Sattagydai

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Author:Laxman Burdak, IFS (R)

Sattagydia was one of the easternmost regions of the Achaemenid Empire, part of its Seventh tax district according to Herodotus,[1] along with Gandārae, Dadicae and Aparytae.[2][3]

Variants

Location

It was situated east of the Sulaiman Mountains up to the Indus River in the basin around Bannu in modern day's southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.[4]

Geography

The location of Sattagydia has been subject to debate. Its association with Gandhara in the 7th tax district of the Herodotus list implies that it was close to Gandhara. Olmstead believed that it stretched from "the lower slopes of the Hindu Kush".[5] Based on these considerations, two locations have been proposed: the first being "the area of the confluence of the Ghorband and Panjshir rivers in Afghanistan", and the second, "the area of the middle Indus, around the modern city of Bannu".[6]

Following recent archaeological findings, the Bannu basin has become the favoured choice. David Fleming points out that it is close to Kurram and Tochi rivers and it has four routes to the west, via the Khyber Pass, the Kurram river valley, the Gomal Pass and the Bolan Pass in Balochistan.[7] Magee et al. have reported findings of recent archaeological excavations at Akra, noting that it was a large urban site that existed throughout the Iron Age and had trade relations with Central Asia.[8]

People

Representatives of Sattagydia are depicted as delegates bringing gifts to the king on the Apadana staircases, and as throne/ dais bearers on the Tripylon and Hall of One Hundred Columns reliefs at Persepolis. The representatives of Sattagydia are characterized by their loincloths, sandals, and exposed upper body, which distinguish them from the representatives of other eastern provinces such as Bactria and Arachosia.[9]

History

Sattagydia is mentioned for the first time in the Behistun inscription of Darius the Great as one of the provinces in revolt while the king was in Babylon. The revolt was presumably suppressed in 515 BCE. The satrapy disappears from sources after 480 BCE, possible being mentioned by another name or included with other regions.[10]

After being conquered by Alexander the Great, Sattagydia became part of the Seleucid Empire. Under the Seleucids this area was adjacent to Sind, which was itself adjacent to Abiria (corresponding roughly to Rajasthan), with the coastal region being called Syrastrene.[11] The area was taken from the Seleucids by the Mauryans under Chandragupta in 316 BCE.[12][13] And, beginning in the 1st century BC, the area was incorporated into the burgeoning Kushan Empire, referred to as "Scythia" in the Periplus.[14]

Identification of Thataguś

Buddha Prakash[15] mentions .....[p.64]: In those moves (of Darius) Gandhara also fell to the Achaemenians and the house of Pukkusati ceased to exist some time between 518 and 515 B. C. Darius conquered the Indus Valley also as the Persepolis inscription indicates. These regions were organized in taxation units 7 and 20 of the gazetteer of Herodotus, the former called Gadara, including the Dadikai, (Darada), Aparytai (Aprita) etc., and the latter known as Hindus, encompassing the lower Indus Valley, where the Indoi (Saindhava - Sauvira) lived. It is contended that Darius also conquered the Panjab up to the Beas where Alexander’s army halted having reached the limit of the Achaemenian empire whose heir they; claimed to be (Cambridge History of India, I, p. 306). Not certain of this fact, Smith observed that this empire “perhaps included a considerable part of the Panjab east of the Indus” (Early History of India, 3rd, ed. p. 37). This view is based on the identification of Thataguś (Sattagydai of Herodotus), included in the seventh taxation unit, with the Panjab. Herzfeld holds that this word Thatagus may represent a compound, in some Iranian or Sanskrit

[p.65]: dialect, of the Indo-European word for ‘seven' with some word meaning ‘stream'. He conjectures that the word that or satta stands for hapta or sapta, but about guś he is not certain. R. G. Kent rejects this view and shows that that in Thataguś (Elamite sa-ad-da-ku-iś, Akkadian sa-at-ta-gu-u) is the same as Avestan sata or Sanskrit śata or Indo-European kmto and guś stands for gav, meaning ‘cattle', so that thataguś does not signify ‘seven rivers’ but ‘hundred cattle' (Old Persian, Grammar, Texts, Lexicon, p. 18). G. G. Cameron also observes: "I find it very difficult to reconcile Thataguś with the Panjab. Must it not rather be on the slopes of the Hindukush” (A. J. Toynbee, A Study of History Vol. VII, p. 649). A. V. Williams Jackson equates Thataguś with ‘‘either the Ghilzai territory to the south- west of Ghazni or the Hazara country further to the west and north-west” (Cambridge History of India, Vol. I, p. 302). It appears that Thataguś represents the region of Gomati, modern Gomal, both these names signifying a land having an abundance of cattle.

