Piracha

Paracha ( _ur. پراچہ) (Also rendered as Peracha,Piracha) is a family name in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India.

Language

Most Pirachas today speak Hindko and Pothohari dialects of Punjabi. Those settled in the North-West Frontier Province are also fluent in Pashto.

Past and Present Paracha

The Pirachas are said to have become a large clan in Makhad in the 10th Century AD. While they used to be successful traders who traded as far as Central Asia, chiefly in Cloth, Silk, Indigo and Tea, the present-day Pirachas are spread around the world in various professions. They are settled all over Pakistan, particularly in the north, and to a lesser extent in Afghanistan, India and Bangladesh.

In Pakistan, Parachas are settled in large numbers at Lahore (Mochi Darwaza), Sargodha,Makhad, Attock District (village of Malahi Tola), Kohat, Mangowal, Shahpur, Khushab, Quetta, Peshawar, Nowshera, Malakand Division and Jhelum.

Piracha: A Word from Antiquity

According to John Platt’s Dictionary of Urdu, Hindi, and English, "Piracha" is a Hindi variant of the Sanskrit adjective Prachya, meaning “eastern, a person living in the east, the eastern country, the country which lies south or east of the river Sarasvati”. The word Piracha is not listed in any Arabic or Persian dictionary.

Reminiscent of the millennium before Christ, Piracha, a Hindi word, has been in common use as a tribal designation in Gandhara and surrounding provinces for centuries. Some of its ethnic interpretations, made without reference to Sanskrit literature, which provides the basic vocabulary for classical Hindi, have been extremely misleading. The average reader finds no access to historical records pertaining to the Piracha Diaspora in and around the Indus Valley and has to depend on hearsay. Despite these aberrations, however, if we look at the meaning of this word carefully, we can get some fascinating glimpses of Indo-Gangetic antiquity.

Dr. H.C. Ray Chaudhri, Professor of Ancient History and Culture, Calcutta University, writes in An Advanced History of India: “In ancient Sanskrit literature, there was a five fold division of India – in the centre of the Indo-Gangetic plain was the Madhyadesa (The Middle Country), to the North of Madhyadesa lay Uttrapatha (North-West India), to its West Aparanta or Pratichya (Western India) and to its East Purva Desa or Prachya, the Prasii of Alexander’s historians.” He reiterates later in the same book that “the Prachya were doubtless the Prasii of Greek literature i.e. the people of Magadha and neighbouring provinces.” The Cambridge History of India confirms this statement by clarifying that the Prasii of Greek historians are the Prachya of Sanskrit literature and also mentions some more Greek and Latin transcriptions of this word.

Professor J.W. M’Crindle, late Principal of Government College Patna and Fellow of The Calcutta University, in his famous book, The Invasion of India by Alexander the Great published in 1892, writes that the Sanskrit word Prachya “denoted the inhabitants of the east country, that is, the country which lay to the east of river Sarasvati, now the Sarsooty, which flows in a south-western direction form the mountains bounding the north-east part of the Province of Delhi, till it looses itself in the sands of the great desert. The Magadhas, it would seem had before Alexander’s advent to India, extended their power as far as this river….” He also gives a number of Greek transcripts of the word Prachya used by Greek historians. According to him, they were called Prasioi by Arrian, Prassii by Pliny, Praisai by Plutarch, Bresioi by Diodors, Pharrasii by Curtius, Praeside by Justin, and Prasiake by Ptolemy. Every Greek historian who has written about the Macedonian Invasion of the Indus valley in the fourth century BC has praised the military and economic power of the Prachya of Magadha.

The word Prachya, much like the word Punjabi, denotes a person living in an area, irrespective of his tribal affinity. A Punjabi can be a Rajput, a Jat, a Gujjar, a Lodhi, a Mughal or an Arab. Similarly, a Prachya was a person who belonged to the country east of the river Sarasvati irrespective of his tribal affiliation – whether Puru, Yadu, Nanda or Gupta. Prachya was not the name of a tribe, but an adjective used for all the tribes living in Magadha and surrounding areas. Except for Magadha, no other area has been described as Prachya in Sanskrit, Pali or Hindi literature.

Prachya rose to prominence before the advent of Christianity and Islam and after the destruction of the Persian Empire by the Greeks. This word is not found in any Arabic or Persian dictionary. It has no Arabic or Persian nexus. Ancient, medieval and modern authorities on Indian antiquity have, invariably, regarded Prachya as an Indo-Aryan people of ancient Magadha – the modern districts of Patna and Gaya in Bihar. According to Platt, the word Piracha is the Hindi version of Prachya. British administrators charged with the responsibility of compiling the census reports while describing the Punjab tribes have collected the hearsay narrated by the Prachyas who were oblivious of their ancient origin. The subsequent generations have confused these imaginative stories with history.

