Xanthii

Xanthii is a variant of Jat in Central Asia. Xandii or Xanthii was term used for tribe by Strabo Xanthii is a nasalised form of Iatii or Jatii.

Variants of Xanthii

• Iatii
• Jatii (of Pliny)
• Xandii
• Zanthi (of Strabo)
• Xanthii
• Xuthi
• Zanthii
• Zatale
• Zaths
• Zooth
• Zothale
• Zuth
• Zuthi

History

Hukum Singh Panwar (Pauria) writes - From classical historians and geographers of the first century BC as well as from those of first century A.D. have come down to us variants like Xanthii or Zanthii or Xandii⁷⁹ Iatii or Iatii⁸⁰, used for the people living on the banks of the Oxus between Bactria,

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The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations: End of page 344

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Hyrkania and Khorasmia⁸¹. Xuthi or Zuthi ⁸² for those who occupied Karamanian desert and Drangiana ⁸³, One scholar⁸⁴ suggests that those people gave their name as Zatale or Zothale to the irrigation channel from the Margus river. All these terms are said⁸⁵ to be variants of the term Jat with their "parental house on the Oxus" and their original seat or colony in Sindh as well as "on the Margus (Zotale or Zothale) river". This reference definitely indicates that the Jats were spread over the region bounded by Indus in the east and the Oxus in the West in Central Asia. This learned scholar seems perplexed in deciding the original habitat of the Jats in spite of the fact that earlier scholars like Pliny, Diodorus Siculus and Megasthenese had claimed that contemporary Indians were indigenous.

Pliny⁸⁶ found the Indians living in the Indus Valley from the past. Diodorus Siculus⁸⁷ asserted that the contemporary Indians were evidently indigenous and Megasthenese⁸⁸ , who was in fact more familiar with northern India of the fourth and third centuries B.C. than any other of his contemporaries, wrote about the people, inhabiting north-western India, that "none was alien and all of them were India's indigenous citizens". These impartial statements of the classical writers amply expose the fallacy of the assertions of those who assign foreign origin to the Jats. It is a pity that in spite of the corroborative evidence, the Indian origin of the Jats was disputed and repudiated in favour of the Central Asian origin, simply because this theory was propounded by European scholars led by giants like Cunningham and Tod. These theories were readily accepted by their Indian adherents without making any reason or rhyme, simply because of the prestige£ that European scholars commanded.

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79. Strabo. Geog., XL, 8-2 & 3. Westphal and Westphal, op.cit., pp. 87-88.

80. Pliny, His. Nat., VI, 18. Ptolemy, Geog., VI, 12,14.

81. ASR, Vol., II, (1863-64), p. 55.

82. Ibid. Westphal and Westphal, op.cit., pp. 87-88.

83. Ibid.

84. Ibid.

85. Ibid.

86. Majumdar, R.C; op.cit., p. 340.

87. Ibid., p. 235.

88. Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historiea, II, 220.

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Hukum Singh Panwar (Pauria) writes - Our conviction that Scythic tribes can be pin pointed among the Jats may not necessarily be an exercise in futility. In the absence of an ethnic history of the Jats and the lapse of two millennial after the Scythians' last return to India it may seem to be as difficult to locate for sure the Scythic element in the Jats as it is to separate water from milk; neverthless a few writers have used the "social lactometer" to give us fairly dependabie data, which we would like to lace before the patient reader.

We begin with Cunningham (ASRI, Vol.II, 1863-64, pp. 1-82) who made an interesting study on the identification of those famous peoples of north-western India whose names have become familiar to the whole world through the expedition of Alexander the Great. He described the various tribes which have settled in the Panjab from the earliest times to the Muslim conquest and attempted to trace the downward course of each separate tribe until it joins the great stream of modern history. We may repeat that next to Tod, he is the scholar who contributed immensely to the Scythic origin of the Jats by identifying them and reasonably so, with the Zanthii (or Xanthii or Xandi in Greek) of Strabo and the Iatii of Pliny and Ptolemy. The derivation of Jat by Cunningham from the Greek and Roman forms is logical but plausible. He suggests that in its original native form, the Greek name

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The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations:End of page 322

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of Xanthii or Xandi (and the Roman name of Zanthii) could have been Janth or by dropping the nasal, Jath (Jath or Jat, for, absence of J in the Greek alphabets is substituted by G or I). The ethnicity of certain Jat tribes was a matter of controversy: this was set at rest by Cunningham's opinion in favour of their also being Scythian.

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Sir Alexander Cunningham, Former Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India, considered the Jat people to be the Xanthii (a Scythian tribe) of Scythian stock who he considered very likely called the Zaths (Jats) of early Arab writers. He stated "their name is found in Northern India from the beginning of the Christian era." These people were considered by early Arab writers to have descended from Meds and Zaths. Cunningham believes they "were in full possession of the valley of the Indus towards the end of the seventh century. Sir Alexander Cunningham held that the Rajputs belonged to the original Scythian stock, and the Jats to a late wave of immigrants from the north west, of Scythian race.

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H.A. Rose writes that Perhaps no question connected with the ethnology of the Punjab peoples has been so much discussed as the origin of the so-called Jat 'race'. It is not intended here to reproduce any of the arguments adduced. They will be found in detail in the Archeological Survey Reports, II, pp. 51 to (31 ; in Tod's Rajasthan, I, pp. 52 to 75 and 96 to 101 (Madras reprint, 1880} ; in Elphinstone's History of India, pp. 250 to 253 ; and in Elliot's Races of the N.-W. P., I, pp. 130 to 137. Suffice it to say that both Sir Alexander Cunningham and Colonel Tod agreed in considering the Jats to be of Indo-Scythian stock. The former identified them with the Zanthi of Strabo and the Jatii of Pliny and Ptolemy; and held that they probably entered the Punjab from their home on the Oxus very shortly after the Meds or Mands, who also were Indo-Scythians, and who moved into the Punjab about a century before Christ. The Jats seem to have first occupied the Indus valley as far down as Sindh, whither the Meds followed them about the beginning of the present era.

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Prof. B.S. Dhillon quotes Sir Cunningham, A. (Major-General and Former Director-General of the Archeological Survey of India) wrote, "the Xanthii (a Scythian tribe) are very probably the Zaths (Jats) of the early Arab writers. As the Zaths were in Sindh (presently a Pakistani province) to the west of the Indus (river), this location agrees very well with what we know of the settlement of the Sakas (Scythians) on the Indian frontier".

References

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