Pāradas (alternatively Varadas , or Parita ) was an Iron age kingdom described in various ancient and classical Indian texts. The exact location of the kingdom is unknown. The Vayu Purana locates the tribe on the upper course of the Amu Darya (also known as Chaksu) and Syr Darya rivers in Central Asia . The Mahabharata , however, associates the Paradas with the tribes of Uttarapatha , and places them on the Sailoda River in the Xinjiang province of China . Additionally, the Ramayana locates the people in the Himalayas .
29-654: It is thought that the Pāradas are connected to the later Paratarajas , an Indo-Parthian dynasty in Pakistan during the 1st-3rd century CE. Numerous Puranic texts associate the Parada Kingdom with the Kamboja , Saka , Yavana and Pahlava tribes, and brand them together as Panca-ganah ("five hordes"). These five hordes were military allies of the Haihaya or Taljunga Kshatriyas of
58-472: A bust adorning a curved hem on the coin obverse can be correlated to the contemporaneous Kanishka II . A rough lineage of Paratarajas rulers can be reconstructed from numismatic evidence as follows: [REDACTED] Yolamirasa Bagarevaputrasa Pāratarājasa The frequent referencing of Mithra , a Zoroastrian deity, in the names of the rulers lends credence to the origins of the Paratarajas lying in
87-528: A date of c. 125 CE using circumstantial evidence: The disintegration of Paratarajas can be predicted with more confidence. Two overstrikes by Datayola— the last extant Parataraja ruler—on coins of the Kushano-Sasanian ruler Hormizd I provide a terminus post quem of c. 275 CE Accepting this schema allots about 15 years per ruler, which fits with the norms for ancient dynasties; additionally, Koziya can be assigned to about c. 230, whose incorporation of
116-574: A king achieves supremacy with the aid of the gods in the epic form. He also believes that the early Islamic texts, such as al-Tabarī are of little use for the history of the Sasanian period. The Sulaymaniyah Museum in Iraqi Kurdistan opened a new Gallery on June 10, 2019, dedicated to the Paikuli Tower, its inscription, and King Narseh. The Sulaymaniyah Museum is the only Museum which displays relics of
145-589: A marked contrast in the legend and the long gap from Datayola, the common use of the swastika as the central motif on the reverse and a similarity in metrological standards led Tandon to hypothesize Vijayapotasya might have been either a Parataraja or a ruler from a successor dynasty that exercised nominal independence despite the strong presence of Sassanians in the region. Paikuli inscription The Paikuli inscription ( Kurdish : پەیکوڵی , romanized : Peykulî , Persian : پایکولی , in Arabic : بيكولي )
174-573: A new city. The Paikuli inscription , which was erected by Narseh (r. 293-302) after his victory over Bahram III , notes an anonymous "Pāradānshah" (King of Pardan) to have been among his many congratulators. Shapur I's inscription at the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht in Naqsh-i-Rustam , which is dated to 262, had "P'rtu"/"Pardan" as one of the many provinces of the Sasanian Empire : And I [Shapur I] possess
203-601: A siege was mounted but eventually their ruler offered submission and was rewarded with governorship of other provinces. Isidore of Charax (fl. 0 C.E - ?) noted Paraitakene was the geographical area beyond Sakastene . The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (1st century CE) describes the territory of the Parsidai beyond the Ommanitic region on the coast of Balochistan. The contemporaneous text Natural History by Pliny records
232-431: Is a bilingual Parthian and Middle Persian text corpus which was inscribed on the stone blocks of the walls of Paikuli tower; the latter is located in what is now southern part of Iraqi Kurdistan near modern-day Barkal village, Sulaymaniyah Governorate, Iraq ( 35°5′53.91″N 45°35′25.95″E / 35.0983083°N 45.5905417°E / 35.0983083; 45.5905417 ). These inscribed stone blocks are now in
261-476: Is mentioned as his successor, although the text of the inscription of Paikuli in which king Shapur appears is unclear because of long lacunae. Some suggest that Narses in the inscription sought to compare his succession to the throne with that of his grandfather Ardashir, just as Ardashir had succeeded Shapur. S. Mori contends that the Paikuli inscription is basically relating the traditional Near Eastern story of how