Contemporary theories about the origin of the Prachya revolve around one of three premises: an Arab ancestry, a Persian descent, or an Arayan origin. We shall examine each of these concepts within its historical perspective, linguistic context, and ethnic parameters.

An Arab Ancestry?

Piracha are generally devout Muslims today. An Arab connection is sacred to them. According to this theory, cquote|they are the descendents of Hazrat Aziz Yemeni, a companion of the Holy Prophet, Muhammad (SAW). Hazrat Aziz used to act as “Farash” to the Holy Prophet. Farash in Arabic means “one who spreads a carpet, an attendant, a valet etc. etc.” Hazrat Aziz Yemeni’s descendents were known as “Farasha” after him. During the Arab conquest of Persia (640-644 AD), Abul Aas, the son of Hazrat Aziz Yemeni, was commanding the Yemeni contingent. After the conquest, he settled down in Persia and married a Persian Princess. The Persians transcribed his surname “Farasha” into “Paracha” according to the usage of their own language. His successors were, thereafter, known as “Paracha” in Persia and later in Afghanistan and the Indus Valley after the Arabs conquered these areas.

This is a fascinating theory which touches the hearts of devoted Muslims. Unfortunately, when it is analysed purely in the context of Persian language, one discovers a serious lacuna. The word Paracha (Hindko for the Sanskrit word Prachya) is not found in any dictionary of the Persian language. On the contrary, the word “Farasha” with its original spelling, pronunciation, and meaning, has become a part of the Persian language since the Arab conquest of Persia and appears in all standard Persian lexicons. The total acceptance of scores of Arabic words in Persian with their original form and meaning intact – for example, faragh (leisure), faraghat (respite), firaq (separation), far’d (individual), firar (flight), fat’h (victory), fira’sat (sagacity) etc. – shows that the dominance of Arabic over Persian was so complete and comprehensive that there was no reason to borrow a word from an Indian Prakrit to identify an Arab Commander of the victorious army.

Linguistic transcriptions have well defined rules. The most important rule is that the transcript must invariably transfer the original meaning of the word being transcribed into the new language. When Panchanada was transcribed into Punjab in Persian, it meant the same thing as Panchanada in Sanskrit, i.e. the land of the five tributaries of the river Indus. Similarly, when the Greeks transcribed Prachya into ‘Prasii’ or ‘Prasiake’, the meaning remained the same, i.e. the people of Magadha and surrounding provinces lying east of the river Sarasvati. This rule is grossly violated if we change ‘Farasha’ into Paracha, because the meaning of ‘Farasha’ is completely lost. If a Persian had made such a mistake, it would have been considered an unpardonable offence by any self-respecting Arab.

Let us examine this theory in its historical perspective. Brahmans did not allow their followers to travel abroad. They preached that they will be polluted if they went abroad. The Buddhists had no such inhibitions and in due course took the lead in Indian foreign trade. The traders of Persia and Yemen knew Prachya traders for centuries before the Arab conquest of Persia. Two Avestan texts confirm that Persia was aware of the separate identities of Eastern and Western India, i.e. Magadha and Gandhara. Yasht X, 104, reads “The long arms of Mithra seize upon those who deceive Mithra, even when in Eastern India he catches them, even in Western India he smites them down.” Another Avestan text, Yasna LXII-29, says, “Even when in Eastern India he catches (his adversary), even when in Western India he smites him down.” Sanskrit was the elite language of both Gandhara and Magadha, and their trade relations with Persia and Yemen were flourishing. As we have already discussed Prachya were affluent traders of both Magadha and Gandhara in second century AD during the reign of Kanishka. Fahian confirms that in fourth century AD Gandhara was still an affluent Buddhist state. Professor Phillip K. Hitti writes in his famous book, ‘The History of the Arabs’, that Sana in Yemen is over 7,000 feet above sea level, and one of the healthiest and most beautiful towns of the Peninsula. Its fertility, proximity to the sea, and its strategic location on the Indian trade route contributed to its early development. Sana was a centre of trade for pearls from the Persian Gulf, condiments, fabrics and swords from India, silk from China, and slaves, monkeys, ivory, gold and ostriches from Ethiopia. These commodities found their way to Western markets through Yemen.

