Pashtuns before Islam

[Tjanaparh]

I think it is not easy with this. Linguist group mostly Avestan in the eastern group and relate it to Bactrian, but Avestan is only known from Avesta. Still I think to say Avestan is from Old Persian isn't right. Mostly it is agreed that they evolved independently. Avestan is very related to Sanskrit too.
What we are doing wrong is taking only singular examples, otherwise we can fiind similar words wetween English and Avestan, Russian and Avestan, Pashto and Armenian, Pashto and Russian).
A deeper look is needed.
Concerning the sounds, for example some dialects of my own language have sounds common only to them that they use for their own words (for example Hamshen Armenian has a very specific Vocal not found in Armenian, but used as a separate letter).
Avestan had also more sounds and different sounds then other Irani languages.

There are words that may sound more similar between Armenian and Pashto then Farsi and Pashto i think.

For examole "white" (Spin (Psht.), Spitak (Arm.), "mountain" (Ghar (Psht.), Qar (=Stone) (Arm.) "mother" (as I remember is Mor in Pashto, while Mor is the genitive of Mother in Armenian(Nominative is Mayr)
You have like us verbs on -el
And I remeber that one Armenian verb was similar to a Pashto one (also i don't remember the Pashto word), it was "to sit" = Néstel in Armenian.
Also your ending -tun is a bit similar to our -utyun.

But same way there are in Armenian words from Pahlavi, not used in Persian today anymore, but used n Armenian, and they are a lot.

So comparing the languages deeper knowledge is needed. Avestan was quiet specific, and also some parts were artificially added and do on correspond to the original Avestan. However for example most Estarn Iranic peakers I know (Pamirians, Ossetians) understand Avestan much better then Persian speakers. We had here one Pamirian member who could explain it better, I may ask him if he has time to rejoin the forum if You like ?

[gadoonwal]

pashtuns never worship statues and fire.
we had our own religion pashtu.

[Pakwatan]

Why does it matter?

[Diaphanous]

pashtuns never worship statues and fire.
we had our own religion pashtu.

Your right, as pashtuns, we don't worship statues or fire or any other element. Instead, we worship something worse. each other. Pashtuns care more about what others will think than what is right. To them, status, respect is more important then islam.

[Badlun]

pashtuns never worship statues and fire.
we had our own religion pashtu.

Yeah. In this one sentence there is the complete truth that we have our own religion called Pashto. Islam gave us beliefs in metaphysical aspects , some morality as well as some rituals but Pasho is the real way of life of Pashtuns.

I saw in parts of Pashtunland that on 15 of the month of Shoban , they observe the Shoqadar night with lots of fire shows especially throwing small balls of fire called pandoskey. It seems that Pashtun like fire games if not worship fire.

Similarly I have seen Pashtuns around a fire and baking maize corns or cobs. The way they celebrate this occasion is not worship but seems a sacred ceremony. Pashtun girls love dolls and games with dolls is part of traditional Pashtun life. Doll is a statue. Although they do not worship dolls but they love it.

All this shows that Pashtuns still have some preIslam influence. Even I have heard that Pashto neem kufer dey= Pashto is half infidelity.

If some one undertakes a research what Pashtuns do which is against Islam, then this will clarify that what Pashtuns were doing before their mass conversion to Islam.

[Baraki]

Even though we can't control what our ancestors were, it probably would make me feel better if they Monotheists or at least Zoroastrians as opposed to polytheists.

[khushal]

Well Millions of Pashtuns are on the map in 2014. Not in 1000 AD

Back in 1000 A.D. the world population was maybe 300 Million. This is the entire world population, including China, Europe, Africa, South America , Asia and Australia, Pashtuns today are bout 50 Million, that is only 1/700 th (50 Million/7.224 Billion) of current world population. Assuming that growth rate was constant that would mean In 1000 AD Pashtun population would probably have been 42,000 people. (300 Million * 1/700 = (approx) 42,000)

If Pashtuns were at one time 42,000 people 1000 years ago then it is easy to see how Millions of Pashtuns could appear today.

What this means is that if Pashtuns were born out of a very small population of People. 42,000 people is the size of a Small American town. We can see that if different people like Soghdians, Indians, Persians Turks, Khotanese all came and mixed together each a a small bit. Then All these groups can easy create a 42,000 Proto Pashtun population. What this demonstrates is that Pashtuns are more probably simply a product of different Non-Pashtuns mixing together and then developing their own language over time.