290-700: Is scarcely documented. The Paratarajas polity is known through coinage, which has been primarily found in and around Loralai . E. J. Rapson first studied the coinage in 1905; it was subjected to a comprehensive evaluation by B. N. Mukherjee in 1972; these studies have been since superseded by analyses by Pankaj Tandon and Harry Falk . Coinage was issued in five denominations: didrachms, drachms, hemidrachms, quarter drachms, and obols; all rulers did not issue every denomination. The first six rulers minted stable denominations in silver that were devalued and then replaced by billon than copper. Tandon notes multiple similarities with Indo-Parthian coinage, especially in
319-463: The Sulaymaniyah Museum ; the field only contains the stones that were used in the construction of the tower. It was set up as a monument to victory, and tells how and why the Sasanian emperor Narseh (also written Narses) ousted his grandnephew from power. In 293 Narses marched from Armenia in open revolt against his nephew with a host of supporters and allies, whose names are recorded on
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#1733085395391348-635: The Yadava line, and were chiefly responsible for dethroning King Bahu of Kosala . Later, King Sagara, son of Bahu, was able to defeat the Haihayas or Taljungas together with the five hordes. King Sagara had divested the Paradas and other members of the Panca-ganah of their noble Kshatriyahood and demoted them to the barbaric caste of Mlechchas , due to their non-observance of sacred Brahmanical codes and neglect of
377-445: The "King of Paratas". The die engraver often left the legend incomplete if he ran out of room, a quirk that is peculiar to the Paratarajas. Four contemporaneous inscriptions refer to the polity — two of them are edicts by Sasanian Emperors that cursorily refer to the Paratarajas, one is a collection of potsherds that record Yola Mira's patronage of Buddhist monks, and the other is a stone inscription recording Datayola's commissioning of
406-587: The Far West. The Paratarajas were Zoroastrian by faith but they likely patronized Buddhism as well. Tandon said the Paratarajas may have been Parthian vassals who declared independence, leveraging the weakening of imperial authority and a burgeoning trade with the Roman Empire . The only significant information about their rule is that they flourished as an intermediary state between three major powers—the Kushanas to
435-485: The Paikuli inscription. The Paikuli inscription of Narses shows that Asuristan ( Babylonia ) at least was in Persian hands, but says nothing of Nisibis and Singara . The fact of Amr ibn Adi 's vassalage to Narses was preserved by the latter in the Paikuli inscription. Paikuli inscription may be devoid of much historical information because it belongs to the genre of epic literature composed since time immemorial in
464-489: The Paraetaceni to be between Aria and Parthia . Ptolemy notes Paradene was a toponym for an interior region of Gedrosia . Extant literature portrays the Paratarajas as a migrant tribal polity that had originated in the territory of modern-day north-western Iran or further east, and migrated over centuries to the eastern fringes of Parthian territory. There, it may have reached its peak as an independent polity. Neither
493-411: The ancient Near East. In the 19th century, when it was visited by several travelers, it consisted of the ruins of a large, square tower that had originally been covered on all sides by stone blocks, some contained inscriptions, but, at the time, lay scattered all around the monument. In Tabari and sources that follow his work, and also in the Paikuli inscription of Narses, a son of Papak called Shapur
522-486: The case of Bactria , and because the region was not claimed as a Sassanian territory in future inscriptions like Kartir's, at Naqsh-e Rajab . Coins carrying an inscription of " śrī rājño sāhi vijayapotasya" ("Of the noble Lord, King Vijayapota") on the reverse have been found around Loralai; based on the presence of a crescent at the brow of the obverse bust, a terminus post quem of c. 400 corresponding to Sassanian shahanshah Yazdegerd I can be assigned. Despite
551-434: The extant inscriptions nor the coinage map the extents of the Paratarajas to any geographic precision. Nonetheless, most scholars have placed the polity in western Balochistan, west of Turan and east of Siestan, largely catering to individual biases. Tandon challenges this "implicit consensus" and hypothesizes Shapur I's inscription to have listed regions in a geographical order from west to east — thus, Pardan falls between
580-529: The inexact provinces Makran and Hind. Deriving support from the abundant finds of Parataraja coins and potsherds in Loralai, he proposes the Paratarajas to have ruled the district and its surrounds, probably extending in the west to modern-day Quetta (or Kandahar) and in the north-east to modern-day Zhob . There exists no conclusive evidence to date the establishment of Paratarajas in Balochistan. Tandon proposed