Magdhan sword blades had become famous in Iran and the Middle East. Professor M’crindle mentions, two beautiful Magdhan swords being presented to an officer by the “King of Persia and his mother.” He also mentions the import of these swords into Abysinian ports. The oldest reference to Yemen in Greek literature dates back to 288 BC. With such ancient trade ties between Greece, Yemen, Persia, Taxila and Magadha, there is no reason to believe that a commander from Yemen or Persia, in 644 AD, when Magadha and Gandhara were still flourishing, would be ignorant about the surname of the people of Magadha who were famous for the supply of high quality sword blades to their armies. Any General worth his title knows where to buy the best arms for his army. He cannot afford to be ignorant in such matters.

The Arabs were so proud of their language and culture that they called Persia ‘Ajam’ (dumb, speechless). For an Arab, therefore, to accept an Indian surname from a Persian would be an obvious insult. Arabs who had settled in Persia were called ‘Tajik’, which is the Persian form of ‘Tazik’ derived from the Arabic word ‘Tazi (of Arab origin) e.g. Aspe Tazi (an Arabian horse). Hazrat Abul Aas could easily retain his surname ‘Farasha’, and his family could be called Farasha. There was no reason for the Persians to import a pre-Muslim Indian surname for an Arabic word, which had already come into common use in Persian after the Arab conquest. Be that as it may, the inescapable conclusion is that the words Prachya and Farasha belong to two different periods of history, centuries apart. They originated in two different linguistic groups – one Semitic and the other Aryan – and are neither synonymous nor interchangeable. History does not provide any evidence to support the theory of an Arab or a Persian origin of the Prachya.

A Persian Descent?

The latest hypothesis about a Persian descent has been based on the following sources:1. Ptolemy’s account of certain ancient tribes of the Central Hindukush (The Parsioi and the Parseyetai).2. Professor Georg Morgenstierne’s report on the Aryan dialects spoken on both sides of the Iran-Afghan frontier.

Proceeding chronologically, we shall examine Ptolemy’s account first and then analyse the Morgenstierne report.

Ptolemy’s Parsioi and Parseyetai

In 327 BC, at the end of spring, Alexander, after his conquest of Northern Afghanistan, crossed the central Hindukush through the Ghorband Pass. It had taken him ten days to cross the Hindukush and reach Alexandria under the Caucasus, the city he had founded two years earlier. General Cunningham has identified this place with Hopian, an ancient city in ruins near Charikar in the Kohidaman valley. The Hindukush forms a broad belt of mountainous country which separates the river systems of the Oxus and the Indus. It was the political boundary between Bactria (Northern Afghanistan) and Paropnisadai (the Kabul valley and the country north of the Kabul River). The routes leading from Bactria over its passes converged at a point near Charikar. From Kabul, ancient routes led into Aria (Herat) in the west, Arachosia (Kandhar) in the southwest, and through Gandhara (Peshawar-Taxila) in the southeast into the Indus valley. Alexander settled here his aged, wounded and disabled veterans along with the Persians who had been settled by Cyrus earlier in and around Charikar. The population of the Persians in Charikar and surrounding valleys can be judged from the fact that Alexander, while on his way to Bactria, had appointed a loyal Persian as a satrap in this area. Upon his return from Bactria, he was disappointed with the performance of this gentleman, and he replaced him with another Persian satrap instead of a Greek to retain the loyalties of the Persians. The central Hindukush was named Paropamisos by the natives. Ptolemy called it Paropanisos in Greek. Before the invasion, these mountains were not known to Alexander or his generals. They considered them a continuation of the Caucasus and vaguely conceived them to be the loftiest and the remotest in the east. Ptolemy named the tribes living on the eastern slopes of the Paropanisos (Central Hindukush) individually as the Bolitai, Aristophyloi, Parsioi, Parseyetai and Ambautai. Collectively, he called these tribes the Paropanisadai.

The hypothesis based on this account of the tribes of Hindukush maintains that:

“…the Parsioi and Parseyetai tribesmen who dwelled in the Ariana, Khurasan eastern or Kabulistan, and spoke an ancient Iranian dialect, identical to Persian, came to be called Prachgan by their Indian conquerors since they inhabited eastern as opposed to western or Iranian Khurasan.”