So that means Pashtuns are not 5000 years old, that Pashtuns are not homogeneous and that the stories Pashtuns have about their origins are myhs and folklore.

your missing many important variables in your analysis. The most important one being migration. Many people constantly migrate from central Asia to South Asia because of the abundant resources in South Asia. Also population tend to grow much faster in place with abundant resources than in places like Afghanistan with very little resources.

A perfect example is Mongolia whose people at one time conquered most of the known world. If you compare the population of Mongolia today to the Mongolian population in Afghanistan, you would notice that the Mongolian population in Afghanistan far exceeds the Mongolian population of Mongolia not to mention that most experts theorize that the y chromosome of Ghengis Khan exceeds 25 million all over the world which is more than 10 times the population of Mongolia.

Point being the Pashtun population in South Asia could far exceed the 50 million in pashtunland, but those Pashtuns have been" Indic-ized" just like the Mongolians have been Persianized in Afghanistan.

[Smarty]

Factor of war can not be ignored. In single battle thousands of people used to die. Ibrahim lodhi gathered around 100000 Afghans to fight babur. His brother mahmud lodhi had around 30 thousands afghans in the alliance with rana senga in battle against babur. In the final battle with mughals, mahmud lodhi gathered a vary large force of afghans, exceeding 100000. In these last two battles of mahmud lodhi, pashtun tribes like lohani, suri and karranis didnt participate. If Afghans in india in 1526-1544 A.D were able to put so many soldiers on field, my guess is that their total population only in india was more than one million. One million is large number, population of KPK in 1947 was only 3 million.
When hamayun came back, there were four suri kings fighting for throne of delhi and each had armies numbering between 30 to 60 thousands afghans.
These Afghans got killed in contineous wars with mughals or got dispersed to and assimilated to be disappeard.
Another example is if dilazak tribe. It was a large pashtun tribe which was living in present day yousafzai lands, hazara and attock. Yousafzais came from kabul, defeated them and killed big portion of its population. Dilazak territory was reduced to east of indus. In 1607 mughal army was sent to wipe out the dilazak as they were on east side of indus. Many were killed and as many as 100000 families were deported to india, where they were dispersed, so got disappeared. This tribe is almost extinct except for few villages in pakhtunkhwa.

[Kushan Prince]

Old Farsi evolved into Pahlvi (Middle Persian) then that evolved into Modern Farsi.

e.g. Bratar into Brâdar into Barādar


Separately,


Old Farsi also evolved into Avestan (that did not evolve into anything present, since a religious language for Zoroastrianism)

e.g. Bratar into Brātar

Therefore, both Modern Farsi and Avestan are descended from the same language that is Old Persian/Farsi.

Ibrahima, drop it.

You and RTR'S pathetic idea that farsi comes from avestan is false and highly laughable, not to mention all you guys do is compare words from an old deluded chart from wikipedia. None of y'all are linguists so no need to spread lies which might delude newer members on here, and what pashtuns practised some 3000 years ago should be of on concern to you. We are muslim today and islam is what we have happily subscribe to today, so focus on strengthening you're imam and learning more about islam to get closer to god. Not to mention you have gone off topic with comparing languages to extinct languages on a religions thread.

[randolph85]

how about pashtuns before pashtuns?

[Badlun]

how about pashtuns before pashtuns?

What about Muslims before Muslims? What about Omar before conversion to Islam?

Every race, ethnic group, nation and individual has a past, has a history, evolutionary process. Nothing appears all of the sudden as one had an unreasonable claim that all of the Pashtuns appeared all of the sudden in 1000 AD and there were no Pashtuns before Islam.

Pashtuns have their thousands of years of journey to reach the stage they are today. When there was no Islam Pashtuns were following their own way of life called Pashtunwali. Today Islam has affected some aspects of their lives but Pashtunwali after 1400 years still remain the predominant way of life of Pashtuns.

[Bengal_Tiger]

Ibrahima, drop it.

You and RTR'S pathetic idea that farsi comes from avestan is false and highly laughable, not to mention all you guys do is compare words from an old deluded chart from wikipedia. None of y'all are linguists so no need to spread lies which might delude newer members on here, and what pashtuns practised some 3000 years ago should be of on concern to you. We are muslim today and islam is what we have happily subscribe to today, so focus on strengthening you're imam and learning more about islam to get closer to god. Not to mention you have gone off topic with comparing languages to extinct languages on a religions thread.

Pashto is a Western Iranian language, descended from Avestan.

Michael Henderson, "The Phonology of Pashto", 1998.

http://people.ku.edu/~mmth/Sample_Pashto_Phonology_I_Term_Paper.pdf

*Though Henderson classifies it as being western Iranian as opposed to the more common designation of Pashto as being eastern Iranian, he does state that it is descended from Avestan.

