU CULTIVATE BEY ,MBEY BE BOAT KULAM GAAL KULU FEATHER SOOGE SIIGE SI, SIGI MOUNTAIN KUNRU TUUD KURU ROCK KALLU XEER KULU STREAM KOLLI KAL KOLI
6.1 Dravidian and Senegalese. Cheikh T. N'Diaye (1972) and U.P. Upadhyaya (1976) have firmly established the linguistic unity of the Dravidian and Senegalese languages. They present grammatical, morphological, phonetic and lexical parallels to prove their point.
6.2 In the Dravidian and Senegalese languages there is a tendency for the appearance of open syllables and the avoidance of non-identical consonant clusters. Accent is usually found on the initial syllable of a word in both these groups. Upadhyaya (1976) has recognized that there are many medial geminated consonants in Dravidian and Senegalese. Due to their preference for open syllables final consonants are rare in these languages.
6.3 There are numerous parallel participle and abstract noun suffixes in Dravidian and Senegalese. For example, the past participle in Fulani (F) -o, and oowo the agent formative, corresponds to Dravidian -a, -aya, e.g., F. windudo 'written', windoowo 'writer'.
6.4 The Wolof (W) -aay and Dyolo ay , abstract noun formative corresponds to Dravidian ay, W. baax 'good', baaxaay 'goodness'; Dr. apala 'friend', bapalay 'friendship'; Dr. hiri 'big', hirime 'greatness', and nal 'good', nanmay 'goodness'.
6.5 There is also analogy in the Wolof abstract noun formative suffix -it, -itt, and Dravidian ita, ta, e.g., W. dog 'to cut', dogit 'sharpness'; Dr. hari 'to cut', hanita 'sharp-ness'.
6.6 The Dravidian and Senegalese languages use reduplication of the bases to emphasize or modify the sense of the word, e.g., D. fan 'more', fanfan 'very much'; Dr. beega 'quick', beega 'very quick'.
6.7 Dravidian and Senegalese cognates.
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English Senegalese Dravidian body W. yaram uru head D. fuko,xoox kukk hair W. kawar kavaram 'shoot' eye D. kil kan, khan mouth D. butum baayi, vaay lip W. tun,F. tondu tuti heart W. xol,S. xoor karalu pup W. kuti kutti sheep W. xar 'ram' cow W. nag naku hoe W. konki bronze W. xanjar xancara blacksmith W. kamara skin dol tool mother W. yaay aayi child D. kunil kunnu, kuuci ghee o-new ney
Above we provided linguistic examples from many different African Supersets (Families) including the Mande and Niger-Congo groups to prove the analogy between Dravidian and Black African languages. The evidence is clear that the Dravidian and Black African languages should be classed in a family called Indo-African as suggested by Th. Obenga. This data further supports the archaeological evidence accumulated by Dr. B.B Lal (1963) which proved that the Dravidians originated in the Fertile African Crescent.
The major grain exploited by Saharan populations was rice ,the yam and pennisetum. McIntosh and McIntosh (1988) has shown that the principal domesticate in the southern Sahara was bulrush millet. There has been considerable debate concerning the transport of African millets to India. Weber (1998) believes that African millets may have come to India by way of Arabia. Wigboldus (1996) on the other hand argues that African millets may have arrived from Africa via the Indian Ocean in Harappan times.
Both of these theories involve the transport of African millets from a country bordering on the Indian Ocean. Yet, Weber (1998) and Wigboldus (1996) were surprised to discover that African millets and bicolor sorghum , did not reach many East African countries until millennia after they had been exploited as a major subsistence crop at Harappan and Gujarat sites.
This failure to correlate the archaeological evidence of African millets in countries bordering on the Indian Ocean, and the antiquity of African millets in India suggest that African millets such as Pennisetum and Sorghum must have come to India from another part of Africa. To test this hypothesis we will compare Dravidian and African terms for millet.
Winters (1985) has suggested that the Proto-Dravidians formerly lived in the Sahara. This is an interesting , because it is in the Sahara that the earliest archaeological pennisetum has been found.