If we pursue this proposition to its logical conclusion and identify the Indians who conquered these tribes after the death of Alexander and named them Prachya, we may be able to discover the exact origin of the Prachya. According to Dr. Ahmad Hassan Dani, Director of the Centre for the Study of the Civilizations of Central Asia, Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, a historian and archaeologist of international repute:“By about 311 BC, when Seleucus Nikator won for himself a secure position as the ruler of Babylon, and felt safe to devote himself to consolidate his authority in the distant provinces, he turned to the east. In 304 BC, he crossed the Indus, but again Chandragupta was helped by the tribes and Seleucus had to enter into an ignominious treaty with the Mauriya ruler. In lieu of 500 elephants, he ceded to Chandragupta several satrapies. A treaty of friendship was signed and sealed by marriage….Thus Chandragupta ruled supreme from Bengal to Herat and from the Hindukush to Meysore.”

Dr. Rahula Walpole, an eminent antiquarian of Colombo University, whose work has been described as “A veritable mine of authentic information gathered from all the available sources and treated with scientific precision,” has independently arrived at the same conclusion as Dr. Dani. He writes:

“Chandragupta, the grandfather of Ashoka, had in about 304 BC, wrested from Seleucus, one of Alexander’s generals, the four satrapies of Aria (Herat), Arachosia (Kandhar), Gedrosia (Baluchistan) and the Paropanisadai (Kabul).”

According to Justin, ‘Seleucus Nicator waged many wars in the east after the partition of Alexander’s empire among his generals. He first took Babylon and then, with his forces augmented by victory, subjugated the Bactrians. He then passed over into India, which after Alexander’s death, as if the yoke of servitude had been shaken off from its neck, had put his prefects to death. Sandrocottus (Chandragupta) was the leader who achieved their freedom. Sandrocottus having thus won the throne was reigning over India when Seleucus was laying the foundations of his future greatness. Seleucus having made a treaty with him and otherwise settled his affairs in the east, returned home to prosecute the war with Antigonus.’ (Historiae Philippace, Book XV Chapter IV).

These eminent historians confirm that the Indians who conquered the Parsioi and the Parseyetai were the people of Magadha, under the leadership of Chandragupta Mauriya. They knew better than any historian that the word Prachya was used specifically for the people of Magadha and could not be given to the people of Eastern Khurasan living in the Central Hindukush. In fact, the Prachya who settled in the Kabul Valley and beyond had come to this area from Magadha after it was conquered by Chandragupta Mauriya in 304 BC.

Khurasan was called Parthia by the Greeks. As the Prachya rose to power in Magadha, the Parthians rose to power in Parthia in third century BC. They revolted against the Seleucid monarchy and established an independent Parthian kingdom covering the modern provinces of Khurasan and Astarabad. They took possession of Taxila in second century BC, after the fall of the Mauryian Empire, and are adequately represented in the archaeological finds of this ancient citadel of power. They ruled over Parthia for 500 years and gradually took over the whole of Persia. One of their kings, Mithridates I (174-136 BC), opened the way for their penetration into India after his capture of Taxila. They were called Pahlavas in India. The Parthians, however, had to suspend their operations in India when the Sakas attacked Parthia. Ptolemy’s Parsioi and Parseyetai were the smaller tribes of Parthian origin. Ptolemy had not heard the name Prachya by then. He learnt about the Prachya a year later when he reached Beyas and transcribed their name into Greek as Prasiake. Ptolemy knew the Prachya as a powerful kingdom of Magadha far away from the Hindukush. He never confused them with the tribes of the Kabul valley. Historically, neither the tribes of Parthia (Khurasan), settled by Cyrus in Central Hindukush, were of Indian origin nor the Prachya who conquered them were of Persian descent. Prachya had a glorious role in Indian antiquity and need to be proud of their origin as much as the Parthians (Pahlavas) of Persia. Both have played a prominent role in ancient history in their respective countries.

The Morgenstierne Report

Professor Georg Morgenstierne arrived in Afghanistan in 1924, from the Norwegian Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture, for a linguistic research with a letter of introduction by the King of Norway to King Amanullah Khan of Afghanistan. His report is known as the “Report on a Linguistic Mission to Afghanistan.” ISBN 0-923891-09-9. Morgenstierne does not mention any other member by name, at any stage in the report. Prima faci,e it seems to be only one man’s report. Since it was widely circulated by the Institute to linguists in Britain, France, and Iran it has acquired a degree of international recognition. An extract from the report, pertaining to the Prachya is, therefore, enclosed as Annexure ‘B’. The reader should examine it independently before reading the following analysis of the Professor’s views about the Prachya.