609-400: The lands: Fars Persis, Pahlav [Parthia] ... and all of Abarshahr [all the upper (eastern, Parthian) provinces], Kerman, Sakastan, Turgistan, Makuran, Pardan Paradene, Hind [Sind] and Kushanshahr all the way to Pashkibur [Peshawar?] and to the borders of Kashgaria, Sogdia and Chach [Tashkent] and of that sea-coast Mazonshahr [Oman]. In 1926 and 1927, Aurel Stein commanded an excavation at
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#1733085395391638-534: The metrological standards and shape, and the coinage of the Western Satraps , especially in materials. The coins exhibit a bust on the obverse and a swastika —either right-facing or left-facing—on the reverse, circumscribed by a Prakrit legend in Brahmi script (usually silver coins) or Kharoshthi script (usually copper coins). This legend carried the name of the issuer followed by patronymic, and identification as
667-711: The north, the Western Satraps to the east, and the Sassanids to the west—for about two centuries. Their fall can be correlated to the well-corroborated decline in Indo-Roman trade volume beginning in the mid-3rd century and then, Shapur II's devastating Eastern Campaign . Tandon rejects the idea that they were conquered by the Sasanians as early as 262—as attested in Shapur I's inscription—because Parata coins continued to be abundant without exhibiting any abrupt Sassanian influence as in
696-467: The order of the four quarters, in the acceptance of the Sarvastivadin teachers. And from this right donation may there be in future a share for [his] mother and father, in future a share for all beings and long life for the master of the law. Yola Mira, a king whose existence was unknown at the time of the excavation, has since been determined form coin finds to be the earliest Parataraja king. For long,
725-814: The potsherds remained the only non-numismatic evidence for any of the Parataraja rulers. A stone-slab inscription found in ??, inscribed in both Brahmi and Kharosthi, commemorates the establishment of an eponymous city by Datayola in the sixteenth year of his reign. A right-facing Swastika is engraved on the inscription. No mention of the dynasty is found in extant literature; however, classical literature in Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit make mention of tribal polities named "Parētakēnoí" (Πᾰρητᾰκηνοί), "Pareitakai/Pareitacae" (Παρειτάκαις), "Parsidai" (Παρ?óδòν > Παρσιδὦν (?)), "Paraetaceni", "Paradene" (Παραδηνή) and "Parada". Tandon accepts Mukherjee's theory all of these names refer to
754-901: The priestly class. Before their defeat at the hands of King Sagara, these five-hordes were called Kshatriya-pungava ("foremost among the Kshatriyas"). The Vayu Purana state that the Udichya tribes, including the Panca-ganah , the Gandharas , Tusharas , Khasas , Lampakas , Madhyadesis, Vindhyas , Aprantas, Dakshinatyas, Dravidas , Pulindas and Simhalas , would be proceeded against and annihilated by Kalki in Kali Yuga . Paratarajas The Pāratarājas ( Brahmi : [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] Pāratarāja , Kharosthi : 𐨤𐨪𐨟𐨪𐨗 Pa-ra-ta-ra-ja , Parataraja , "Kings of Pārata ") or Pāradarājas
783-585: The ruins of a Buddhist site at Tor Dherai in Loralai and discovered potsherds carrying Prakrit inscriptions in Brahmi and Kharosthi scripts. Sten Konow , publishing the report about three years later, failed to understand the Brahmi legends but interpreted the Kharosthi legend as: Of the Shahi Yola Mira, the master [owner ] of the vihara, this water hall [is] the religious gift, in his own Yola-Mira-shahi-Vihara, to
812-610: The same entity, who gave rise to the dynasty; he cites Datayola's coin-inscriptions in support. Around 440 BCE, Herodotus described of the Parētakēnoí as one of the Median tribes that were collectively ruled by Deiokes . Arrian records Alexander to have encountered the Pareitakai in Sogdian province — in his account, that parallels those by Quintus Curtius Rufus , Strabo , and Plutarch ,
841-464: Was a dynasty of Parthian kings in the territory of modern-day Baluchistan province of Pakistan from circa 125 CE to circa 300 CE. It appears to have been a tribal polity of Western Iranian heritage. Sometime between the 7th and 4th centuries BCE, they started their gradual eastward migration from what is now northern Iraq or Iran, and by the 1st century CE, they had reached modern-day Baluchistan. The ancient history of Balochistan , western Pakistan,
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