Millet impressions have been found on Mande ceramics from both Karkarchinkat in the Tilemsi Valley of Mali, and Dar Tichitt in Mauritania between 4000 and 3000 BP. (McIntosh & McIntosh 1983a,1988; Winters 1986b; Andah 1981)
Given the archaeological evidence for millets in the Sahara, leads to the corollary theory that if the Dravidians originated in Africa, they would share analogous terms for millet with African groups that formerly lived in the Sahara. The linguistic and anthropological data make it clear that the Dravidian speaking people were part of the C-Group people who formed the backbone of the Niger-Congo speakers. It indicates that the Dravidians took there red-and-black pottery with them from Africa to India, and the cultivation of millet. The evidence makes it clear that the genetic evidence indicating a Holocene migration to India for the Dravidian speaking people is wrong. The Dravidian people given the evidence for the first cultivation of millet and red-and-black pottery is firmly dated and put these cultural elements in the Neolithic. The evidence makes it clear that genetic evidence can not be used to effectively document historic population movements.
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All Indians are not Black. You may be able to classify the Dravidian and Munda people as Black.
There is mtDNA data uniting Africans and Dravidians.
Can Parallel Mutation and neutral genome selection explain Eastern African M1 consensus HVS-1 motifs in Indian M haplogroup http://www.bioline.org.br/pdf?hg07022
The most interesting fact about this evidence is that the Dravidian language is closely related to the Niger-Congo group. There are other linguistic groups that separate the Niger-Congo speakers from the Dravidians. The fact that they are genetically related indicates that the Dravidians recently came to India.
quote:Originally posted by Whatbox: Did Indian civ result from Northern Indo-European speakers or from nearby from Central Asia (Mongolia)?
Some theories I've heard about, so I wanted to ask our East Asia expert.
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: Thats a very odd question, indeed.
India knew many distinct complexes, not just one, and of course, they're all indigenous.
Swenet's reply above is correct. In fact it would be silly to attribute Indian civilization to Indo-European speakers when we have the Harappan civilization of the Indus Valley as proof of advanced pre-IE culture.
The problem is that many Western scholars tend to exaggerate the IE influence in Indian civilization while neglecting the older and far more prevalent indigenous features.
A perfect example would be the deity Shiva whose pictures you posted. Shiva possesses many 'non-Aryan' features as many Brahmanic Indian texts have pointed out, and was said to be associated with non-Aryans. His aspects like yoga, the tiger-skin, and his phallic symbol the linga, are all found in Harappa and found in Dravidian cultures.
As far as influence from (eastern) central Asia like Mongolia, such did not occur until the Mughal Empire.
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Some theories I've heard about, so I wanted to ask our East Asia expert.
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: Thats a very odd question, indeed.
India knew many distinct complexes, not just one, and of course, they're all indigenous.
Swenet's reply above is correct. In fact it would be silly to attribute Indian civilization to Indo-European speakers when we have the Harappan civilization of the Indus Valley as proof of advanced pre-IE culture.
The problem is that many Western scholars tend to exaggerate the IE influence in Indian civilization while neglecting the older and far more prevalent indigenous features.
A perfect example would be the deity Shiva whose pictures you posted. Shiva possesses many 'non-Aryan' features as many Brahmanic Indian texts have pointed out, and was said to be associated with non-Aryans. His aspects like yoga, the tiger-skin, and his phallic symbol the linga, are all found in Harappa and found in Dravidian cultures.
As far as influence from (eastern) central Asia like Mongolia, such did not occur until the Mughal Empire.
Thanks for your reply.
Ah, and this is something I did not know -- previously, I only knew that the title "Aryan" is very associated with Indian civilization almost to the point where I associated the entirety of India's civilization with it.
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^ I put non-Aryan in quotes because of the wide and sometimes distorted use of the word Aryan. The word was title common to many speakers of Indo-Iranic languages from Iranic peoples like the Persians to Indian people. As you know Western scholars then began using the term for all Indo-European speakers in general especially Europeans and from there the Nazi scheme of blonde, blue-eyed Nordics. So much distortion but the original usage was likely a cultural one for the Indo-Iranic speakers. The irony is that you have self-proclaimed 'Aryan' skin-head Euros attacking Indians and Persians as non-Aryans.
Modern Hindu religion despite its Vedic Aryan roots have many older indigenous roots and features as well which Vedic and Brahmanic texts call non-Aryan.
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I see. I wasn't exactly sure, but it seemed like you were doing something like that.