The Timing of the Report

The twenties of the last century were years of great turmoil in Afghanistan. The treaty of Rawalpindi, signed in August 1919 at the end of the third Afghan War, had allowed the Afghans the freedom to conduct their foreign affairs. Amir Habibullah Khan, father of the Afghan King had been assassinated in February 1919. The Afghans suspected a British hand behind this tragedy. In 1922, it was discovered in Turkey that a man named Mustafa Saghir was involved in a plot to assassinate Ataturk Mustafa Kamal. This man confessed his involvement in the murder of Amir Habibullah Khan during the investigations carried out in Turkey. When it became public that His Majesty King George of England, Emperor of India and Defender of the faith, had requested the Government of Turkey for Saghir’s pardon, the Afghans were intensely enraged. The history of modern Afghanistan, unfortunately, has been an epic of Afghan suffering because of foreign intrigue, exploitation and aggression.

The British were using every ruse to instigate revolts against Amanullah. The Russians were keen to exploit this situation. It was under these conditions that the Professor came for a linguistic research in Afghanistan right in the middle of all the trouble. In his own words “It was only natural that many people in Afghanistan should regard a linguistic investigator with mistrust, and suspect him of having other than purely scholarly aims. An old Pathan put it bluntly when he said, ‘I was the son of Kamnari Sahib (Sir Louis Cavagnari, renowned for his role in the Anglo–Afghan war of 1879), who had sent me to collect information about the languages and customs of the border tribes, while he himself waited with an army on the frontier.’” The old Pathan, who had seen British intelligence at work for more than half a century by then, had read the situation with admirable precision. Before the first Afghan war, a number of European explorers had visited Afghanistan as tourists, teachers, and traders to spy for the Raj. They had lived with the people, wore their clothes, ate their food and learnt their language. They used to discuss history, geography, climate, politics, etc. to gain information for the British war effort. The Afghans suspected the professor of similar aims and it was obvious that no educated Afghan was willing to give him any accurate information about the strategic areas of the Panjsher valley or the people living around the passes opening into the Kabul valley across the Hindukush. The only exception would be some destitute, partisan turn–coats whom he could buy with the funds placed at his disposal. For the record, Amanullah was eventually dethroned in 1929.

Research Methodology

Morgenstierne tells us that he had been sent to Afghanistan “to study twelve Aryan dialects on both sides of the Indo-Iranian linguistic frontier.” He stayed in the area for only seven months. According to him, “many of these languages were imperfectly known, and some were absolutely unknown.” He had been sent to find out whether these languages were completely Indian in origin, partly Indian, or wholly or partly Iranian? He admits that: “our knowledge of the Iranian languages in question was very limited.” To accomplish this formidable task in seven months, he was accommodated in the superbly situated Haram Sarai of Abdur Rehman in the Bagh-e-Babur outside Kabul. He stayed there comfortably till the end of October and “except for some short excursions for the purpose of linguistic studies” did not visit the valleys where these ‘little known’ or ‘completely unknown’ dialects were actually spoken. As he confides, “the rebellion in Afghanistan made it impossible for me to reside in more outlying parts of the country…………..”. He summarises his research methodology, in the following words: “in a country like Afghanistan where even the general outlines of the linguistic situation were to a great extent unknown, it was probably more profitable to stay in Kabul, like a spider in the centre of the web getting a superficial view of the different languages spoken in the country, than to bury oneself in a mountain valley, concentrating on a more thorough study of one single dialect.” We thus have a ‘spider’s superficial view from the centre of the web’ to contend with in this report. The Professor relies, entirely, on the evidence of uneducated witnesses from neighbouring tribes who spoke a different language. He accepted their opinions in preference to the opinions of Sir George Grierson, the editor of the "Linguistic Survey of India", and Mountstuart Elphinstone, known for "The Kingdom of Kabul" (1815). Both these authors maintain that the Prachya are an Indian people.

For his research on “Prachi,” the Professor’s first contact was a tribesman from Satha, a village near Gulbahar in the Panjsher Valley, who spoke Pashai and had only heard of ‘Prachi’ being spoken in the neighbourhood. He told the learned professor that “in this language ‘Mayon Xareman’ means ‘I eat bread’, and ‘an tereman’ means ‘I drink water’. This information, according to the professor, “made it clear to me that I was on the track of an unknown Iranian language.” In Afghan Persian ‘I eat bread’ is translated as ‘Ma nan mi Khuram’ and ‘I drink water’ is ‘Ma aub mi khurram’. The two sentences quoted by the Satta–Pashai do not follow the fundamental requirements of Persian grammar nor resemble the Persian words for ‘water’ (aub) and ‘eating or drinking’ (khurdan). His next contact was Mohammad Ghani, ‘a shepherd of considerable stupidity,” as he calls him. It is on the evidence of such witnesses that he labels an ancient Persian dialect as Prachi oblivious of the fact that Prachi is a Sanskrit word and Sanskrit is an Indian not an Iranian language. He completely disregards Sir George Grierson’s note which explains ‘Prachi’ as “Eastern, denoting a language of eastern India” and Elphinstone’s opinion describing “the Puranchehs” as another class of Indians. Both Grierson and Elphinstone are quoted as authorities on Indian antiquity, yet Morgenstierne disregards their opinions and uses the statements of a few uneducated tribesmen to plant a Sanskrit name on an unknown Iranian dialect.