Pashto is the living language of the Avestan people and Avestan is itself is still used to recite liturgy.

Quote #5 from: http://www.lingforum.com/forum/viewt...2e9ad124d46dde

Although Avestan is the oldest known Iranian language, it is not a direct ancestor of modern Persian. The latter is derived from the vernacular tongue of the Achamaenean kings, which we know from the numerous cuneiform inscriptions they left behind. Although this language is closely related to Avestan (and particularly the form found in the later Avestan texts), they were subtly different, and belonged to different branches of the Iranian language family...


Middle Iranian languages descended from Avestan included Sogdian, Khotanese (or Scythian), Khwarezmian or Chorasmian, Bactrian (which displays the closest affinity to Avestan), Pashto, and Ossetic. All except Pashto and Ossetic swiftly followed their parent into extinction.

http://everything2.com/title/Avestan

All of these multiple sources from different linguistic authorities validate the accuracy of Kushan Prince's statements above.


- Pashtuns are an Iranic race
- Their language is descended from Avestan (as were quite a few other languages which are now extinct)
- The ancestors of both Pashtuns and Ossetians may well be the Scythians.




The people that we know currently know as "Pashtuns" may have originated from the Khorasan/Balkh region, with Balkh being the home of Zorostrianism.

Prior to their residence the Pashtun people or their ancestors ("Proto-Pashtuns") probably came from the north-west of that region.




The current Pashtuns are a mixture of different racial groups united by one common language (and culture, "Pashtunwali") including Caucasian, Mongoloid, Turkic and Indic blood.

We do not know what the original Pashtuns looked like but probably fair skinned with medium/dark blonde hair.



A light Afghan.



Blonde Pashtun.



An Indic looking Pashtun, Ziauddin Yusufzai,probably a descendant of local Indic peoples of the Peshawar region.

You also have "Pashtuns", that look darker than Ziauddin Yusufzai, so from the spectrum of Nordic looking to Indic looking you have all variations between with also a Mongoloid influence.

The language however is an Indo-Iranian language.

[Kushan Prince]

^Very interesting analysis there Bengal Tiger thank you.

However i like to add that the modern day belief today among pashtuns is that we believe our people originally started out from central Afghanistan from the ghor province and spread out towards the north south, and east. That blonde pashtun you posted looks a lot like a nuristani man or a kunari Pashtun, but nether less, we come in all shapes and colours.

Also i would like to add that Malala Yousafzai wrote in her book that her father was discriminated against constantly for his dark skin and not looking "pashtun enough." Which would indicate skin colour is a taboo among many pashtuns. I think you may be right, her father could be a pashtunized dard or and indic as KPK was not originally Pashtun before islam. The mongoloid influence however i believe is recent and must be intermixing with local hazaras or turkic ghazis that settled in the cities during mahmud of ghazni's time although it is very minimal compared to tajiks.

[Kushan Prince]

Pashto has borrowed words from Avestan (e.g. aspa) and Farsi (e.g. goman). But it has NOT evolved from the languages. Thats the point I was making.


Let me make it simple for you:

---> = think of it as A gives birth to B

1)Old Farsi ---> Pahlvi/Middle Farsi --->Modern Farsi


2) Old Farsi ---> Avestan


3) ??? ---> Pashto

Dude, you've completely derailed your own thread and i feel like this is a troll account now. Perhaps and iranian spy or something?

[Bengal_Tiger]

^Very interesting analysis there Bengal Tiger thank you.

However i like to add that the modern day belief today among pashtuns is that we believe our people originally started out from central Afghanistan from the ghor province and spread out towards the north south, and east. That blonde pashtun you posted looks a lot like a nuristani man or a kunari Pashtun, but nether less, we come in all shapes and colours.

Also i would like to add that Malala Yousafzai wrote in her book that her father was discriminated against constantly for his dark skin and not looking "pashtun enough." Which would indicate skin colour is a taboo among many pashtuns. I think you may be right, her father could be a pashtunized dard or and indic as KPK was not originally Pashtun before islam. The mongoloid influence however i believe is recent and must be intermixing with local hazaras or turkic ghazis that settled in the cities during mahmud of ghazni's time although it is very minimal compared to tajiks.

Thanks Kushan.

You are a Pashtun so naturally know more so thanks for your informative post.


I did not know that about Malala Yusufzai's father and the discrimination he received. What a pity and such preferential/negative treatment of people based on appearance and colour is unfortunately a universal phenomenon in all societies including Muslim and non-white ones.