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ I put non-Aryan in quotes because of the wide and sometimes distorted use of the word Aryan. The word was title common to many speakers of Indo-Iranic languages from Iranic peoples like the Persians to Indian people. As you know Western scholars then began using the term for all Indo-European speakers in general especially Europeans and from there the Nazi scheme of blonde, blue-eyed Nordics. So much distortion but the original usage was likely a cultural one for the Indo-Iranic speakers. The irony is that you have self-proclaimed 'Aryan' skin-head Euros attacking Indians and Persians as non-Aryans.
Modern Hindu religion despite its Vedic Aryan roots have many older indigenous roots and features as well which Vedic and Brahmanic texts call non-Aryan.
. Central Asia was called Kush by the ancient people. The Armenians made it clear that the ancients called Persia, Media,Elam Aria, and the entire area between the Tigris and Indus rivers Kush.Bardesones, writing in his Book of the Laws of Countries, in the 2nd Century said that the "Bactrians who we called Qushani (or Kushans)".The Armenians, called the earlier Parthian: Kushan and acknowledged their connection with them. Homer, Herodotus, and the Roman scholar Strabo called southern Persia AETHIOPIA. The Greeks and Romans called the country east of Kerma: Kusan.
First, I would like to make it clear that the probable language of the Kushana was Tamil. According to Dravidian literature, the Kushana were called Kosars=Yakshas=Yueh chih/ Kushana. This literature maintains that when they entered India they either already spoke Tamil, or adopted the language upon settlement in India. In pinyin Yueh chih is pronounced: Yuezhi
The Kushana and the Yueh chih/ Yuezhi were one and the same. In addition to North Indian documents the Kushana-Yueh chih association are also discussed in Dravidian literature. V Kanakasabhai, The Tamils Eighteen hundred years ago, note that in the Sanskrit literature the Yueh chih/ Yuezhi were called Yakshas, Pali chroniclers called them Yakkos and Kosars< Kushana.
Many of the Yueh people were Dravidian speakers. The Yueh people were also called Yuehchih or Kuishuang (Kushana). In ancient times the Yueh chihs controlled Central Asia and much of China until the first century BC. In the Pali Chronicles, the Ramayana and Matsya, the Yuehchih were called Yakshas or Kosar. The Yueh of North China established Xia. According to the Yi Xia Dong Xi Shuo, by Fu Ssumein, the li Qiang (Black Qiang) of Shang were united with the Yueh people of southwest China. . . The Yuezhi allegedly arrived in India during the 2nd century BC. He makes it clear that the Yuezhi / Kushana as noted on their coins worshipped Siva as seen on the coins of Kanishka. This is why we have a coin of a Kushana king from Taxila, dated to AD 76 that declares that the king was maharaja rajatiraja devaputra Kushana "Great King, King of kings, Son of God, the Kushana".
The term Tochara has nothing to do with the Yuehchih, this was a term used to describe the people who took over the Greek Bactrian state, before the Kushana reached the Oxus Valley around 150 BC . There is no reason the Kushana may not have been intimately familiar with the Kharosthi writing at this time because from 202BC onward Prakrit and Chinese documents were written in Kharosthi.
The Kushana and the Yuezhi were one and the same. In addition to North Indian documents the Kushana- Yuezhi association are also discussed in Dravidian literature.V Kanakasabhai, The Tamils Eighteen hundred years ago note that in the Sanskrit literature the Yueh chih were called Yakshas, Pali chroniclers called them Yakkos and Kosars< Kushana.
Some researchers believe that the Ars'i spoke Tocharian A, while Tocharian B was the "Kucha language" may have been spoken by the Kushana people. I don't know where you read that the speakers of Tocharian A were called Ars'i. These names: Ars’i and kucha, have nothing to do with ethnic groups, they refer to the cities where Tocharian text were found: Tocharian A documents were found around Qarashar and Turfan, thusly these text are also referred to as Turfanian or East Tocharian; Tocharian B documents were found near the town of Kucha, thusly they are sometimes called Kuchean or West Tocharian.
Linguist use the term Tochari to refer to these people, because they were given this title in Turkic manuscripts . As a result, the word Tochari has nothing to do with the Kushana people. The observable evidence make it clear that the terms used to label the Tocharian dialects are not ethnonyms, they are terms used to denote where the Tocharian records were found. The use of the term Ars'i does not relate to the Kushana people. The terms: Asii, Pasiani, Tochari and Sacarauli, refer to the white nomads that took Bactria away from the Greeks—not the Yuezhi .