The Professor has made a highly unreasonable assumption that “Paranc” (eastern) might easily mean “Pratyanc” (western), even if the word is not used in this sense in Sanskrit (Annexure A, note on Prachi refers). Then, he suggests several options which are even more absurd. He writes that the Pashai or any other mountain tribe could have given the name ‘Prachi’ to an Iranian neighbour, ignoring the fact that Sanskrit had never been a language of uneducated tribes of the Central Hindukush. It is, on the other hand, the refined language of the Brahman elite, not a language used by the Pashais, the Waziris, or various other tribes of the Hidukush. He made these baseless assumptions without consulting some Brahman priests in Kabul or Peshawar. He could easily learn about the status of Sanskrit in Indo-Aryan literature from the Brahmans in these two cities. Morgenstierne requests his readers to take a “lenient view of the errors, inexactitudes, and the lacunae” in his materials. It is for the reader to judge whether suggesting ‘east’ can also mean ‘west’ is an error, an in-exactitude, a lacuna, or simply ignorance. How much credibility can be placed on such a baseless report is for the reader to decide. If the unknown dialect under discussion is an Iranian dialect, it should have had an Iranian name.

One cannot accept the statement of a peasant, a shepherd or a recruit when scholars like M’Crindle refer to classical Greek writers, the chroniclers of Cylone quote sacred Buddhist literature, and Dr. Ray Chaudhry proceeds on the authority of ancient Sanskrit literature to identify Prachya as the people of Magadha and surrounding provinces. It will be sheer disregard for history if one allows a “spider’s view from the centre of the web” to prevail upon classics based on years of dedicated research. That the Prachya have kept their surname alive for twenty-five centuries is a matter of pride for them. They do not require any genealogies other than their own to investigate and commemorate. If one takes up any book on Indian history, one finds that Magadha was a great name in ancient India. It established the first and the last indigenous empire that ruled over the whole of the subcontinent.

An Aryan Origin?

According to Dr. Romila Thapar, Aryan is a linguistic term indicating a speech group of Indo-European Origin. From the region of the Caspian Sea and southern Russian steppes, these nomads spread out to Greece, Asia Minor, Iran and India in search of pastures. Their Indian descendents were called Indo-Aryans. The Indo-Aryans had remained for some time in northern Afghanistan and northern Iranian plateau. By about 1500 BC, they migrated into the Indus Valley through the passes in the Hindukush as a nomadic horde. Their archaeological remains are not adequate to reconstruct a picture of their early life. We have, therefore, to consult their language, literature, and theology to learn about their social life, customs and religion.

Four books of knowledge, known as Vedas, govern Indo-Aryan life. Rigveda is the oldest of these books, followed by Samaveda, Yajurveda, and Atharvaveda. Each Veda has its own prose commentary, called Brahmana, to explain its teachings. Rigveda, it is said, was compiled in the area between the Oxus and the Sarasvati by 1000 BC. It is considered to be the oldest book of hymns in Sanskrit literature. A critical review of Rigveda carried out in Sialkot just after its completion is still in use as the Skala Recension. Skala was the Sanskrit name of Sialkot of antiquity. The other three Vedas and Brahmanas were written in the later Vedic Period between 1000 and 600 BC. In this study, we have referred to the Vedas and the Brahmanas to determine the antiquity of the Prachya.