An objection to the identification of Thataguś' with the Panjab is financial as pointed out by Toynbee. As he writes, “the Panjab must always have been a rich country in virtue of its agricultural and pastoral products, and, therefore, if the Herodotean Taxation District No. 7 did include even only a part of the Panjab, it is surprising that it should have been assessed at a lower figure than any other district. Moreover Thataguś, whether a rich country or a poor one, had been in rebellion in 522-21 B. C. and Darius was not the man to let off resubjugated rebels lightly in their tax assessments, as he showed by the enormous figure at which he assessed the poverty-stricken south-eastern Asagartiya, Yautiya and Machiya.” Hence he concludes that “the lowness of the assessment on the Herodotean District No. 7. could perhaps be reconciled with a location of one of its constituent cantons in the wealthy Panjab on the supposition that, if Thataguś did lie in the Panjab, it included no more than a fraction of it, e. g., the north-western corner, to the north-west of the Salt Range” (A Study of History, Vol. VII, p. 648). In fact it is strange that, if Panjab formed part of the Achaemenian empire, it was not made a separate taxation unit or satrapy, being one of the richest units of the empire.

External links

References

  1. ↑ Herodotus III 91, III 94
  2. ↑ Mitchiner, Michael (1978). The ancient & classical world, 600 B.C.-A.D. 650. Hawkins Publications ; distributed by B. A. Seaby. p. 44. ISBN 9780904173161. Jigoulov, Vadim S. (2016), The Social History of Achaemenid Phoenicia: Being a Phoenician, Negotiating Empires, Routledge, p. 21, ISBN 978-1-134-93809-4
  3. ↑ Eggermont, Pierre Herman Leonard (1975), Alexander's Campaigns in Sind and Baluchistan and the Siege of the Brahmin Town of Harmatelia, Peeters Publishers, ISBN 978-90-6186-037-2
  4. ↑ Fleming, David (1982). "Achaemenid Sattagydia and the geography of Vivana's campaigns (DB III, 54–75)". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland. 114 (2): 102–112. doi:10.1017/S0035869X00159155. ISSN 0035-869X.p.105
  5. ↑ Olmstead, A. T. (1948), History of the Persian Empire, University of Chicago Press, ISBN 978-0-226-62777-9, pp. 48–49.
  6. ↑ Fleming, Achaemenid Sattagydia 1982, p. 103.
  7. ↑ Fleming, Achaemenid Sattagydia 1982, p. 105.
  8. ↑ Magee, Peter; Petrie, Cameron; Knox, Richard; Khan, Farid; Thomas, Ken (2005), "The Achaemenid Empire in South Asia and Recent Excavations in Akra in Northwest Pakistan", American Journal of Archaeology, 109 (4): 711–741, doi:10.3764/aja.109.4.711, S2CID 54089753, p. 735.
  9. ↑ Magee, Peter; Petrie, Cameron; Knox, Richard; Khan, Farid; Thomas, Ken (2005), "The Achaemenid Empire in South Asia and Recent Excavations in Akra in Northwest Pakistan", American Journal of Archaeology, 109 (4): 711–741, doi:10.3764/aja.109.4.711, S2CID 54089753, p. 713.
  10. ↑ https://www.livius.org/sao-sd/sattagydia/sattagydia.html
  11. ↑ Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
  12. ↑ De La Fosse, Claude Fraser, (1917) History of India (revised edition) Macmillan & Co., London, pp. 39-42, OCLC 13241962
  13. ↑ Junianus Justinus Historiarum Philippicarum libri XLIV, XV.4.19[usurped]
  14. ↑ Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
  15. ↑ Buddha Prakash: [[Evolution of Heroic Tradition in Ancient Panjab], VII. The Response to Achaemenian Challenge,pp.64-65
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