These white nomads came from the Iaxartes River that adjoins that of Sacae and the Sogdiani .The Kushana people took over Bactria much later. It is a mistake to believe that Ars'i and Kucha were ethnonyms is understandable given your lack of knowledge about Tocharian. And I will agree that there were a number of different languages spoken by people who wrote material in Tocharian. It is for this reason that I have maintained throughout my published works on Tocharian, that this was a trade language. See: Tocharian is a Dravidian trade language https://www.academia.edu/8491572/Is_Tocharian_a_Dravidian_Trade_Language
This Tocharian/Kushan language was used by the Central Asians as a lingua franca and trade language due to the numerous ethnic groups which formerly lived in central Asia". Kharosthi was long used to write in Central Asia. It was even used by the Greeks. The use of the Kharosthi writing system in Central Asia and India, would place this writing contemporaneous with the tradition, recorded by the Classical writers of Indians settling among the Kushana.
There were many people who probably used Tocharian for purposes of communication including the Kushana and the "Ars'i/Asii". They probably used Tocharian as a lingua franca. You make it clear in your last post that numerous languages were spoken in Central Asia when the Tocharian was written in Kharosthi. Most researchers believe that a majority of the people who lived in this area were bilingual and spoke Bactrian ,Indian languages among other languages. I agree with this theory, and believe that the Kushana Kings may have spoken a Dravidian language. Due to the possibility that the Kushana spoke a Dravidian language which is the substratum language of Tocharian; and the presence of a number of different terms in Tocharian from many languages spoken in the area-led me to the conclusion that Tocharian was a trade language. The Kushana always referred to themselves as the Kushana/Gushana. The name Kushana for this group is recorded in the Manikiala Stone inscription (56BC?), the Panjtar Stone inscription of 122 AD and the Taxila Silver Scroll.
The Greeks called them Kushana in the Karosthi inscriptions, and Kocano. In the Chinese sources they were called Koei-shuang or Kwei-shwang= Kushana, and Yueh chih .
As you can see the term Kushana had been used to refer to these people long before Kujula Kadphises used the term as a personal name. This was over a hundred years after the Kushana had become rulers of Bactria. It would appear from the evidence that the nation of the Kushana was called Kusha.
In 176 B.C., the Huns fell upon the in western Gansu,defeated their army and murdered their King. This battle led to the Kushana migration into Nanshan region, and thence to Bactria and North India. (Bagchi 1955, p.4)
The Kushana first occupied Transoxiana about 160 B.C. and established themselves in the Oxus Valley (Chi 1955, p.8) They later drove the Haumavorka Indo-European Saka people, from Bactria and founded the Kushana dynasty which lasted until the 3rd century A.D.
It was Kujuula Kadphises who united the Kushana people and made them into a single nation. Kadphises conquered India as far as the Indus. His capital was Purushapura near Peshwar, in Pakistan. Later Wiima Kadphises extended Kushana rule into the Punjab.
The Kushana conquered the Sakas and Parthians and took control of an empire stretching from the Oxus river in Afghanistan, to the Ganges plains of India.. This unite under one authority the former dominions of the Indo-Greeks and the Sunga dynasts.
The greatest king of the Kushana was Kaniska. Kaniska came to power between A.D. 78-144. (Thapar 1972, p.92)
Kaniska ruled an empire extending from Central Asia, to Varansi in the Ganges Valley. He supported the arts and repaired many Kushana monuments and cities.
Kaniska had two capitals. The capital in Central Asia was Bergraam or Kupura in Afghanistan, while in India the capital was established at Muthura.
The Kushana were not Vedic worshippers. As among the Egyptians and Nubians, the Kushana raised past kings to the status of "gods", and they dedicated temples to them.
The Kushana were great patrons of the Buddhists. They supported the Mahavana (Great Vehicle) school of Buddhism. Under the Kushana the Buddha, was depicted in the form of the Muthuras school. These Muthura school Buddhas had strong negroid features.
The Kushana king was called the raja or Maharajatiraja "king of Kings".
Another famous Kushana king, Kujula imitating the Roman denares (coins) was the first Asians to circulate coins in central Asia. It was Kaniska, who first put Buddha on Indian coins.
The Kushana made fine sculptures and engraved beautiful carved sheets of ivory. Their plaques are some of the finest art pieces in India.
. .
. The Kushana were at this time in control of the Silk Road, which took Chinese goods to the West. It was also under the Kushana that Buddhism entered China. The Kushana ruled India for almost 200 years.
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