The earliest mention of the word Prachya is found in Aitareya Brahmana, the prose commentary on Rigveda, where Prachya has been defined as the name of the eastern country in a five-fold division of Vedic India. Satapatha Brahmana, the prose commentary on Yajurveda, is the second source confirming the Aryan origin of the Prachya. It informs its readers, while discussing certain sacrificial rituals, that the Prachya address Agni, the god of fire, as ‘Sarva.’ Two sacred books of the Indo-Aryans thus define Prachya as the eastern country of Vedic India. According to Panini and later grammarians, Sanskrit had been divided into two distinct literary forms in the later Vedic age – Udicya (northern) and Pracya (eastern). This explains the text of Satapatha Brahmana when it refers to ‘Sarva’ representing Agni in the eastern dialect. Two important books of ancient Indo-Aryans thus identify Prachya as the eastern country – the country east of the river Sarasvati. The Brahmana period is the most important period in the history of the Prachya because it was during this period that Indo-Aryans completed their conquest of the Gangetic Valley and the Prachya gradually rose to power. Writing on this period Dr. Romila Thapar records “Classical Sanskrit became gradually and increasingly the language of the Brahmans and the learned few, or had a restricted use on certain occasions such as the issuing of proclamations and official documents or during Vedic ceremonies. In the towns and the Villages, however, a popular form of Sanskrit was spoken which was called Prakrit. It had local variations; the Chief Western Variety was called Shauraseni, and the eastern variety was called Magadhi.” Pali was literary Prakrit based on Sanskrit and used in the east. Buddha (563 BC – 483 BC), wishing to reach a wider audience, taught in Magadhi. He was a prince of Sakyas, a Himalayan republic, who had rejected Brahmanism and was preaching a religion completely opposed to Vedic teachings, the caste-system, animal sacrifices, and Brahman rituals. As he was preaching in Magadhi, the language of The Prachya, Magadha became the heartland of Buddhism and Prachya became the vanguard of this dissident movement. According to Dr. Joshi, the Brahmans of the Vedic tradition ‘abused and reviled’ the Buddha as an atheist (nastika), a demon (asura) and as an outcaste (Shudra). From 500 BC to this day, Brahmans have had the same attitude towards any deviation from orthodox Brahmanism. The religious antagonism against Christianity and Islam springs from the same psyche. The word Prachya, historically, represents the tip of the iceberg of intense hostility towards any system of thought opposed to Brahman apartheid. This antipathy is mutual and the Prachya hate nothing more than the idea of any connection with Brahmanism. Prachya is not a Hindu designation, but a Sanskrit word for the eastern country which had supported the arch enemies of Brahmanism – Mahavira and Buddha.

The strongest evidence in support of the Prachya claim to an Aryan origin is, therefore, the word Prachya itself. Prachya is a linguistic as well as a geographic identity. It is a Sanskrit word, and Sanskrit was the language of the Indo-Aryan elite of antiquity. It was a geographic term used for the country east of the river Saresvati in Sanskrit literature. Sarasvati has been defined as a river which rises in the mountains bounding the north-east part of the Province of Delhi and flowing in a south-eastern direction gets lost in the sands of the Rajisthan desert. It was the ‘Naditama’ (foremost of the rivers) in the Later Vedic and Epic literature. The word Prachya is, thus, area specific and cannot be used for the Aryans of Iran and Afghanistan.

Prachya is not an isolated word and forms part of a family of well-known words like Prachin (eastern, ancient); Prachinate (antiquity); Prachin Adhikar (prescriptive right); Prachi (an eastern female); Purva (being before or in front, previous, antecedent, east, eastern, easterly), Purvardha (the first half, front or upper part, eastern part); Purva-disa, Purva-dis, Purva–dik, Prachya, (the eastern region, eastern quarter, the eastern part of India), Purva-desi (a native of the eastern part of India), Purva-samundra, the eastern sea; Purva-Ja (former, elder, born in the east or the eastern country). Historically, the people of Magadha and surrounding provinces were described as Prachya in Sanskrit, Greek and Buddhist chronicles.

Prachya contribution to the development of Sanskrit language and literature can be assessed from the fact that Panini of Taxila and the later grammarians divide Sanskrit into two main dialects – Udicya (northern, Taxila and Kashmir) and Praciya (eastern, Magadha and surrounding countries).

Traditionally, the Prachya kept their accounts in Hindi script, Takra, till the closing years of the nineteenth century. Increase in literacy and the rise of the Urdu-Hindi conflict in the twentieth century lead to the greater use of Urdu in rural Punjab and Gandhara. Takra was, consequently, eliminated gradually from Prachya accounts. Hindi script is used neither by the Arabs nor the Persians. It is purely an Indo-Aryan medium of written expression in Northern India.

The Prachya, generally, prefix their names with the word ‘Mian’. Mian in Sanskrit means a gentleman, and implies a civilized person who leads a gentle and scrupulous life. It is not found in any Arabic or Persian dictionary. Mian was the title of hill rajputs in the Himalayan states. Both Sakias and Mauriyas were Himalayan hill tribes. Gautama was a prince of the Sakias and the Mauriyas were descendents of the royal house of Piphallivana in the Himalayan region north of Bihar. As Buddhism became ascendant in Northern India, this title became widespread amongst the ruling elite in preference to titles implying temporal power. Ashoka’s emphasis on the cultivation of piety provided it a great impetus.

From ancient times till the early part of the nineteenth century, the Rajputs of the Punjab Himalayas were called Mian. Mian Mansingh, for example, was a distinguished general of the Mughal Army. In the 1830s in the Kangra Valley, to be entitled Mian, a rajput had to observe the following code of conduct: ONE, never to plough his land himself; TWO, never accept a marriage proposal for his daughter from an inferior, nor marry below his rank; THREE, never accept money in exchange for the betrothal of his daughter; FOUR: keep his female house-hold in strict seclusion. The Prachya relish these Indo-Aryan traditions and the title is still widely used by the affluent members of their fraternity.

The word Aryan is not synonymous with the word Hindu. Strange as it may seem, Hindu is not a Sanskrit word. The river Indus is called Sindhu in the Rigveda. It was transcribed as Hindu in Avesta. When the Persians conquered the Indus valley in 515 BC, they used the name for the river as well as the people of the Indus valley. In due course, it was used for the people of the subcontinent as a whole by the Arabs and other conquerors. India was not fully Brahmanised at any stage in its history. Millions of Indians did not believe in the Vedas till the advent of Buddhism. When Buddha appeared on the scene, the tide turned in his favour and orthodox Brahmanism was confined to Madhya-desha (the middle country, or the upper part of the Gangetic Valley). All the Indians have never been Hindu nor have all the Hindus been of Aryan origin. The black majority of pre-Aryan origin was forced into the lowest stratum of society as untouchables (Shudra). Hinduism is not a purely Aryan religion either. Dr. L. M. Joshi poses a very important question in the History of Punjab (Vol-I). “How did the Indo-Aryans who came as immigrants in small numbers, and with poor cultural equipment, succeed in conquering and Brahmanising nearly the whole of India?” he asks. “One answer,” according to him “is that the Aryans were conquered by the culture of the vanquished. There is an enormous mass of evidence which records not only the process of assimilation, homologisation and Brahmanization of non-Brahmanical and non-Aryan races, cultures, languages, cult objects, and religious ideas, but also a long-drawn or rather constant conflict between the invaders and the invaded.” In reality, even today Hinduism is not the largest Indo-Aryan religion. Buddhism, as it developed in Magadha and later Gandhara, is the third largest religion in the world, after Christianity and Islam, with an international following. Prachya are Indo-Aryan, but not Hindu. They were the earliest and the most devoted converts to Islam in South Asia because of their trading interests in Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan. Platts’ dictionary has transcribed Prachya in English as Pracya using ‘c’ for ‘ch’. Encyclopaedia Britanica uses Pracya, the Cambridge History of India uses Prasii while the Greek transcriptions given by Professor M’Crindle vary from Praisioi to Prasiake. In An Advanced History of India, Dr. Ray Chaudhry, disregarding this plethora of transcriptions simply uses the Roman script for the original Sanskrit word and keeps the original name in tact. Since the Prachya mostly speak modern Indo-Aryan dialects like Punjabi, Landha and Hindko in the Indus valley, this study has followed the example of Dr. Ray Chaudhry for the convenience of the reader and used the original Sanskrit word Prachya.

Converted Hindus

The Gazetteer of the Rawalpindi District 1893 and 94 however records that
"they are converted Hindus and seem to be much the same as Khojas " • [ Gazetteer of the Rawalpindi District 1893-94, Punjab Government, 2001 Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore. Page 104 ]

Piracha use of Hindi characters

The Gazetteer of the Shahpur District 1897 records that-"The Musalmans generally use the Arabic Character.The Musalman Khoja and Piracha traders however mostly keep their accounts in Hindi .• [ Gazetteer of the Shahpur District 1897, Punjab Government, Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore. Page 91 ]

Verifiable References

*For a complete account of the origin and history of the Piracha, with comprehensive references and bibliography, please visit http://raheem.info/history/piracha.htm

* Morgenstierne, Georg (1926) Report on a Linguistic Mission to Afghanistan. Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning, Serie C I-2. Oslo. ISBN 0-923891-09-9

ee also

*List of Pakistani family names
*Paracha
*El-Umari
*Abbasi
*Alavi
*Gardezi
*Gilani
*Hashemi
*Osmani
*Quraishi
*Sayyid
*Shaikh
*Shaikh Siddiqui
*Siddiqui

=References=